I never upgrade Windows OR Linux - I reinstall both on a clean partition.
I have two partitions, for the current and previous install respectively. When it's time to upgrade, I copy my user data from previous to current; reformat previous and install the new OS there; and flip partitions in the boot loader.
That way, if the new install isn't all I'd hoped, I can easily boot into the previous partition from the grub menu. And I don't have to worry about a Windows or Linux upgrade almost working (yes, I've had problems with both).
Dedicated installer disks are available, too. On the download page, click the "Alternate Desktop CD" checkbox just below "Start Download". No liveCD - just a nice, clean text-based installer like Grandma used to make.:-)
It's actually easier than Windows, IMHO. It boots into Ubuntu without asking a single question, so you can decide if you like it. If you do, double-click "Install" on the desktop, answer the same type of questions as you would on Windows, and while it loads onto the hard drive, you can continue using it.
Or, if you prefer, stick the disk into a computer running Windows, click "Install", and it will install as if it were a Windows application. After installation, when you reboot, you get the usual grub menu to select either Ubuntu or Windows. If you later decide you don't like it, boot Windows and select Ubuntu and Uninstall from Add / Remove Programs, and it uninstalls.
$800 billion to shore up the faltering American economy is a drop in the bucket. Look up the numbers sometime.
Howzabout now? Here are the numbers: $5.63 trillion in debt held by the public in 2008; we just authorized an additional 0.8 trillion, or 14% additional debt.
drop in the bucket: A small, usually inadequate amount in relation to what is needed or requested.
14% is neither "small" nor "inadequate"; the word "obscene" comes to mind, though, and it's exactly "what was requested" by the Bushites. So, no, by no stretch of the imagination was this a "drop in the bucket".
All this ludicrous deficit spending even though we have yet to even begin a recession (despite three years of intense politically-motivated media cheerleading).
I'm canadian and we have neither problem with our heavily regulated banking industry.
And the United States wins again - Paulson just used his $800,000,000,000 blank check to effectively buy the banking industry in the USA. And another industry succumbs to the growing socialist sentiment.
Jefferson's spin is undoubtedly approaching its relativistic limits.
Fortunately, having the federal government take over a sector of the economy guarantees its success. I mean, look how much better education has fared since Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in the mid-1970's.
Don't be insulting. Isaac Asimov would never besmirch his name by writing for a lascivious, nudity-ridden rag like Playboy. The very idea is beyond contempt.
(And yes, I'm aware that Asimov did, indeed, write for Playboy - and fittingly, darned near every other publication on the planet. Words to Asimov were like water to Niagara Falls.)
Of course. In high school, I created a gate-less electrical calculating device for a science fair project. But according to the summary, the article is about building logic gates with RNA. I was commenting in that vein.
Another way to calculate with RNA is to construct a living creature. Humans calculate, for example (well, at least some of us). So do chickens, dolphins, and various primates, or so I read. I bet my dog could, if some roasted meat was involved.:-)
Wait a minute. The Taliban "just holed up and have been waiting it out", yet Bush failed to "get at the last of the strongholds". Who got the rest of the strongholds? Sounds like you're saying the Taliban took serious losses, yet none were killed. Which?
And if the Taliban survivors wanted to "wait it out" for 7 long years, they would more likely return to civilian life rather than live in a hole in the mountains. If the USA went after them as civilians, would you not then scream we were engaging in illegal combat operations? It's a brilliant "hole up" strategy - why present a legit target when you can be a "civilian"?
And how would Bush know if former Taliban warriors were just "waiting it out", or if they had honestly given up arms and decided to support the new government? Since you believe you can read the minds of "the conservative hawks and Bush", as in your earlier post, do you assume he can read the minds of the Taliban warriors hiding incognito?
Or (I suspect), do you just hate Bush regardless of his actions?:-)
By "finish them off", are you suggesting that we engage in wholesale slaughter of those we defeated in battle??? They were removed from political power. In fairness to the president, that was the stated objective, and it was accomplished. I stand by my assertion that option 4 is the "Bush Option".
