That made my freakin' day. Just to celebrate, I'm gonna find that thing on vinyl. I don't own a record player anymore, but I still have all my old albums.
Sorry, I didn't see this when I posted earlier. I still think the biggest difference between your observation and his is not necessarily the data itself (average moderation 'unfairness quotient', if you will), but rather what is the acceptable level of unfairness.
Wow. I am honestly not trolling you here, but was that satire?
You made an observation based on your experience. He made one based on his experience. The GP has the temerity to ask you a question, and your reaction is to bite his head off? What happened to having a discussion?
He asked you where you got your data. If your answer is "years of experience reading 1000's of articles and millions of posts", then say it.
He said he "rarely" saw politically motivated moderation. You said you saw it "too often". These are both very subjective observations. Even if both of you were looking at the same exact same posts, the differences between your points of view might be more attributable to your relative levels of tolerance to 'inaccurate' moderation.
I'm sorry. But the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning. And unfortunately, we never know when or where they are going to strike.
Thank you for your gracious reply. Your description of "hawk" is intriguing. I like your concept of a hawk being responsibly assertive (if I am reading you correctly) vs. my more common usage of 'more likely to wage war'. That offers a different way to look at things, and I will have to consider some of my positions in that light.
Our next president may actually have to pull us out of Iraq sooner than we should. I am no fan of our being in Iraq, but I think that it is far better to leave them stable than situation they are in. Agreed.
Although we in the US have had the technical ability to shoot down satellites for a long time, it was pretty obvious why we responded with a shoot-down of our own not long after the Chinese did theirs. We have each fired a shot across the other's bow, so to speak.
I'm disappointed you didn't reply with your name attached. Not because I want to flame you back, but because some of your points are worth a conversation, and frankly, if you're an AC, there's no telling whether I'm talking with one person or several, and therefore not much reason to try to engage in meaningful dialog.
that being said, I can see your points on Dems and foreign policy. Understand that in writing for brevity, I sacrificed nuance in my descriptions. However, I would still argue that on the whole, Dems are and generally have been more dovish than Republicans.
Corruption is no differentiator. Lots on both sides. The big difference is the Dems (IMHO) tend to have more subtlety and flair.
What in particular makes you think that I am a "freaking right wing nut"? A "freaking nut"... yeah, sometimes. But I don't know about the right wing part. The truth is, I happen to support some things considered far right of center*, and other things considered far left of center*. Your ad hominem attack reveals more about you than I.
Regards,
NBY
* By "center", I am referring to the average centrist position here is the US. That means that it is a) very open to interpretation even here in the US, and b) probably considered to the right of average European "center".
Republicans used to be the party in favor of lower taxes & smaller government & farmers. Foreign policy tended to be hawkish. They'd let you have guns and God, but not porn or gay sex. Right wing.
Democrats used to be the party in favor of civil rights & bigger social programs & friendly with labor. Foreign policy tended to be dovish. You couldn't have guns or put up a Christmas tree on public land, but you could have porn and/or gay sex. Left wing.
Now they both tax the crap out of us, spend us into a world of deficit, screw the working/middle class and infringe on our rights while cutting social programs. Or maybe it has always been that way, and I'm only starting to notice. Hmm...
Seriously though, although the Republicans are generally right of center and Dems are generally left of center, since there are only 2 parties each party covers a lot of ideological ground and there is some overlap in the middle. With both parties being mindlessly poll-driven, I feel like most of them are simply parroting the feel-good position of the day as it comes to them from their handlers, making both sides sound remarkably similar overall. Mostly they just argue over who gets the blame or the credit, depending which way the poll numbers are going.
That wasn't my take on the tome of responses here, but of course that's subjective.
I realize that by generalizing, I was excluding a broad spectrum of other responses. I went back and re-scanned responses to the articles I quoted. In retrospect, I actually think that you were closer to the heart of more posts than I was. Thanks for showing things in a different light.
I agree on embargo vs. boycott, my point was that the US can choose to engage China or to isolate ourselves from them, and isolation is neither good for us or for them.
Given the existing trade agreements between us and China's membership in the WTO, I don't think and official embargo would be realistic. Given the competition worldwide for Chinese business, I don't think that boycotts from individual corporations are realistic, either.
