Of course Vista is no better, and wrestling it into submission can also be frustrating, but I have heard few Vista users trying to argue that its deficiencies are in fact strengths. You should at least back up a statement like that with a good example. Otherwise it remains just a cheap shot I think...
B. You can go back where you came from How about C. Will not even think about going with the current sad state of affairs.
What the hell is next??? Obligatory body cavity search for _everybody_ trying to enter the country??
Besides, what good is browsing a computer in the airport??
1) you cannot possibly search all my files in sufficient time 2) it's much easier for me to access my 'dangerous-to-the-great-country-of-the-FREE', nefarious and super duper gazillion bits encrypted content from a server I have safely tucked away somewhere... Far from the prying eyes of the customs people 3) What if a buffoon of customs fucks up my research data or other important data sitting on my hard drive?
Wake up and smell the coffee, I said it once and I'll say it again. These tactics are just as effective in protecting the US as DRM is in stopping piracy... It's just a nuisance to normal people while terrorists will happily go about their not so merry business.
The 9-11 hijackers didn't use a hacked copy of Flight Simulator to cause their damage. They used sharp box cutter _metal_ blades which they appear to have gotten through the metal detector just fine. Just goes to show...
First, one can never prove a scientific theory. Scientific theories are adopted because some group of scientists decides that some new theory gives us a better picture of the universe than the old theory. Basically, if the new theory has better predictive capabilities than the old theory, then the new theory tends to dominate. In reality, the old theory never goes away until proponents of the old theory all die. Theories can only be disproved.
Yes yes... we all saw this in our mandatory courses of philosophy at university over here (Belgium that is). I know what you mean but I think it is not applied correctly to my post.
Problem with the whole 'if reality does something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual.' is that this statement can _never_ be proven, the thesis that we might be living in a VR world can therefore never be falsified. The very nature of the VR theory implies that there is some form of higher system that is manifesting us and everything around us. This system is free to choose the rules by which we exist, the laws that govern us. Just as any programmer can create a game engine for the next big 3rd person shooter.
The fact that we might be some form of simulation or manifestation in this VR world, possibly subjected by a toned down version of the 'physics' that govern the very thing that is running the simulation, might well be the reason that information processing in our perceived world cannot 'do' certain things. Therefore, the fact that we cannot process certain things, or adequately describe them doesn't automatically imply that they _must_ be 'non-virtual'.
Perhaps the simulator running us can process information in ways that are impossible in the VR world. So everything we cannot process might well still be virtual after all. The whole theory doesn't provide tools or a framework to attempt falsification. I don't know what philosophers would think, but to me this makes it a 'less good' theory (to avoid calling it bad), something that other big theories somehow always provide...
He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual. How can one ever prove or disprove something like this?
To do so would require knowledge about the calculation capabilities of the system running the simulation. Given the fact that or math and physics might be simulated entities themselves, how then can we ever claim that something in our reality 'cannot be processed/calculated?' outside of our alleged simulated 'reality'?
We will never now. Unless somebody hands us that red pill (or was it the blue one... Neo? a little help please!)
Solving the underlying cause of terrorism is not going to stop the terrorist that is boarding the plane today. I'd say that there is enough factual evidence that there are people who are more than willing to commit acts of terrorism NOW. Making sure there will not be any in say 50 years won't protect you in a plane NOW And do you honestly think all the current security measures are going to stop a really determined terrorist from succeeding?
You cannot kill an idea that lives in the heads of thousands of people. You cannot magically read their minds to try and figure out what they are up to. If they are desperate they will prevail in their attempts to hurt others.
Unless the world as a whole figures out a way to give everybody some hope at a half decent existence you can expect shitloads of suffering. Terrorist will try to kill us, our armies will go off and cause some more 'collateral damage',... It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Until that time I think we have to be prepared to do the right thing and turn the biblical other cheeck. Take it lake a man and try to keep being constructive. After all, it is (for instance, there are many examples) very apparent that years of retaliations, border checks, walls,... by Israels highly advanced army have done nothing to break the spirits of Palestinian militants, it only made things worse.
I think that right wing or conservative influences in America still have not figured this one out, although many of them claim to be good Christians and to know scripture;-). Practice what you preach I would say.
