Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Heat, Thought, Time
It's the incredible edible, heavy-investment waffle double gainer! steevo.com writes: "Intel has decided to stay with Rambus. Say it ain't so! Details are at C-NET.
Time was when ... wilkinsm writes: "When I tuned my shortwave to 5 Mhz today, I learned that NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is currently doing a open survey on the time and frequency user community. I encourage all of you unix admins that use the network time protocol to show your support and fill the online survey out."
Has the code been tossed out with the bathwater? nonAI writes: "The Israeli company, which promoted a competition against an AI, closed its gates, as reported by an Israeli economic magazine (sorry, babelfish doesn't help). That's the end for the Child Machine HAL."
Now imagine you know of a freewheeling, opinionated discussion board ... Wael Islam, a member and volunteer with IslamWay.com, writes with some words on the objections B'nai Brith Canada raised to postings on IslamWay's message boards.
"In IslamWay.com discussion board we've more than 4000 Member and at the time of the media attack there was more than 28,000 posts!! Bnai Brith didn't only take one of the posts, but even took a statement out of context to prove that IslamWay.com is a terrorist website! ...
... The discussion post was between two people who were fighting each others by words, one called the other one that you are a hypocrite, so the other one was very angry so he told him - I'm just giving the meaning- : Let's see who is the hypocrite, Come with me to Afghanistan and let's train ourselves there .. so the person meant that army exercises will be a way to prove who is the coward and who is the brave!"
The people who attacked IslamWay.com based on the Discussion Board post didn't clarify that it was mentioned in the discussion board, and they just said a post on IslamWay.com."
Of course, we could require that all public communications be approved in advance, licensed, and inoffensive.
Please resume watching your educational audio-visual materials. echoSpades writes: "I guess I wasn't the only one to be annoyed with Apple's DVD playback. Apple's website has a small text link to info about a class action suit against them: 'There is a proposed settlement of a class action lawsuit against Apple Computer, Inc. involving issues with DVD playback in earlier models of the Apple iMac DV, iMac DV SE and Power Mac G4 computers."
...and Islam Way is a terrorist site.
Or neither is true. But the same argument has been used against both. The difference is, when Microsoft and the Church of Scientology attacked Slashdot, they used the DMCA. Islam Way was attacked with the threat of new legislation.
The fact is, every weblog is going to have a seamy underside. Hopefully the public will not be so easily swayed by emotion as to outlaw weblogs because of the comments posted by a handful of fools.
"A coward is incapable of causing destruction; it is the prerogative of the brave" - Mahatma Ghandi
Intel packages the new P4's with RDRAM or SDRAM, so what's the big deal? If you want rambus, pay for it! If not, get the SDRAM. Let's let the market decide which one is better. Intel really only has to explain itself to its investors. It has to prove itself to its customers!
Well, no duh. They were going to dumb rambus when they had a chipset that they could sell exclusively that allowed you to use SDRAM in their computers. Now that that patent isn't theirs anymore, they're going to work to hype up rambus anymore try to marginalize their competition.
This of course isn't to be critical of Intel, they're just trying to cover their hiney, but it is to mention WHY they would.
(sorry, babelfish doesn't help).
That's a babelfish phrase if I've ever seen one.
Ahh, class action lawsuits. As has been pointed out on numerous Mac-related web sites, the problems with Apple's software DVD player were fixed in later versions of the software (included with 9.0.4, 9.1, and 9.2)
This software was available as a free download. I believe it was even included with the Software Update control panel (so that with minimum user input, it would update itself), also as a free download.
So now Apple settles this lawsuit, and they have to provide the software for free (been there, done that, now they just have to provide the CD) and provide support on the update.
It seems that the only real winners in this lawsuit are the lawyers. Apparently they get a cut based on possible takers. So they figure there are 100,000 people effected by the bum software. They figure that 20,000 might take Apple up on their over-priced offers. They get a cut of those 20,000 people's purchases, even if they do not actually buy the items in question.
Strange...
Anyway, this just shows commercial software places "Do not 'Release early, release often.'" - you might get sued if it is too buggy, even if you provide free updates.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Because everyone would be to worried about keeping warm. Everyone should move up here to the antartic, and build igloo's. Except of course for Steve Jobs, as one poster already pointed out, he would turn everything into fruity coloured "I-Gloo's." I will have none of that. So come up north, and join me as I keep warm next to my nice wood burning stove. We can hunt polar bears, and download stare at the Pr0n K1ng's pr0n. I stole it from him! All of it! He has none left!