You are confusing economic disadvantage with discrimination based on ethnicity. It's not all about economics. I could be an intelligent Shudra in India and still not be as accepted as a Brahmin, based solely on my heritage.
In general, the tone of responses I have read prior to this article seems to say that Yahoo and Cisco should not cave in to Chinese pressure, and should stand for freedom.
In general, the tone of responses to this article seems to be that hotels should do as China asks, since their laws are sovereign in their country.
In fact, I'd have to say that the truth of Windows being overall better, shows in market share alone... Market share != better.
Also, market share numbers are often fudged by technology companies, especially Microsoft. I recall one particularly silly ppt slide MS reps used to trot out that showed NT marketshare in the mid-'90s, when Novell Netware was the dominant competitor to NT. I worked for a PC distributor at the time, and every so often a MS rep would come in to feed us some kool-aid. The slide in question showed a bar graph with 3 vertical bars. The tallest bar was NT shipments from a particular time frame. The next, slightly shorter bar was Novell Netware 4.x shipments from the same period, and the third bar was Novell Netware 3.x. The Microsoft dog-and-pony expert would point proudly at the graph, explaining that it showed Microsoft's market dominance, despite the fact that the aggregate Novell NW 3.x + 4.x totals were substantially greater than NT.
I can also recall being told by management (same distributor) to ship at least 1 CAL with every order, for free if need be - whether it was ordered or not. Why? To artificially boost numbers of NT seats shipped.
No matter what attempted "spin" you use, it still doesn't [...] unseat Windows as the most used [...] up to Enterprise Class/Mission Critical systems... I won't dispute the numbers in the home/desktop/small-to-mid server arenas (although, like I said, numbers aren't everything). I call BS on the enterprise/mission-critical stuff, though. Windows is still trying to make inroads into the mainframe/high end UNIX world. I'd argue that through the efforts of IBM and others, Linux can run better on higher-end gear than Windows.
I'm not saying you can't like MS products for whatever reason you see fit. But this isn't high school anymore. Popularity isn't everything.
... that has criticized US companies for cooperation with Chinese government in the past?
I'm not taking a position for or against Sam, his statement, this bill, Yahoo, Google, the Chinese, the US, or any of that. I'm just surprised that a forum that has been so critical of cooperation with censorship would also be so critical of an attempt to give these companies some air cover, so to speak.
What do you see as the essential differences between the alleged request made of the hotels, and say, Cisco?
And I find it interesting that you're criticizing expressed skepticism This is slashdot. You aren't new here. Get used to it.
of an "officer's" "experience" as stated on an anonymous Internet forum. Actually, his "experience" closely matches the experiences of friends and relatives of mine in LE. That by itself doesn't mean that his post is factual, but it helps it pass the sniff test. In particular, the "good spirits" quote was revealing. From multiple anecdotes from LE I know, there is a range of behavior they encounter from people they've arrested. There are the full-blown hostiles kicking out cruiser windows, trying to spit through the screen/partition, whatever. There are sullen, quiet ones. Not particularly cooperative, but not actively resisting. And believe it or not, there are some who become cooperative and friendly; the "good spirits" end of the spectrum, if you will. We can only guess as to why.
It could be that they are trying to act in their own best interest by being nice to the police. It could be that in a some way, now that the fight is over and they lost, the anger that kept them fighting in the first place has dissipated. However you explain it, they exist.
Perhaps you should reconsider your handle? No thanks, I like it just fine as it is. Just because I question your rant doesn't mean I'm gullible. Nice try, though.
I appreciate your response as well. I'll try to tune the tone better next time.;)
I believe Iran's goal is to stir the shit. Couldn't have said it better myself.
That's a false argument; none of these situations seem to require shooting or tazing (tasing?). Properly used, less-lethal weapons save far more lives than they take, both for the subject and the officers. Proper use is a matter of training and judgement.
The kid threatening harm to him/herself may have received an unpleasant tasing, but did that prevent more substantial self-inflicted harm?
In Stalinist USSR, they could and did shoot/torture/imprison people for no damned good reason whatsoever.