Regardless, the new checks in the airports are like DRM is to music. A total nuisance to honest people and at the same time totally incapable of preventing the very things it was designed to counter. The US is the RIAA of geopolitics (and us dumb Europeans mostly just follow suit) and they are losing the battle and with that, we _all_ lose, everybody on this bloody rock. We're no better then a bunch of territorial chimps...
The most common profile of a terrorist, according to the research reports that I've seen, is a moderately wealthy, relatively successful, young male. Much like many of the civil rights activists in the US during the 1960's & 70's. So they probably have the same reasons. They are angered by the injustice that they have seen (or believed reports of) done to others. I follow... However, that doen't contradict my main point. The real problem of Muslims in general isn't so much our or their religion or customs. Hell, Jesus Christ is one of the prophets of Islam and there are lots of other points were both our religions overlap.
The real reason is that some things happened in recent history that caused some people immense amounts of grief, suffering and loss of material things. They lost their land, their stuff, they got killed... This is what caused them to react and sometimes do equally bad things to others.
I refuse to beleive that Muslims are all terrorists just because they are Muslims and they just hate us because we are not. Yet, this is what everybody wants us to believe.
If this was so then Shiites and Sunnis wouldn't also be kicking each others ass. The only thing at work here is good old, 'I want what the other has'.
This leads me to the second point;
I don't have an answer, but the obvious approaches don't seem to work. OTOH, image clearly plays a large part here. As the US is perceived as inherently more violent (and more accessible), more groups focus the anger of their members upon the US. America has done a lot of good, they helped us out during WWII and saved us from a lot of bad stuff. Ever since then they have been the de facto 'global police force', if not only because they are the only country in the world with the resources...
If you are a moral authority on this scale it is only normal that people meticulously watch your every move. From time to time this will lead to criticism, rightfully so I would think. You cannot do everything right all the time.
The US also committed some stuff that wasn't all to nice. They dropped the ball a few times, however noble the intentions might have been.
What I blame the US for (and many along with me I think) is that they keep making the same mistakes time and time again. Always going out to fight wars that cannot be won. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. Funding people who will later on betray them once they have gotten powerful enough.... Acting against Muslim extremists, but looking the other way if Israelis step over the line etc... You cannot deny that these things are going on.
The US needs to realize that their current policies might cause themselves more harm than actually solving anything.
The Romans got their butts kicked in the end no degree of cruelty could prevent that... by people from the East no less. I fear America _and_ Europe will suffer the same fate if we don't change our game plan. The Middle East will become our undoing and China and India are ready to become the next big global powers.
Really? Go read the fatwa of Osama bin Laden from 1996. His main complaint is that American infidels were defiling the "land of the two holy places" (ie Saudi Arabia) by their presence in the country. Why were the Americans in Saudi Arabia? Because the Saudis invited them there to protect the country.
You cannot reason with this kind of religious extremism - it is kill or be killed.
Osama can go fornicate a goat for all I care. He runs his mouth 24/7 about infidels and Holy War but he NEEDS certain people for his cause. And for the most part, the people he needs are of the easily brainwashable kind with not much to loose. Making them think they are fighting for religion (while in fact, they are not) gives them purpose, because without it they have nothing. As I said many times before. Do you think that the Muslim counterpart of family guy with a nice house, car, wife, kids, some money in the bank would be easily swayed to give up anything for some deranged guys 'Holy War'?
Even the Romans knew -> bread and games will keep the people quiet:). Take it away and they'll cuase trouble.
Conquered Palestinian land? Absolutely not. The British Mandate of Palestine was picked by the British from the collapsing Ottomans, who ruled the area for centuries. The British took the vast majority of the Mandate's land and created an new Palestinian Arab state called Jordan. The remainder of the Mandate was kept by the British until after World War II ended.
Give it fancy names all that you like. The Ottomans ruled the place, they were Muslims. Muslims lived there since the time of the crusades and even before. They had to move to accomodate the Jewish people. I can understand they were a bit pissed about that. Not to mention the fact that Israel took the nicest bits of land.
And even IF everything went ok and according to the law and what not (which I doubt -> by what right did the British ever think they were allowed to decide what happenend with Jordan and Israel? Can you explain that to me??), why then does Israel, to this day continue to build more settlements??? Don't they have enough already??? What are they achieving besides causing even more trouble for everybody?