According to Rambus CFO Bob Eulau, the deal was less for the 'financial' implications, but rather was about the 'strategic' implications. Although the 'ole chipmonster gets complete access to Rambus' patents for fixed quarterly payments, Rambus gets the important longterm test of ...uh... not dying tomorrow as users realize that RDRAMs speed increase doesn't quite make up for the fact that one can purchase gigs of DDR SDRAM for the same price as megs of RDRAM. Oh well, there are always the lawsuits to support them... The company has spent millions pursuing patent infringement suits against three memory makers.
please explain to me how software can travel down a wire to begin with??
and I think I could probably write code to send things on the prn port if I knew the pins of your printer to make the head move WAY over and then put that into an infite loop
if you are sufficiently stupid you'd run it long enough on your dot matrix printer and strip the belt
"Of course, we could require that all public communications be approved in advance, licensed, and inoffensive." - you mean, the gov't doesn't already?
Your ignorance is showing. This is a KNOWN BUG with Linux. Certain models of printers can be physically broken by being driven out of spec by the poorly written linux printer drivers. Check the docs that come with the kernel source next time before shooting off your mouth. Many people have broken their printers because they didn't check to see if they we're truly compatible first.
I noted an article the other day about the FTC investigating Rambus and others over alleged submarine patents.
Is Intel going into the submarine patent business? Does this leave them liable to charges from the FTC?
Are any of Rambus' patents worth anything? Does anybody even care?
A couple of minutes ago, slashdot seemed to be down for a few minutes -- i got the "internal configuration error" blah blah -- did anyone else see it?
Like we have never seen this before.!
But be sure to thank them for the free advertising! Especially once it is made clear the the comments were rhetorical questions in the middle of a heated discussion.
The may feel rather silling about it after the fact.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You try to server up 2 million hits every day. Slashdot was probably only down for like 30 seconds, so stop your complaining.
Gaming Shizzle
Wait a second here...Google search....Ah! Here we go...
...So long as you're running 4 or 8 chips in parallel. :-P
I don't know why Intel is cutting its own throat, tying its processor to the most expensive memory around, especially since that same memory is holding the processor back. I suppose they signed some agreement years ago and now they're stuck.
Nevertheless, it is very irresponsible to misrepresent a statement deliberately.
For example, I could take the quote above and claim Slashdot is about to sensor posts. Ridiculous, yes, but to an outsider it makes sense.
The price of greatness is responsibility.
I read over (I must admit rather quickly) some stuff regarding the B'nai article. The IslamWay site made some rather slight attacks at Jews in thier response.
This leads me to two questions:
1) From all that we have seen on the news lately with Islamic scholars, Islam means peace and the Q'uran teaches that a Muslim should respect his Christian and Jewish brothers and love them since we all come from the same God. It goes back to Islam teaching that Abraham and Jesus were in the same vein as Muhammed as prophets. Why is then that there is such a thread of hate when it comes to Muslims and Jews? I understand the biblical aspect of the conflict (It goes back to Cain and Able if I remember my studies). But sitting that aside, why the hate?
2) Again, on the news, we keep hearing that true Islam does not teach Jihaad but the concept had to come from somewhere, correct? I can't find any unbiased reporting and I don't have a copy of the Quran here with me to check myself. If Jihaad is indeed mentioned in the Quran, what are the circumstances surrounding it and what are the justifications.
I understand that many Muslims are saying that Bin Laden has hijacked TRUE Islam but where did he get the ideas for Jihaad? Where did this all start? (not his hatred of the US but the concept of a holy war at all costs.
Further more, I've read all the passages about killing innocents and how it is forbidden but if a Jihaad is allowed does that bypass that rule?
I guess this is really a question for someone versed in Islamic apolegetics but it can't hurt to ask.
And no one post any bullshit condeming all religions and the typical comments we get on slashdot about religious people being sheep. It doesn't float.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Good thing they got rid of HAL before he reached his teenage years. You think dealing with him is hard now, well you just wait and see what he's like at 15!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
GWB: organic intelligence by some Americans.
funny how their fake "18 month old healthy baby boy" seems to have more decision making power and intelligence than our "uh, uh, um, uh, uh..."* pres.
woops. unity, right, not diessention, sorry.