I've traveled quite a bit outside the USA since 9/11, and have never felt unsafe. Indeed, those I met in UK, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Bahamas - all were exceptionally friendly, and other than staying inside at night in Marseilles on the advice of our taxi driver, I never took special precautions. Where do you travel that you feel threatened?
You're correct, the isolationist path supported by Ron Paul is a fifth option I neglected to cover. Don't take this the wrong way, I generally like Mr. Paul - just not his foreign policy.
In this case, unfortunately, it's the Jimmy Carter option. This would probably be as disastrous as option 3 in its own way, as the Saudi royal family collapses and another radical regime hostile to the West comes to power.
Would terrorists then leave us alone? Not until we also abandon our allies (Israel and Kuwait come to mind). Without support, they would fall as well. At that point, radicalism could complete its sweep of the Middle East, bringing a new dark ages of theocratic rule. Hope that energy independence plan works really, really well, 'cause no more oil for the Great Satan!
I could be wrong, of course, but disengagement from the Middle East would be exceptionally dangerous to carry out without a truly epic disaster for all concerned. I don't have that much confidence in Western governments to carry it off. I think I'll pass.
The budget for the war in Iraq is not just staggering, its unforgivably large.
Um hm. So's 800 billion for greedy banks and foolish politicians, as long as we're changing topics anyway.
That is, I was specifically addressing the Afghan war (again, check the subject line). You might find, if you re-read what I wrote with a less fevered mind, that I said "after 2001", (and that would include the unfortunate events in Iraq, to save you a check on Wikipedia), "we threw logic out the window".
Could be. I tend to agree with the Libertarian Platform to a greater degree than the "major party" platforms, but I'm not a card-carrying Libertarian.
I might point out that the platform "support[s] the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression", and I certainly considered the attacks on 9/11 "aggression". If the Libertarian idea is that our military can't cross our own borders to prevent attacks... well, yea, I'm definitely NOT that kind of libertarian!
Iraq != Afghanistan (which was my topic - see the subject line). So, to change topics...:-)
Your question needs clarification. Iraq was certainly a threat to Iran, for example - they had a long war to prove it. They were a threat to Coalition aircraft, at which they routinely launched SAMs. They were a threat to the Kurds, against whom they had used WMDs in the form of nerve gas. They were a threat to Kuwait, whom they famously invaded in 1991. They were a threat to Shiite Muslims and other religions, who were routinely denied political power and legal due process.
But I think your question is more precisely stated as, "Was Iraq a threat to the Western world in the same sense as Al Queda in 2001?" If so, then...
No, Saddam was a secular Sunni and no friend to Al Queda. He was a megalomaniac and a brutal dictator, but they are a dime a dozen. I doubt he had the ability to effectively strike at Europe or American soil.
Of course, since I said in my original post, "After 2001, of course, we threw logic out the window", that I hold this opinion should hardly surprise you!
AFAICT, President Bush had 4 options with Afghanistan after 9/11.
(1) Ignore it. This was the Clinton strategy, and had resulted in slowly escalating attacks on American and European soil over the previous decade or so. Whether it ultimately succeeded would have depended on whether momentum could be regained on a host of other fronts to make radical Islam irrelevant in the Muslim world - a questionable assumption. Nevertheless, it may have been the second most effective option available IMHO.
(2) Take out the Taliban, disrupt Al Queda, then leave. Depending on your perspective, this would have stirred up the ant's nest (causing a rash of new attacks) or reset the clock by ten years (a cold war-like strategy that worked pretty well against an aggressive Soviet Union). This may have been the best option for the US in retrospect, although it would do nothing to help the Afghan's who were brutally oppressed by the Taliban (and most previous regimes:-/ ).
(3) Take out the Taliban, evict Al Queda, and stick around for nation-building. As you mention, this would almost certainly be disastrous. If you're planning to fight radical Islam, this is the least favorable ground on the planet.