As long as Israel _as well as_ Palestine keep provoking eachother it will remain a feeding ground for extremists on both sides.
Hezbollah, with the consent of the Lebanese government, sent a group of armed men across the internationally recognized border between Lebanon & Israel. These men killed & captured a number of Israeli soldiers. Now, when you send a group of armed men across the border to attack the armed forces of another country, that is an act of war. Israel responded with war, and Lebanon got fucked (again). War is a terrible thing, causing great suffering, destruction and loss of life. Maybe the Lebanese won't be so quick to start a war next time.
How can you justify blowing a whole country to bits because of a few hundred militant people? Normal people will suffer for years because of the cluster boms Israel decided to drop in densely populated areas??? Did the Lebanese people ever have a choice? Did the clusteboms destroy Hezbollah or even hurt them in the slightest? No, this organisation still exists... The only people that got fuck are the farmers who cannot work their land... the kids that loose their limbs playing outside in a field full of nice little bombs.
If it was only Israels intention to hurt terrorists, why then don't they contribute in cleaning up the undetonated clusterbombs, so the normal people don't have to suffer???
At least I can say that us Belgians are the only ones currently in the region to actually try and solve shit:) We are cleaning up the bombs, a job that will take years... Where is the rest of the world???
How can you justify the killing of many for a handful of souldiers?? These soldiers chose to fight, the knew the risks. Shit happens. This story is like bombing Texas because a few redne
Ok, here goes;
I come from BELGIUM... remember that country??? We were those annoying pricks that tried to block some of the American weapons transports from Germany to the Antwerp port in the days leading up to the second Gulf War.:) Internationally speaking our country is an insignificant speck. We got run over in a day or two during WWII. As a nation we are quite powerless.
That doesn't change the fact that I very much resent that Europe doesn't make itself more heard in the Middle Eastern conflict. Just like I hold it against the US that they currently cause more trouble than solving any. Africa has it's own problems (ever saw on CNN what's going on in Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone,...????
You are right about the PEOPLE part though (why the caps btw???). Fact of the matter is that people are the product of their respective environments.
Palestinians live in a hellhole currently, so when somebody like Osama or whatever comes along to claim that it's the infidels fault and that killing them will solve shit the follow... what else are they to do??? They are kept dumb and poor and AFRAID (nothing to do with burying their heads). And somebody who has nothing is capable of anything.
Same goes for average Joe American. Do you really, HONESTLY think that Billy from Iowa gives a flying fuck about Afghanistan, or Iraq or any of their imaginary weapons of mass destruction (again people are being scared by their leaders)? I'm sure he doesn't. Jimmy goes to fight to pay his way through college, to get food on the table for his kids. It's the poor people who go off to die in some godforsaken place. Not the rich assholes like your average Kevin Federline, Tommy Lee, Donald Trumps kids (does he have any??),...>insert rich guy who has everything... . Idealism??? Hell no...
I can understand that the 9-11 attacks were a big trauma for America. I, as a Belgian, was utterly shocked. It shouldn't have happened. But what did the invasion of Iraq solve? Did it bring the 9-11 victims back? Did it prevent another 9-11 from happening? No...
This is the only question that needs to be asked... 'Are we doing the right thing with our current approach, are we reaching a solution???'
I think all the checks at airports and all the military might of the US eventually will be totally insufficient to prevent this stuff from happening all over again.
1) Could you explain to me how exactly 'common sense' might infer that poor countries support less terrorism?
2) You mention SA as a rich country supporting terror because they simply hate us or our ideals (us = westerners). You seem to base this claim on the fact that there are some SA crackpots with ties to terrorist groups.
How then do you explain the fact is going beyond itself to become the greatest tourist attraction for rich folk in the bloody universe??? They build whole islands for rich westerners to come live there, they even allow consumption of alcohol by westerners, the whole nine yards. SA NEEDS us to buy their oil, to sustain their wealth, they don't hate us, we make them rich! They are nothing without us and we are nothing without them.
Furthermore, rich Saudis like Bin Laden can only be the worlds biggest terrorists because they have legions of poor bastards with nothing to lose to sacrifice in their so called holy wars. They prey on the poverty of others.
Do you really think that your average Achmed or Mohammed with a nice car, a nice wife and 2 kids doing well in school would ever care to go off to kill some infidels??? Hell no.