*as quoted today in yet another mind poppingly whiny, gramatically incorrect, uninspiring presidential speech.
I can just imagine what could have been: One more lamer posting on Slashdot!
Watching and listening to the speeches in the House of Parliament today, I was very much relieved. Positions by the major leaders included (these are not quotes):
Jean Cretien: We will not curtail freedoms in this country in order to stop terrorism. Airport inconveniances, sure, but he very strongly said that we could not benefit from a reaction out of fear and hate, and that while a responce was deserved, we would not let anyone force us into an action that was not well thought out.
Stockwell Day: This action must be resolved, and it will be resolved (quoting Sir Winston Churchill) through 'blood, toil, sweat, and tears', but we will not give up our way of life, because when terror is allowed to flourish, the terrorists have won.
Alexa McDonough: Terrorists thrive on martyrs, and we must provide a measured, thought-out, and diplomatic action to counter this threat of terrorism.
Joe Who?: We must seriously reconsider things in this country, and not hold anything over if it needs to be changed - including funding for areas of government, laws, and so forth.
All in all, some quite rousing speeches (considering who was giving them), and definitely a lot that made me feel proud to be Canadian. What Ottawa's responce will actually be, we will have to wait and see.
--Dan
Maybe if /. ran something besides Linsux, they wouldn't have this problem.
True enough, they'd never get near 2 million hits a day with most other OS's...
Cobbled together unauthorized Lexmark driver made by Linux hackers illegaly reversed engineering the protocol have been known to screw over the firmware rendering the printer a paperweight even in windows. The moral of the story is software can trash hardware in a number of instances. This is not common, but it does happen specialy with hacked up Linux driver shit!
Last time I checked, cdrom.com, one of, if not the busiest file sites on the net ran FreeBSD. And, if I recall correctly, it can handle 3600 simultaneous users with ease.
Then again, what else would you expect from a site whose very foundation is built upon neo-linux-zealotism?
And GWB was the man who is quoted as saying that he thought he would concentrate on domestic affairs from now on. I guess foreign affairs implied too many "furriners with funny accents", and almost none of them had a lobby group.
Guess what Bushie baby, from now it's foreign affairs morning, foreign affairs noon and foreign night, except for a few panic-stricken moments that will involve domestic security!
By the way, would any Republicans reading this care to expound at length on the wisdom of airline de-regulation. Include in your discussion an explanation of how bankrupt airlines can compete fairly or at all. Include a paragraph on the security efforts that nearly bankrupt airlines are likely to be willing to pay for! Discuss the cost of bailing out bankrupt airlines and the tax increases that will be required. Oh well, there is a precedent for that isn't there?
Like anything the whole has to be judged as a whole. But non-violence and no peace with non-muslim's is very superficially evident. From the Koran:
Al-Maidah 5:33*The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger,
and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: *execution,
or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides*,
or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy
punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;*
Al-Maidah 5:51 O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends
and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he
amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah
guideth not a people unjust.
(be tolerant?)
Sura At-Tawba 9:29 Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that
forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge
the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until
they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
(People of the Book refers to the Jews, the forbidden includes alcohol)
Sura At-Tawba 9:30 The Jews call 'Uzair a son of God, and the Christians call Christ the
son of God. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate
what the unbelievers of old used to say. God's curse be on them: how they
are deluded away from the Truth!
(curse upon Jews & Christians who won't covert)
Sura At-Tawba 9:38 O ye who believe! what is the matter with you, that, when ye are asked
to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling heavily to the earth? Do ye prefer
the life of this world to the Hereafter? But little is the comfort of this
life, as compared with the Hereafter.
(suicide or extreme risk of death in the name God)
Sura At-Tawba 9:39 Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put
others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath
power over all things.
Those who wish to research further can do so at http://www.al-quran.org.uk
It is unwise to crtitise that which that of which you have little understanding and knowlege. Even Bushie hasn't done that (yet).
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
Almost no religions have ever been a force for peace. Religious revivals of any kind seem to me to be a leading indicator of when the wars are going to start. Look back through history at the pogroms, religious massacres and witch hunts. Yes, witches can be looked on as the last remnants of the old mother goddess religion!