(4) Take out the Taliban, evict Al Queda, then move the field of battle somewhere else. This was the Bush option, with "somewhere else" set to Iraq. This approach successfully set back Al Queda by 10 years (and counting), but cost the US and Britain the good will of most of its allies in the world. I suspect the president was counting on the Iraqi people embracing freedom and democracy, rapidly establishing a stable government, and joining the fight, which would have made this the winning option. If so, he miscalculated.
You advocate waiting them out, and that has worked thus far with a pretty darned significant list of anti-democracy types. Not with Libya, though - they settled down only after a bombing run that killed Khadafi's daughter (among 45 military and 15 civilian casualties) - similar to option 2 above. It also failed most notably in the prelude to WWII, as has been endlessly rehashed over the past 7 years, so there are no guarantees.
In retrospect, though, and with full 20/20 hindsight, and recognizing the high cost to the long-suffering Afghan people, overthrowing the Taliban and scattering the ants before a token nation-building exercise with the Northern Alliance amid steady get-the-heck-out-of-Dodge withdrawal was probably our best option - and a lesson to be learned for the future, if we're smart.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan openly supported Al Queda training camps used to prepare for the 9/11 attacks. The original Bush Doctrine (you know, before there were 30 of them) stated (more or less) that a government that supported a terrorist organization is as illegitimate at the terrorist organization itself. This was a Good Reason for removing the Taliban, and indeed we did so with strong support from the civilized world. (After 2001, of course, we threw logic out the window, but that's a different tale.)
By your logic, spending money to find a cure for a rare disease is "pretty dumb", since a lot more people die from other causes. I believe that your logic is faulty. It makes sense to address all of the causes of harm, as cash permits. To a person of my Libertarianesque perspective, that means the causes for which people are willing to spend their own cash, of course - including cash taken in taxes - but not my grandchildren's cash. A government that is trillions of dollars in debt ought to be horsewhipped and put on a very tight budget until they pay their debts - but again, that's a different tale.
I attended a fascinating talk by Mr. Vern Ceder at the past PyCon (Python Conference) on teaching programming to secondary students. You might review his papers from that and other conferences, and email him for advice (see linked page).
To heck with that - Give me the candidate who actually feels constrained to follow the constitution. Let me know when you find 'em - and here's a hint: They likely won't have an R or a D beside their name.
...read this document that grants you your freedoms
It does no such thing. It acknowledges a subset of the "unalienable Rights" with which they were "endowed by their Creator".
The difference is huge. If the constitution "grants" me rights, then the states can change it to revoke those rights. However, if those rights are "unalienable" because they were granted by someone above the state's pay grade (to coin a phrase), then the states lack the authority to revoke them.
This was precisely the argument laid out in the Declaration of Independence to justify the American Revolution.
As a former heavy user of Perl (and now a light user), let me encourage you that you're unlikely to go wrong either way. Both are popular, well-supported dynamic languages with bright futures.
Python is less Perlish than Ruby in syntax, but in the end I found that rather charming and made it my "new" dynamic language. I have no regrets.
Besides, if I want to shred and rebuild a text file in 40 characters of line noise (please understand that I mean that fondly - I like Perl's conciseness), then I've still got Perl 5. Python does many other things well, so I consider them both useful tools to know.
So quit tossing up (ahem), pick one, and get on with it!:-)
We've embedded Jython into a couple of Java apps to provide end-user scripting capabilities with very good success. End users have been very clever in automating their own work, and even the tool development teams have adopted it for quickly writing report front ends and such.
We've distributed and evangelized both native Perl and Python. Perl tends to be used when manipulating text files, while Python is most popular when controlling processes, though the correlation is hardly perfect. Either works just fine. I'm confident Ruby / JRuby does, too, it just arrived a little late to our party.:-)
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I never upgrade Windows OR Linux - I reinstall both on a clean partition.
I have two partitions, for the current and previous install respectively. When it's time to upgrade, I copy my user data from previous to current; reformat previous and install the new OS there; and flip partitions in the boot loader.
That way, if the new install isn't all I'd hoped, I can easily boot into the previous partition from the grub menu. And I don't have to worry about a Windows or Linux upgrade almost working (yes, I've had problems with both).