Give or take some rogue nutjobs, this has _nothing_ to do with ideology, yet everything with money and oil. Nothing more, nothing less.
And the whole west brought a lot of the current day problems upon themselves by doing the things they did thoughout the East, from Palestine all the way up to Afghanistan. Why is it so hard for American people to admit this??
Seeing some of those right conservatives on the news _really_ scares me sometimes. Don't you see they use the same tactics as your average ayatollah?
But this is a discussion that is far to complex to explain in writing in some stupid online messageboard.
... Wait until the next disgruntled teen steps up to your favorite Wall-mart totin' a bigass shooter.
Anyways enough of the stupid talk,
I strongly feel that the US should focus more on taking away the causes of all this senseless terror. You might feel safe but the root of the evil is still there.
And this evil doesn't stem from some crazy ass muslims here and there who just happen to like offing people, just because there are crazy bastards or something.
No, these problems all arise because people, Muslims, Jews and Christians (and throw in some Hindus for good measure) alike are falling victim to injustice, thus making them susceptible to the warmongering of only a handfull of so called 'leaders'.
The Jews got killed in WWII, so the were a bit pissed (and reasonably so). So they went of and conquered themselves some Palestinian land, thus making these guys unhappy (again, reasonably so). You end up with a bunch of Palestinians having nothing anymore, living in the stone age and no discernible way out. In a situation like that it only takes one nut to step up and say 'it's them Jews ho did this to us, lets go out and kill a few...'
Palestinians kill some Jews, Jews blow Lebanon to pieces with some clusterboms and padabing padaboom, you have a full scale war on your hands.
Whose fault is this? Nobodies, except maybe the allies (I explicitly don't blame the US all on it's own) from WWOII who decided to try and create Israel in the way they did. This should have been done using more diplomatic ways I think, even if that would have taken 50 years. Hell, I'm no geopolitical expert, but even a child can see what went wrong.
Same deal with Afghanistan. Russians needed to go so Mujahedein got funded. Once the Russians were gone there was nobody to support the merging nation of Afghanistan. They ended up piss poor and frustrated, a feeding ground for extremists.
Saddam and the whole Iran vs. Irak story... same thing.
Why do you think North Koreans are so pissed?? Because they like to lob a nuke in our backyard and because they think this will make things better for them? NO!!!! Because they are piss poor (They were pawns in the cold war between USSR and USA) and because some Chateau-Neuf-Du-Pape drinking bastard tells them it is our fault and if we go away they wil magically become un-poor.
The problems mentioned here are global problems, caused by the whole world just looking on instead of taking reasonable action. They are not just the USA's fault but the USA is a big player on a global scale, economically, morally and military... They should behave accordingly and not let a bunch of extremists in their own country take over.
It's not 'them vs. us', it's not 'Christians vs. Muslims', it's about people having the right to live freely and not taking everything from them, making them blind with rage so they cannot think straight and do all kinds of stupid crap to eachother.
The US and Europe should do something about THAT instead of herassing me at the airport because I happen to look funny (and I do sometimes, really:)... Just my two cents
What I really don't understand is why the rules that apply to normal social behaviour in public places -no running around in ye old birthday suit, no smoking in public places, no being drunk in public, no stealing, no spanking the monkey watching hardcore nature flics,...- should not apply to everything else, like for instance surfing the net on a plane or any other public terminal for that matter.
Imagine the possibility of getting strip searched for cigarettes/porn/your flask of single malt on the street corner, just because those items just might be used to conduct socially inappropriate behavior.
I could already watch hardcore porn on my portable DVD player or PMP for crying out loud... but I don't. Why?? -> because it would be inappropriate and people would look at me funny. And even if I did something that crossed the line I could get warned or sanctioned, just like they prohibit drunks from taking the plane...
Why can't we all just drop it already with this over regulating BS and just rely on common sense??
I hate this trend. Everything needs to be controlled for us since we are all clearly mindless sheep that are not able to think for ourselves properly.
Oh big brother, help us, for we know not what to do:(
... How a once idealistic company (or one with some good ideas at least) gets corrupted by it's own succes. They are going the way of the evil corporation real fast.