Today we are looking at a revival of fundamentalist Christianity amongst protestants, anti-abortion mania in Catholics, a revival of traditional Judaism, a fanatical revival of fundamentalist Islam, not to mention fundamentalist Hinduism. The one exception could be Buddhism, but I note to my sorrow that Hindus and Buddhists are at war in Sri Lanka. The Discordians and Sub-Geniuses (praise be to BOB!) look peaceful and perfectly rational by comparison!
If religion was a force for peace, what a wonderful placid world we would now have. All that I can observe is that everybody appears to hate everybody else's guts with a passion. The greater the fundamentalist fervour, the greater seems to be the hate. Consider the attacks in the streets of people who only vaguely look Arabic.
I can only reach one conclusion:
The only worthwhile freedom of religion is a freedom FROM religion!
How's that for a fundamental religious tenet (but not fundamentalist)?
as I understand it...Jihad means "to strive", and Muslims should strive to the best of their ability to follow the 5 pillars of their faith among other beliefs (hadith/sunnah) as laid out for them in the Islamic belief system. Without going into a lot of detail (it wouldn't go over here well anyway I imagine) all Muslims are 'submitters' to God, and striving to do their best (as vague as it may sound) is just another one of the behavioral/lifestyle recommendations given in their holy book. How and why the concept of striving to please God and be a good follower of Islam ever mutated into the present day (MIS!)understanding of jihad by the ..shall we say.. UNINFORMED people of the world today, I can only speculate. I'm certain some wacko terrorist coined the buzzword during some media interview (given for his "cause" I'm sure) and it just stuck (no thanks to our present day media blitzes we see with every story now...man I'm sick of business buzzwords). Sad, really, how a few bad apples are not just spoiling the bunch, they are singlehandly changing the entire world's understanding of what appears to be a relatively harmless, if not accomodating religion with an amazing and troubled history...tsk tsk. EDUCATE YOURSELVES, PEOPLE !! Don't let Fox or CNN do it for you. Peace ...oh yeah tweek, post a response if you would like me to zip up (or tar/gzip :) some copies of different holy books from major religions and pass em along...I have always studied them, and would be more than happy to pass along some (fairly complete) HTML versions from 3-5 diff religions.
On with tonight's rant:
There is a lot of debate, analysis, planning, work, sacrifice and struggle ahead for America in its battle against global terrorism. The first few days, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 tragedy, I saw well reasoned debate, much of which I agreed with. America seemed to have the right attitude about rooting out the fanatical zealots that had wrought so much death, destruction, suffering, and which if unchecked will cause far more. Four or five days later I see we are dangerously off message. Everywhere I look now I see American flag waving, and often accompanied with the phrase "God Bless the USA."
Nationalism and religious extremism is what motivated these misguided men. We must not answer it with nationalism and extremism of our own. This must not become Our-God versus Their-God. Say that we have one of the best governmental systems in the world, if not the best, and I will not argue. Extend this to say we are right and just because God favors our form of government or vise versa, and you will be no better than they, using religion to guide us into acts of retribution instead of justice.
Am I saying not to retaliate? No. I think terrorism must be rooted out everywhere for the sake of a safer and most just world. We cannot stop at fighting Islamic extremists in middle-east locations. We must tell the IRA, no more. We must look within our own borders and stop soldiers of fortune, eager to engage in the fight for the sake of the fight. We must not turn a blind eye to the plight of lower Africa just because we have no pressing concerns there, not just because it is right, but also because one day we will have interests there.
We must make sure our governmental agencies are not funding terrorists for short-term goals by calling them freedom fighters. Perhaps they are, but if we support them covertly, we are no better than those we must now deal with. If a cause is just then America must not be secretive or indirect in its support. We may have to choose our fights, and these may from time to time involve the practicality of considering if American interests are at stake (we cannot be everywhere at one), but the first question must always be "is this just?" The second question must then always be "is this a just way to achiever our goals?"
I warrant if you where to burn an American flag in public at the moment, you risk being put in the hospital if not the morgue. My point is not the burning the American flag is a good thing to do, but that it is easy to do the absolute wrong thing for what you think are just reasons, in this case assaulting someone because they have disrespected a symbol you hold dear. Certainly, the terrorists that have fought and died think they are doing the right thing. Dismissing them as evil, and making their Holy War our Holy War will pull us down into a morass from which there is no escape.