Dedicated installer disks are available, too. On the download page, click the "Alternate Desktop CD" checkbox just below "Start Download". No liveCD - just a nice, clean text-based installer like Grandma used to make. :-)
It's actually easier than Windows, IMHO. It boots into Ubuntu without asking a single question, so you can decide if you like it. If you do, double-click "Install" on the desktop, answer the same type of questions as you would on Windows, and while it loads onto the hard drive, you can continue using it.
Or, if you prefer, stick the disk into a computer running Windows, click "Install", and it will install as if it were a Windows application. After installation, when you reboot, you get the usual grub menu to select either Ubuntu or Windows. If you later decide you don't like it, boot Windows and select Ubuntu and Uninstall from Add / Remove Programs, and it uninstalls.
I really can't imagine anything easier. Well, other than buying it pre-installed. :-)
$800 billion to shore up the faltering American economy is a drop in the bucket. Look up the numbers sometime.
Howzabout now? Here are the numbers: $5.63 trillion in debt held by the public in 2008; we just authorized an additional 0.8 trillion, or 14% additional debt.
drop in the bucket: A small, usually inadequate amount in relation to what is needed or requested.
14% is neither "small" nor "inadequate"; the word "obscene" comes to mind, though, and it's exactly "what was requested" by the Bushites. So, no, by no stretch of the imagination was this a "drop in the bucket".
All this ludicrous deficit spending even though we have yet to even begin a recession (despite three years of intense politically-motivated media cheerleading).
I'm canadian and we have neither problem with our heavily regulated banking industry.
And the United States wins again - Paulson just used his $800,000,000,000 blank check to effectively buy the banking industry in the USA. And another industry succumbs to the growing socialist sentiment.
Jefferson's spin is undoubtedly approaching its relativistic limits.
Fortunately, having the federal government take over a sector of the economy guarantees its success. I mean, look how much better education has fared since Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in the mid-1970's.
Don't be insulting. Isaac Asimov would never besmirch his name by writing for a lascivious, nudity-ridden rag like Playboy. The very idea is beyond contempt.
Asimov wrote The Union Club Mystery stories for Gallery.
Ahem.
(And yes, I'm aware that Asimov did, indeed, write for Playboy - and fittingly, darned near every other publication on the planet. Words to Asimov were like water to Niagara Falls.)
Huh? I live in Texas - my dog kills and eats a variety of wildlife. But she prefers her meat roasted. Don't you??
Of course. In high school, I created a gate-less electrical calculating device for a science fair project. But according to the summary, the article is about building logic gates with RNA. I was commenting in that vein.
Another way to calculate with RNA is to construct a living creature. Humans calculate, for example (well, at least some of us). So do chickens, dolphins, and various primates, or so I read. I bet my dog could, if some roasted meat was involved. :-)
You must be new here.
ANDs and ORs are nice, but what about a NAND (Not AND)? Give me a NAND, and I can implement any Boolean equation.
Wait a minute. The Taliban "just holed up and have been waiting it out", yet Bush failed to "get at the last of the strongholds". Who got the rest of the strongholds? Sounds like you're saying the Taliban took serious losses, yet none were killed. Which?
And if the Taliban survivors wanted to "wait it out" for 7 long years, they would more likely return to civilian life rather than live in a hole in the mountains. If the USA went after them as civilians, would you not then scream we were engaging in illegal combat operations? It's a brilliant "hole up" strategy - why present a legit target when you can be a "civilian"?
And how would Bush know if former Taliban warriors were just "waiting it out", or if they had honestly given up arms and decided to support the new government? Since you believe you can read the minds of "the conservative hawks and Bush", as in your earlier post, do you assume he can read the minds of the Taliban warriors hiding incognito?
Or (I suspect), do you just hate Bush regardless of his actions? :-)
By "finish them off", are you suggesting that we engage in wholesale slaughter of those we defeated in battle??? They were removed from political power. In fairness to the president, that was the stated objective, and it was accomplished. I stand by my assertion that option 4 is the "Bush Option".