But at least Brin and co. have their private airstrip now:)
Well... I used 'becoming evil' in response to the image they alway wish to portray. "We think different, we are not like Microsoft blah blah blah"
Yet in the end they are just the same, if not worse. They charge outrageous premiums for run of the mill hardware (take a standard macbook as an example...) just because the case is white or something. They make 100% or more of profit on iPods made in Chinese sweatshops by underpaid children. The list is endless.
I am not stupid. Other multinationals in the PC industry probably also are guilty of one or more of these practices. So this should not be seen as flame bait. But Apple should just quit the whole "we are so much better" drivel...
I for one, will steer waaay clear of their products.
I think it is just a bit silly of the guy to try and release under CC. Its a totally useless endeavor seeing that each and every journal makes you sign one of those copyright transfer documents before publishing. This effectively transfers copyright of the publication over to them.
I know because I also published multiple reasearch publications, its standard procedure...
What was he thinking?:)
Maybe (definitely) a bit off topic, but reading this stuff just pisses me off a bit... What did the US ever achieve with all of its draconian checks and procedures in airports and all of their visa crap? Other than (borderline) infringing on the privacy of many innocent individuals it will never be able to stop the most determined people with bad intentions (or desperate Mexican or other immigrants at that).
It is deeply disturbing that the USA hands out billions to Israel for military purposes whilst on the other hand supplying Egypt, Saudi Arabia and God knows who else with weapons. What are they expecting? Arming to groups of people who have had beef for ages to the teeth and then expecting everybody to play nice?
They are just creating their own (and everybody elses) problems. No measure of retina scans, fingerprinting and other niceties will ever be able to avert the inevitable consequences their foreign policy will have.
... Or at least _not only_
The same behaviour happens on my company issued Dell D820. It comes loaded with IE6 and NO Google toolbar and yet when I mistype a URL I do not end up at the MSN search page like on any other IE installation! Instead IE redirects me to a Dell branded Google search page full of Google commercials.
... but wasnt the American President George W. Bush known to snort a good deal of coke back in the day???
Not two mention both of his dumbass doughters and their love for lady alcohol.
They deny a simple girl her precious certificate and yet you make a mentally challenged former cokehead one of the most powerfull people on earth? This scrares the s**t out of me:s
Go figure...
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell is next??? Obligatory body cavity search for _everybody_ trying to enter the country??
Besides, what good is browsing a computer in the airport??
1) you cannot possibly search all my files in sufficient time
2) it's much easier for me to access my 'dangerous-to-the-great-country-of-the-FREE', nefarious and super duper gazillion bits encrypted content from a server I have safely tucked away somewhere... Far from the prying eyes of the customs people
3) What if a buffoon of customs fucks up my research data or other important data sitting on my hard drive?
Wake up and smell the coffee, I said it once and I'll say it again. These tactics are just as effective in protecting the US as DRM is in stopping piracy... It's just a nuisance to normal people while terrorists will happily go about their not so merry business.
The 9-11 hijackers didn't use a hacked copy of Flight Simulator to cause their damage. They used sharp box cutter _metal_ blades which they appear to have gotten through the metal detector just fine. Just goes to show...
Yes yes... we all saw this in our mandatory courses of philosophy at university over here (Belgium that is). I know what you mean but I think it is not applied correctly to my post.
Problem with the whole 'if reality does something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual.' is that this statement can _never_ be proven, the thesis that we might be living in a VR world can therefore never be falsified. The very nature of the VR theory implies that there is some form of higher system that is manifesting us and everything around us. This system is free to choose the rules by which we exist, the laws that govern us. Just as any programmer can create a game engine for the next big 3rd person shooter.
The fact that we might be some form of simulation or manifestation in this VR world, possibly subjected by a toned down version of the 'physics' that govern the very thing that is running the simulation, might well be the reason that information processing in our perceived world cannot 'do' certain things. Therefore, the fact that we cannot process certain things, or adequately describe them doesn't automatically imply that they _must_ be 'non-virtual'.
Perhaps the simulator running us can process information in ways that are impossible in the VR world. So everything we cannot process might well still be virtual after all. The whole theory doesn't provide tools or a framework to attempt falsification. I don't know what philosophers would think, but to me this makes it a 'less good' theory (to avoid calling it bad), something that other big theories somehow always provide...