War must from time to time be waged by freedom loving people, but don't do it in God's name and don't make the American flag a surrogate for God. God is not for war of any kind. Most of Christianity's most cherished biblical figures are martyrs that refused to fight. I do not advocate turning the other cheek in this case, but to persecute a war with God in the rallying cry will surely keep us from our most basic goal here -- to prevent religious fanaticism from motivating men to barbaric acts.
Letter To Iran
It means "to struggle to better oneself".
Those who wish to further their own political agendas in these countries will tell the people that the holy war they are fighting is for jihaad. Now the word has only bad connotation in all contexts (just like "hacker")
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
It is when they all group together in ignorance and panic that they start pulling each other under the waves.
Often dragging bystanders and those who try to help with them.
The only worthwhile freedom of religion is a freedom FROM religion!
And sadly, the Taliban have made it a crime to try to preach to people a religion different from their own.
It seems as though the Islamic world is today hitting the troublesome stage that the "Holy" "Roman" "Empire" (which was, to quote someone else, "neither holy, roman, or an empire") did in the middle ages. The Catholic Church even massacred "heretic" branches that didn't even reinterpret the book -- they just refused to acknowledge the church's power!
...is to impose their own brand of censorship. That way they don't have to run the risk of embarassing articles such as this one being read by thinking individuals.
You're using her as bait, Master!
1) minor conflicts between jewish tribes and Moslems during the Prophet's exile in Medina, told from the Islamic point of view in the Haddiths
2) the Crusades caused a hardening of opinion about the large Jewish and Christian populations under Islamic rule ca. 1000AD,
3) fallout from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after 1918.
After reading the article: Bin Laden's successors - NY Times Magazine, June 25, 2000, which has been floating around on Usenet lately, it's clear that the basic problem with the Afghans and Jihad is that the vast majority of Afghans (in this case, ethnic Pathans) are barely educated hicks.
It would seem that even those lucky enough to get into a religious school are getting only the sketchiest outline of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Instead, they spend years phoenetically memorizing the Koran while not being the least bit conversant in Arabic. Filling the void are traditional Afghan cultural biases. Hence, Afghan attitudes regarding Jihad are almost completely uninformed, and molded by almost 20 years of continuous warfare and city-slicker outside opportunists like bin Laden.
Luke, help me take this mask off
In the Topaki Palace Museum in Istanbul is a letter from Mohammed to the head of the Egyptian Coptic Christians explaining (according to the translation posted with it) that those Christians could either (1) convert or (2) be killed. Since Muslim practice follows not just the Koran but also the examples from Mohammed's life (and from the example of the customs of the community around him), and since Mohammed seemed to offer genocide to the Coptic Christians in this instance ... well, I'm not a Jew or Christian either, but neither Moses nor Jesus is on record threatening genocide towards nonbelievers. Moses may have drowned an Egyptian army, but they were chasing him.
/. believes in pure evil that can't be explained, let us at least consider that there may be serious flaws in Islam, particularly concerning the evil that can be explained in its false founding prophet, who was an empire builder using religion as a cover, somewhat as Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot used Marx, all of whom managed to say some beautiful things. And Marx, like Mohammed, had a vision of an impossible paradise, that led people to die, and to act against others, in explainably evil ways.
Of course, we should recognize the Copts were not innocent in the eyes of Mohammed, since they failed to convert. Nor can we be.
Dan Rather was just on Letterman crying about how this isn't about Islam, but just "pure evil that can't be explained." Since I doubt anyone reading
They hate us because we have good lives here, now; not in a worker's utopia beyond the fall of capitalism, and not in a Muslim heaven beyond the end of life. We are not as harsh as their prophet; their choice is not to convert or be killed. But their choice is certainly to cease attacking us or be killed, because if they come after us they will find themselves like the army chasing Moses. Self-defense is not genocide. If they're there when the Red Sea closes, it's their own damn fault.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
heh, and you forgot a big website named Yahooo also runs FreeBSD....
Maybe you should look at a nice list http://www.freebsd.org/gallery/gallery.html
I could not find any evidence that Artificial Intelligence NV, the creators of HAL, has "closed its gates".
Their site is up, the Machine Learning Challenge is still under way and there is even a new article about HAL, with logs of HAL's interactions with its teachers.
Since no link was supplied, I think it is safe to assume for now the original poster is just misinformed.
What If IslamWay.com Really Was A Terrorist Board? Wouldn't it be better to leave it in place and have the CIA monitor it?