I've traveled quite a bit outside the USA since 9/11, and have never felt unsafe. Indeed, those I met in UK, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Bahamas - all were exceptionally friendly, and other than staying inside at night in Marseilles on the advice of our taxi driver, I never took special precautions. Where do you travel that you feel threatened?
On the other points, I tend to agree with you.
You're correct, the isolationist path supported by Ron Paul is a fifth option I neglected to cover. Don't take this the wrong way, I generally like Mr. Paul - just not his foreign policy.
In this case, unfortunately, it's the Jimmy Carter option. This would probably be as disastrous as option 3 in its own way, as the Saudi royal family collapses and another radical regime hostile to the West comes to power.
Would terrorists then leave us alone? Not until we also abandon our allies (Israel and Kuwait come to mind). Without support, they would fall as well. At that point, radicalism could complete its sweep of the Middle East, bringing a new dark ages of theocratic rule. Hope that energy independence plan works really, really well, 'cause no more oil for the Great Satan!
I could be wrong, of course, but disengagement from the Middle East would be exceptionally dangerous to carry out without a truly epic disaster for all concerned. I don't have that much confidence in Western governments to carry it off. I think I'll pass.
The budget for the war in Iraq is not just staggering, its unforgivably large.
Um hm. So's 800 billion for greedy banks and foolish politicians, as long as we're changing topics anyway.
That is, I was specifically addressing the Afghan war (again, check the subject line). You might find, if you re-read what I wrote with a less fevered mind, that I said "after 2001", (and that would include the unfortunate events in Iraq, to save you a check on Wikipedia), "we threw logic out the window".
Could be. I tend to agree with the Libertarian Platform to a greater degree than the "major party" platforms, but I'm not a card-carrying Libertarian.
I might point out that the platform "support[s] the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression", and I certainly considered the attacks on 9/11 "aggression". If the Libertarian idea is that our military can't cross our own borders to prevent attacks... well, yea, I'm definitely NOT that kind of libertarian!
You answered your own question by quoting the word "terrorist". :-)
Iraq != Afghanistan (which was my topic - see the subject line). So, to change topics... :-)
Your question needs clarification. Iraq was certainly a threat to Iran, for example - they had a long war to prove it. They were a threat to Coalition aircraft, at which they routinely launched SAMs. They were a threat to the Kurds, against whom they had used WMDs in the form of nerve gas. They were a threat to Kuwait, whom they famously invaded in 1991. They were a threat to Shiite Muslims and other religions, who were routinely denied political power and legal due process.
But I think your question is more precisely stated as, "Was Iraq a threat to the Western world in the same sense as Al Queda in 2001?" If so, then...
No, Saddam was a secular Sunni and no friend to Al Queda. He was a megalomaniac and a brutal dictator, but they are a dime a dozen. I doubt he had the ability to effectively strike at Europe or American soil.
Of course, since I said in my original post, "After 2001, of course, we threw logic out the window", that I hold this opinion should hardly surprise you!
Your suggestion that the war in afghanistan is[1] popular[2] worldwide[3] is ridiculous.
[1] I said "received strong support"
[2] I specified in "2001"
[3] I specified in the "civilized world".
Yours is such a long post to be based on such a blatant misquotation.
"Take out" == "remove from political power".
AFAICT, President Bush had 4 options with Afghanistan after 9/11.
(1) Ignore it. This was the Clinton strategy, and had resulted in slowly escalating attacks on American and European soil over the previous decade or so. Whether it ultimately succeeded would have depended on whether momentum could be regained on a host of other fronts to make radical Islam irrelevant in the Muslim world - a questionable assumption. Nevertheless, it may have been the second most effective option available IMHO.
(2) Take out the Taliban, disrupt Al Queda, then leave. Depending on your perspective, this would have stirred up the ant's nest (causing a rash of new attacks) or reset the clock by ten years (a cold war-like strategy that worked pretty well against an aggressive Soviet Union). This may have been the best option for the US in retrospect, although it would do nothing to help the Afghan's who were brutally oppressed by the Taliban (and most previous regimes :-/ ).