Writing this gives me headaches :-s
Really? Go read the fatwa of Osama bin Laden from 1996. His main complaint is that American infidels were defiling the "land of the two holy places" (ie Saudi Arabia) by their presence in the country. Why were the Americans in Saudi Arabia? Because the Saudis invited them there to protect the country. You cannot reason with this kind of religious extremism - it is kill or be killed.
Osama can go fornicate a goat for all I care. He runs his mouth 24/7 about infidels and Holy War but he NEEDS certain people for his cause. And for the most part, the people he needs are of the easily brainwashable kind with not much to loose. Making them think they are fighting for religion (while in fact, they are not) gives them purpose, because without it they have nothing. As I said many times before. Do you think that the Muslim counterpart of family guy with a nice house, car, wife, kids, some money in the bank would be easily swayed to give up anything for some deranged guys 'Holy War'? Even the Romans knew -> bread and games will keep the people quiet :). Take it away and they'll cuase trouble.
Conquered Palestinian land? Absolutely not. The British Mandate of Palestine was picked by the British from the collapsing Ottomans, who ruled the area for centuries. The British took the vast majority of the Mandate's land and created an new Palestinian Arab state called Jordan. The remainder of the Mandate was kept by the British until after World War II ended.
Give it fancy names all that you like. The Ottomans ruled the place, they were Muslims. Muslims lived there since the time of the crusades and even before. They had to move to accomodate the Jewish people. I can understand they were a bit pissed about that. Not to mention the fact that Israel took the nicest bits of land. And even IF everything went ok and according to the law and what not (which I doubt -> by what right did the British ever think they were allowed to decide what happenend with Jordan and Israel? Can you explain that to me??), why then does Israel, to this day continue to build more settlements??? Don't they have enough already??? What are they achieving besides causing even more trouble for everybody? As long as Israel _as well as_ Palestine keep provoking eachother it will remain a feeding ground for extremists on both sides.
Hezbollah, with the consent of the Lebanese government, sent a group of armed men across the internationally recognized border between Lebanon & Israel. These men killed & captured a number of Israeli soldiers. Now, when you send a group of armed men across the border to attack the armed forces of another country, that is an act of war. Israel responded with war, and Lebanon got fucked (again). War is a terrible thing, causing great suffering, destruction and loss of life. Maybe the Lebanese won't be so quick to start a war next time.
How can you justify blowing a whole country to bits because of a few hundred militant people? Normal people will suffer for years because of the cluster boms Israel decided to drop in densely populated areas??? Did the Lebanese people ever have a choice? Did the clusteboms destroy Hezbollah or even hurt them in the slightest? No, this organisation still exists... The only people that got fuck are the farmers who cannot work their land... the kids that loose their limbs playing outside in a field full of nice little bombs. If it was only Israels intention to hurt terrorists, why then don't they contribute in cleaning up the undetonated clusterbombs, so the normal people don't have to suffer??? At least I can say that us Belgians are the only ones currently in the region to actually try and solve shit :) We are cleaning up the bombs, a job that will take years... Where is the rest of the world???
How can you justify the killing of many for a handful of souldiers?? These soldiers chose to fight, the knew the risks. Shit happens. This story is like bombing Texas because a few redne
Ok, here goes; I come from BELGIUM... remember that country??? We were those annoying pricks that tried to block some of the American weapons transports from Germany to the Antwerp port in the days leading up to the second Gulf War. :) Internationally speaking our country is an insignificant speck. We got run over in a day or two during WWII. As a nation we are quite powerless.
That doesn't change the fact that I very much resent that Europe doesn't make itself more heard in the Middle Eastern conflict. Just like I hold it against the US that they currently cause more trouble than solving any. Africa has it's own problems (ever saw on CNN what's going on in Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, ...????
You are right about the PEOPLE part though (why the caps btw???). Fact of the matter is that people are the product of their respective environments.
Palestinians live in a hellhole currently, so when somebody like Osama or whatever comes along to claim that it's the infidels fault and that killing them will solve shit the follow... what else are they to do??? They are kept dumb and poor and AFRAID (nothing to do with burying their heads). And somebody who has nothing is capable of anything.