In the wake of the attacks, there are just far too many people letting their emotions do the driving.
Take the attacks on Arab-Americans for instance. Not only are these vigilante idiots mistaking Sihks for Moslems, they are totally forgetting what Arab-Americans (even if persecuted) will probably end up doing for us in ways that we can only begin to imagine and may never know about becase many operations will be secret.
What am I talking about? I'm talking about the Tuskeegee Airmen, The Navajo Code Talkers, and the Japanese "Nisei" who fought in Europe.
If you don't understand the last paragraph, do some reading and get back to me. Then let me know if it still makes sense to vandalize Mosques and shoot people who look like Arabs.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I guess that explains why I couldn't hit yahoo today... Thanks for clearing it up...
Sura Al-Baqarah 2:221
"Do not marry unbelieving women (idolaters), until they believe: A slave woman who believes is better than an unbelieving woman, even though she allures you. Nor marry (your girls) to unbelievers until they believe: A man slave who believes is better than an unbeliever, even though he allures you. Unbelievers do (but) beckon you to the Fire. But God beckons by His Grace to the Garden (of bliss) and forgiveness, and makes His Signs clear to mankind: That they may celebrate His praise."
Interesting how the message seems to be addressed to men - was/is the koran for men?
Are the terrorist themselves afraid that their religion is being degraded in the U.S. because of interfaith marriage?
I'm deeply disturbed at the news I'm reading on the tech websites that B'Nai Brith Canada is treating a single incident of exagerrated speech as a call to terrorism, and in turn accusing the website where such speech occurred as itself encouraging terrorism and thus liable to hate speech controls.
As an avid internet user for the past ten years, I have grown used to childish excesses of speech. These are a small cost to pay for genuine free exchange of ideas. Any effort to require editorial control of public exchanges on the internet is tantamount to the elimination of the new freedom that the internet affords every individual, to be a publisher as well as a consumer of information. No one can police any facility that allows people to say what they will - there are too many people.
In these grim times, it is good to remember that there are good people and bad people in every community. I don't want all Jews to have to shut up because one Jew may say something offensive, however offensive it may be. I can't see how we can rightfully do anything but extend the same right to every other community.
The internet allows people to contact people, to break out of the narrow constraints of the mass media. If we are to ever learn to live together in peace, there is hardly a better tool. The new freedom of speech that the internet affords has its costs, but its potential is enormous. This is a delicate time in the history of the internet, as many people are focussing on the difficulties and ignoring the immense potential.
The tragic events of the last year and especially the last week result from too little communication, not too much. Please don't join the forces that want to limit communication to the few and the powerful.
sincerely
Michael Tobis, Ph.D.
mt
1. bin Laden is reported to be extremely wealthy.
2. bin Laden is the head of a very sophisticated terrorist organization with contacts all over the world.
3. bin Laden probably uses highly sophisticated communication equipment to keep in contact with his network
4. bin Laden has eluded caputure for the last 10 years.
5. bin Laden is the prime suspect in the greatest acts of terrorism in history.
and finally
6. bin Laden is using a public web site that even my grandmother could monitor to recruit members to his cause.
Point 6 doesn't quit fit.
I'll tell you one thing that this discussion reminds me of, as all discussions do these days, although I don't know why. It's a quote from Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. He said:
/. will become a forgotten wasteland:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I hope that, upon reflection, more slashdotters will come to see this man's genius as expressed in the quote above. If they reflect on the quote below, then I believe
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."
shouldn't that be
New York, New Yorl so good they maimed it twice
Here's the original article (alas, in Hebrew). http://quotes.walla.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=item&pat h=110&id=116867
I do not make a distinction. A religious fanatic is a religious fanatic is a religious fanatic. I abhor them all equally. I am an equal opportunity abhorrer!
The sad thing about the present situation is that Bin Laden is firmly convinced that Bush is the great satan, who has bombed innocent women and children and defiled the sacred places in Saudi Arabia. Bush, meanwhile, is firmly convinced that Bin Laden is the great satan, who has bombed innocent women and children and defiled that sacred place in the USA, namely Wall Street.
If the principals did want to settle the present situation in a religious way they should merely confess their respective sins to each other and then shake hands and we all might be saved. Clerics such as Pat Robertson and a mullah of Bin Laden's choice could act as seconds.
Maybe shortly after hell freezes over!!!