(3) Take out the Taliban, evict Al Queda, and stick around for nation-building. As you mention, this would almost certainly be disastrous. If you're planning to fight radical Islam, this is the least favorable ground on the planet.
(4) Take out the Taliban, evict Al Queda, then move the field of battle somewhere else. This was the Bush option, with "somewhere else" set to Iraq. This approach successfully set back Al Queda by 10 years (and counting), but cost the US and Britain the good will of most of its allies in the world. I suspect the president was counting on the Iraqi people embracing freedom and democracy, rapidly establishing a stable government, and joining the fight, which would have made this the winning option. If so, he miscalculated.
You advocate waiting them out, and that has worked thus far with a pretty darned significant list of anti-democracy types. Not with Libya, though - they settled down only after a bombing run that killed Khadafi's daughter (among 45 military and 15 civilian casualties) - similar to option 2 above. It also failed most notably in the prelude to WWII, as has been endlessly rehashed over the past 7 years, so there are no guarantees.
In retrospect, though, and with full 20/20 hindsight, and recognizing the high cost to the long-suffering Afghan people, overthrowing the Taliban and scattering the ants before a token nation-building exercise with the Northern Alliance amid steady get-the-heck-out-of-Dodge withdrawal was probably our best option - and a lesson to be learned for the future, if we're smart.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan openly supported Al Queda training camps used to prepare for the 9/11 attacks. The original Bush Doctrine (you know, before there were 30 of them) stated (more or less) that a government that supported a terrorist organization is as illegitimate at the terrorist organization itself. This was a Good Reason for removing the Taliban, and indeed we did so with strong support from the civilized world. (After 2001, of course, we threw logic out the window, but that's a different tale.)
By your logic, spending money to find a cure for a rare disease is "pretty dumb", since a lot more people die from other causes. I believe that your logic is faulty. It makes sense to address all of the causes of harm, as cash permits. To a person of my Libertarianesque perspective, that means the causes for which people are willing to spend their own cash, of course - including cash taken in taxes - but not my grandchildren's cash. A government that is trillions of dollars in debt ought to be horsewhipped and put on a very tight budget until they pay their debts - but again, that's a different tale.
I attended a fascinating talk by Mr. Vern Ceder at the past PyCon (Python Conference) on teaching programming to secondary students. You might review his papers from that and other conferences, and email him for advice (see linked page).
To heck with that - Give me the candidate who actually feels constrained to follow the constitution. Let me know when you find 'em - and here's a hint: They likely won't have an R or a D beside their name.
...read this document that grants you your freedoms
It does no such thing. It acknowledges a subset of the "unalienable Rights" with which they were "endowed by their Creator".
The difference is huge. If the constitution "grants" me rights, then the states can change it to revoke those rights. However, if those rights are "unalienable" because they were granted by someone above the state's pay grade (to coin a phrase), then the states lack the authority to revoke them.
This was precisely the argument laid out in the Declaration of Independence to justify the American Revolution.
Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now...
As a former heavy user of Perl (and now a light user), let me encourage you that you're unlikely to go wrong either way. Both are popular, well-supported dynamic languages with bright futures.
Python is less Perlish than Ruby in syntax, but in the end I found that rather charming and made it my "new" dynamic language. I have no regrets.
Besides, if I want to shred and rebuild a text file in 40 characters of line noise (please understand that I mean that fondly - I like Perl's conciseness), then I've still got Perl 5. Python does many other things well, so I consider them both useful tools to know.
So quit tossing up (ahem), pick one, and get on with it! :-)
Sun supports Jython as well.
We've embedded Jython into a couple of Java apps to provide end-user scripting capabilities with very good success. End users have been very clever in automating their own work, and even the tool development teams have adopted it for quickly writing report front ends and such.
We've distributed and evangelized both native Perl and Python. Perl tends to be used when manipulating text files, while Python is most popular when controlling processes, though the correlation is hardly perfect. Either works just fine. I'm confident Ruby / JRuby does, too, it just arrived a little late to our party. :-)