Same goes for average Joe American. Do you really, HONESTLY think that Billy from Iowa gives a flying fuck about Afghanistan, or Iraq or any of their imaginary weapons of mass destruction (again people are being scared by their leaders)? I'm sure he doesn't. Jimmy goes to fight to pay his way through college, to get food on the table for his kids. It's the poor people who go off to die in some godforsaken place. Not the rich assholes like your average Kevin Federline, Tommy Lee, Donald Trumps kids (does he have any??), ...>insert rich guy who has everything... . Idealism??? Hell no...
I can understand that the 9-11 attacks were a big trauma for America. I, as a Belgian, was utterly shocked. It shouldn't have happened. But what did the invasion of Iraq solve? Did it bring the 9-11 victims back? Did it prevent another 9-11 from happening? No...
This is the only question that needs to be asked... 'Are we doing the right thing with our current approach, are we reaching a solution???'
I think all the checks at airports and all the military might of the US eventually will be totally insufficient to prevent this stuff from happening all over again.
1) Could you explain to me how exactly 'common sense' might infer that poor countries support less terrorism?
2) You mention SA as a rich country supporting terror because they simply hate us or our ideals (us = westerners). You seem to base this claim on the fact that there are some SA crackpots with ties to terrorist groups.
How then do you explain the fact is going beyond itself to become the greatest tourist attraction for rich folk in the bloody universe??? They build whole islands for rich westerners to come live there, they even allow consumption of alcohol by westerners, the whole nine yards. SA NEEDS us to buy their oil, to sustain their wealth, they don't hate us, we make them rich! They are nothing without us and we are nothing without them.
Furthermore, rich Saudis like Bin Laden can only be the worlds biggest terrorists because they have legions of poor bastards with nothing to lose to sacrifice in their so called holy wars. They prey on the poverty of others.
Do you really think that your average Achmed or Mohammed with a nice car, a nice wife and 2 kids doing well in school would ever care to go off to kill some infidels??? Hell no.
Give or take some rogue nutjobs, this has _nothing_ to do with ideology, yet everything with money and oil. Nothing more, nothing less.
And the whole west brought a lot of the current day problems upon themselves by doing the things they did thoughout the East, from Palestine all the way up to Afghanistan. Why is it so hard for American people to admit this??
Seeing some of those right conservatives on the news _really_ scares me sometimes. Don't you see they use the same tactics as your average ayatollah?
But this is a discussion that is far to complex to explain in writing in some stupid online messageboard.
... Wait until the next disgruntled teen steps up to your favorite Wall-mart totin' a bigass shooter.
:) ... Just my two cents
Anyways enough of the stupid talk,
I strongly feel that the US should focus more on taking away the causes of all this senseless terror. You might feel safe but the root of the evil is still there.
And this evil doesn't stem from some crazy ass muslims here and there who just happen to like offing people, just because there are crazy bastards or something.
No, these problems all arise because people, Muslims, Jews and Christians (and throw in some Hindus for good measure) alike are falling victim to injustice, thus making them susceptible to the warmongering of only a handfull of so called 'leaders'.
The Jews got killed in WWII, so the were a bit pissed (and reasonably so). So they went of and conquered themselves some Palestinian land, thus making these guys unhappy (again, reasonably so). You end up with a bunch of Palestinians having nothing anymore, living in the stone age and no discernible way out. In a situation like that it only takes one nut to step up and say 'it's them Jews ho did this to us, lets go out and kill a few...'
Palestinians kill some Jews, Jews blow Lebanon to pieces with some clusterboms and padabing padaboom, you have a full scale war on your hands.
Whose fault is this? Nobodies, except maybe the allies (I explicitly don't blame the US all on it's own) from WWOII who decided to try and create Israel in the way they did. This should have been done using more diplomatic ways I think, even if that would have taken 50 years. Hell, I'm no geopolitical expert, but even a child can see what went wrong.
Same deal with Afghanistan. Russians needed to go so Mujahedein got funded. Once the Russians were gone there was nobody to support the merging nation of Afghanistan. They ended up piss poor and frustrated, a feeding ground for extremists.
Saddam and the whole Iran vs. Irak story... same thing.
Why do you think North Koreans are so pissed?? Because they like to lob a nuke in our backyard and because they think this will make things better for them? NO!!!! Because they are piss poor (They were pawns in the cold war between USSR and USA) and because some Chateau-Neuf-Du-Pape drinking bastard tells them it is our fault and if we go away they wil magically become un-poor.