Religion just shouldn't be taken so seriously. It's all a cosmic joke and the joke's on us! Maybe it would help if we worked on the assumption that god is totally impartial?
1) Uh, Abel died with no (cannonical) record of any children, so that's not quite the right root of this. I think it was Abraham, who had two wives. The slave wife, Haggar (who was sent away, not inheriting anything) is the one they (Islam) trace themselves through, if memory serves, whereas the other wife (hrm, was her name Sarah? I forget...) is "the child of promise" from whom Israel is decended. Mind you, that would be the Old Testament/Torah line on it; I have no idea what the Qu'ran thinks of that. I understand them to believe that the whole Bible is "corrupt" or something, whereas they have an original copy of the Qu'ran (mind you, the other 6 or so copies were burnt so there would be no variants, or something like that... not that it matters).
:( I think most people, even Muslems, regard this the way we do--disgusting.
In more recent times, though, the Crusades (including the modern state of Isreal) would be where the animosity comes from. They look on the USA and USA policy as a continuation of the Crusades--Bin Ladin said something of that sort in an interview, some time ago.
2) Yes, Islam means peace, AFAIK (mind you, this is from someone who has never seen a Qu'ran...) and a Muslem is one who submits to Allah's will. According to one Muslem cleric on TV, the attackers will go straight into hell fire. In any event, there is some concept of Jihad, which is the struggle against evil. Most Muslems think this means a personal struggle against temptation and the like. However, some fundamentalists take jihad more literally--a struggle against, well, people like innocent Americans
Please take this all with a grain of salt. I *do* know a few things & am pretty confident of what I said above. However, I've never even *seen* a Qu'ran before, so my knowledge of Islam is limited.
Brilliant point, all the more intriguing after Ashcroft requested Arab-American assistance in translation and interpretation.
On your first point: Once a while back in the suburb I grew up in, a group of vile white supremacists acquired time on a cable access station. When the community was about to burn the station down, the local chief of police asked: "would you rather these idiots act in secrecy or would you like to be able to keep an eye on who is who and what is what?". Made a lot of sense.
The US has done a lot of bad things, but this is stupidly one-sided.
Starts in 1948, long after the Jews had been kicked out of their homeland in the first place (makes it look like they just came into a foreign land and took it)
"U.S. blocks Sadat's efforts to reach a peace agreement with Egypt." Completely forgetting Carter at Camp David. Of course, no mention of the peace deal with Arafat.
The dam? Hmmm, you deal with my enemy, should I keep giving you money?
About the airliner, let's just say there are a lot of questions out on that one that make it look like a provoked incident by Iran. The ship was threatened militarily from sea and air, putting it into defensive mode, and Iran sent that airliner straight at the ship it the middle of it all.
"U.S.-backed rebels in Afghanistan fire on civilian airliner," like we're responsible for a rebel with an itchy trigger finger on his Stinger. These people were fighting for their freedom, we helped.
"U.S. rejects any diplomatic settlement of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. (for example, rebuffing any attempt to link the two regional occupations, of Kuwait and of Palestine)" And why should we have accepted? They invaded and refused to get out, end of story. To fall to a tactic like that would be essentially giving into terrorism in that all someone has to do to get their way is invade a country and negotiate from there.
"Washington makes it known that the sanctions would remain as long as Saddam remains in power." Okay, let him stop his weapons program and cooperate fully and see what happens.
If you owned as many rambus options as intel did you wouldn't be too quick to trash the company either ;-) The real question is will the chipsets support alternative memory architectures? That will probably mean de facto that Rambus looses, but if they save face and intel does a little better on the stock, what do we care?
This is very insightful. In fact, as I understand it, the concent of jihad lay dormant for many many centuries, and was only revived in the 1980s. The revival was for the reason that you state: for the Afghans to fight the Soviets.
What is almost incredible is that this revival was brought about by the CIA. The CIA wanted to find a way to motivate the Afghans to fight the Soviets (this was during the cold war, remember). So the CIA pondered how to do this, and eventually came up with the idea of reviving the (largely-forgotten) notion of jihad. More details are available here.
its sikh not sihk
Your post really is insightful, and your first statement brings up a question that has bothered me at least since last Wednesday. The newsman was in "How could we let this happen" mode, and he was interviewing someone highly placed at the NSA. The NSA was talking about all of the sophisticated (mostly American) technology available to the terrorists and the difficulty of combatting it.
It occurred to me then that the NSA has no peer when it comes to technology and the gathering of information--even, many of us would say, in ways we don't especially appreciate. But how much of what occurred in the development of this attack relied on technology? And how much was plain old-fashioned talking, recruiting, development of loyal followers, fostering of relationships--stuff you do in person?
It seems to me that Internet sites such as this one and the one you refer to are the modern equivalent of coffee houses, marketplaces, and town squares--places where people gather to talk. Have our intelligence organizations foresaken old-fashioned human contact in favor of technological wonders? If so, I don't think it served any of us very well.
Anne
(I can answer your question about the Nisei, Navajo Code Talkers, and Tuskeegee Airmen. But I'll leave it as an excercise for the student.)
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
I actually own one of the iMacs that are a target of the class action lawsuit. Here's the synopsis:
Someone was too dumb/lazy to download the patch to the DVD player application and sued Apple.
Everyone with one of these models of Macintosh gets a fifteen dollar discount on a mouse or keyboard, or some equally ludicrous discount on painfully overpriced software.
Thanks, Apple, but I think rather than paying the "discounted" 44 dollars for one of your piece of shit no-button lucite mice, I'll just stick with my fifteen dollar Logitech three-button.
What a joke.
--saint
For those of you that might be interested, I just launched a new site dedicated to models of human language acquisition. Over time I hope to provide a repository of relevant news on researchers, conferences, papers, and books from fields including A/I, computational linguistics, developmental psychology, machine learning, and cognitive science.
I will also use the site to share information about my own work. Like HAL, my model learns (and "learn" should always be taken with a grain of salt) from the bottom-up, but the words it acquires are grounded in visual perception. The basic idea is to resolve nouns to objects and verbs to actions/relationships in short spatial-motion videos. My work is based on work by Jeffrey Mark Siskind, David Bailey, Jan Norris, and Katherine Nelson.
Upon completion of my dissertation, I hope to release some or all of the Java code for my model on the site.
Islam ONLY permits Jihad (A holy war) when the government (or king for that matter) of a country does not allow the muslim inhabitants of that country to exercise the religious customs of islam (prayers, mosques, not eating pork, not drinking alcoholic beverages, and charity).
,that is).
Once all of these are approved by the government, Islam has no issues whatsoever with muslims living under chrisitian rule.
You people have to realise that it's most likely Muslim people are really nice people and their relegion (in it's pure form that is, not the one some bullies mix up with politics) is an enlightened one.
For god's sakes, I'm an ISRAELY JEW and _I_ say they're nice. Of course we have issues with arabs (Who BTW, are NOT all muslims)
but the truth is those issues have nothing to do with Islam.
The trouble is many Muslims are extremely poor and live under opressing regimes, and a lot of times religion gets mixed up with politics and the local bullies use that to incite poor people, who have very little to lose, against the western culture.
Of course the local regimes encourage that because it's easier to put the blame for their incompetence and cruelty on somebody else (that is, the west).
With all due respect to american rage, (which I can perfectly understand as I've attended funerals of people I know who got hit by terror)
launching a war is the dumbest thing you americans have ever come up with (except the doughnut
We need to be proactive and reach a decision regarding whether we (the world) are going to allow people --who refuse to adopt a peaceful frame of mind -- to continue to exist on this planet.
If it was my decision, I would wipe the entire middle-eastern bloc off the face of the earth -- preferably by carpet-bombing with 100 megaton, very dirty nukes. That way, after the survivors come out (as is inevitable) they would succomb to radiation-poisoning. Then start up a large Chevron station where the oil wells were.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
... The discussion post was between two people who were fighting each others by words, one called the other one that you are a hypocrite, so the other one was very angry so he told him - I'm just giving the meaning- : Let's see who is the hypocrite, Come with me to Afghanistan and let's train ourselves there .. so the person meant that army exercises will be a way to prove who is the coward and who is the brave!"
I'm not saying what Islamway is or isn't, but does this person honestly expect me to believe this was a challenge to a pushup contest?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Motherfucker.
Burn in HELL
As far as the airlines, he is planning to fund the ones in trouble to help them get through this dry spell. Try reading something other than Slashdot, like a newspaper.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
What am I talking about? I'm talking about the Tuskeegee Airmen, The Navajo Code Talkers, and the Japanese "Nisei" who fought in Europe.