The problems mentioned here are global problems, caused by the whole world just looking on instead of taking reasonable action. They are not just the USA's fault but the USA is a big player on a global scale, economically, morally and military... They should behave accordingly and not let a bunch of extremists in their own country take over.
It's not 'them vs. us', it's not 'Christians vs. Muslims', it's about people having the right to live freely and not taking everything from them, making them blind with rage so they cannot think straight and do all kinds of stupid crap to eachother.
The US and Europe should do something about THAT instead of herassing me at the airport because I happen to look funny (and I do sometimes, really
What I really don't understand is why the rules that apply to normal social behaviour in public places -no running around in ye old birthday suit, no smoking in public places, no being drunk in public, no stealing, no spanking the monkey watching hardcore nature flics, ...- should not apply to everything else, like for instance surfing the net on a plane or any other public terminal for that matter.
:(
Imagine the possibility of getting strip searched for cigarettes/porn/your flask of single malt on the street corner, just because those items just might be used to conduct socially inappropriate behavior.
I could already watch hardcore porn on my portable DVD player or PMP for crying out loud... but I don't. Why?? -> because it would be inappropriate and people would look at me funny. And even if I did something that crossed the line I could get warned or sanctioned, just like they prohibit drunks from taking the plane...
Why can't we all just drop it already with this over regulating BS and just rely on common sense??
I hate this trend. Everything needs to be controlled for us since we are all clearly mindless sheep that are not able to think for ourselves properly.
Oh big brother, help us, for we know not what to do
What worries me most is that you get modded +2 for a comment like this.
... How a once idealistic company (or one with some good ideas at least) gets corrupted by it's own succes. They are going the way of the evil corporation real fast.
:)
But at least Brin and co. have their private airstrip now
Well... I used 'becoming evil' in response to the image they alway wish to portray. "We think different, we are not like Microsoft blah blah blah"
Yet in the end they are just the same, if not worse. They charge outrageous premiums for run of the mill hardware (take a standard macbook as an example...) just because the case is white or something. They make 100% or more of profit on iPods made in Chinese sweatshops by underpaid children. The list is endless.
I am not stupid. Other multinationals in the PC industry probably also are guilty of one or more of these practices. So this should not be seen as flame bait. But Apple should just quit the whole "we are so much better" drivel...
I for one, will steer waaay clear of their products.
... This is most likely to be just lowly scare mongering. Apple is becoming evil awfully quick.
I think it is just a bit silly of the guy to try and release under CC. Its a totally useless endeavor seeing that each and every journal makes you sign one of those copyright transfer documents before publishing. This effectively transfers copyright of the publication over to them. I know because I also published multiple reasearch publications, its standard procedure... What was he thinking? :)
I mean, could it be that he was not voluntarily trying to scam everybody, but just misinterpreted his results? This is great stuff if it is true!
Maybe (definitely) a bit off topic, but reading this stuff just pisses me off a bit... What did the US ever achieve with all of its draconian checks and procedures in airports and all of their visa crap? Other than (borderline) infringing on the privacy of many innocent individuals it will never be able to stop the most determined people with bad intentions (or desperate Mexican or other immigrants at that). It is deeply disturbing that the USA hands out billions to Israel for military purposes whilst on the other hand supplying Egypt, Saudi Arabia and God knows who else with weapons. What are they expecting? Arming to groups of people who have had beef for ages to the teeth and then expecting everybody to play nice? They are just creating their own (and everybody elses) problems. No measure of retina scans, fingerprinting and other niceties will ever be able to avert the inevitable consequences their foreign policy will have.
Oh the humanity of it all... :)
... with the Linux vs. Windows chenanigans.
:s
Flamebait I say
... Or at least _not only_ The same behaviour happens on my company issued Dell D820. It comes loaded with IE6 and NO Google toolbar and yet when I mistype a URL I do not end up at the MSN search page like on any other IE installation! Instead IE redirects me to a Dell branded Google search page full of Google commercials.
... but wasnt the American President George W. Bush known to snort a good deal of coke back in the day??? Not two mention both of his dumbass doughters and their love for lady alcohol. They deny a simple girl her precious certificate and yet you make a mentally challenged former cokehead one of the most powerfull people on earth? This scrares the s**t out of me :s
Go figure...
She didnt give the kid a break either, now did she??