I figured this was noteworthy, since it discussed technical scientific matters about Iran's nuclear program. Since politics and nuclear power, and other non-Linux related posts, have been topics here in the past, and indeed have their own set of tags, I figured this was relevant.
This article was certainly not intended as a troll, although perhaps I was naive (yes, I get the irony) to think I could post something like this without having AC's frothing at the mouth about bombing something.
The reason I bothered to post this is I found it interesting. For one thing, I found it interesting because it was the first visual I've gotten of their nuclear program other than low-res satelite shots of a building. I also find it interesting for the same reason you do. Despite your apparent hostility towards me, you have actually asked the same thing I was wondering: Why would they publicize a tour of a top-secret location?
Whatever your opinion of the Iranian leadership, they aren't stupid. We can safely assume that none of this emerged without the leadership's explicit consent and direction. Looking at the pictures and descriptions, we have to realize that whatever is there is there because the Iranian government wants us to see exactly what is in those pictures - including the Defense Minister. I included him because I was summarizing the articles, and this seemed like a salient point. Why did Iran include him?
Items of interest to me:
1 - First-gen centrifuges & descriptions of problems, failures.
2 - Second-gen centrifuges & descriptions of improved capabilities.
3 - Vague mentions of next-gen centrifuges & challenges in producing them.
4 - The centrifuge bearings.
5 - A woman working on the bearings - perhaps significant from a regime that wants to address the West's opinions on its policies towards women.
6 - Deliberate inclusion of the Defense Minister.
Anyway, to answer the question "Why would they... ? " It seems obvious to me they want to maintain the appearance (real or otherwise) of transparency in their nuclear program. It also seems obvious to me that they included different messages for consumption by a few different audiences:
1 - Iran. At home, I imagine this is a feel-good, nationalistic story.
2 - United Nations, esp. IAEA. "See? We're transparent as can be."
3 - Russia. (maybe?) "Thanks for going out on a limb for us in the world press. Here's a photo op that might help our message."
4 - USA / Israel "We're not going to play the same closed, paranoid game that NK did. World opinion is going to be MUCH harder to swing against us. Yeah, our Defense Minister toured the place. So what? What are you going to do about it?"
I also tend to believe [tinfoil hat alert] that they probably included elements/imagery (other than the Defense Minister guy) in the photos designed to be apparent to western and Israeli intelligence that civilians probably don't recognize.[/tinfoil]
I am NOT advocating another war, airstrike, threat level, whatever. I am asking questions about what is really going on here.
Would Bush publicize a visit to Area 51? Just like the Iranians, I'm sure he would if he had something significant to gain. And just like any form of propaganda (USA, Iran, whomever), I don't think that it could be taken at face value without unfettered, independent third-party involvement.
Expect a President McCain to invade Cuba, a President Clinton to encircle and crush Cuba's regime, and a president Obama to subvert and destroy it. You poor, deluded, paranoid little rascal. Other than allow "dry foot" Cuban illegals safe haven in this country (a favor we do for NO OTHER nationality), expect the next President to do what everyone since Kennedy has done: Nothing.
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That made my freakin' day. Just to celebrate, I'm gonna find that thing on vinyl. I don't own a record player anymore, but I still have all my old albums.
Sorry, I didn't see this when I posted earlier. I still think the biggest difference between your observation and his is not necessarily the data itself (average moderation 'unfairness quotient', if you will), but rather what is the acceptable level of unfairness.
Wow. I am honestly not trolling you here, but was that satire?
You made an observation based on your experience. He made one based on his experience. The GP has the temerity to ask you a question, and your reaction is to bite his head off? What happened to having a discussion?
He asked you where you got your data. If your answer is "years of experience reading 1000's of articles and millions of posts", then say it.
He said he "rarely" saw politically motivated moderation. You said you saw it "too often". These are both very subjective observations. Even if both of you were looking at the same exact same posts, the differences between your points of view might be more attributable to your relative levels of tolerance to 'inaccurate' moderation.
You forgot the part about waving a golf club in the air.
I'm sorry. But the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning. And unfortunately, we never know when or where they are going to strike.
No problem. You could form the "Full-Auto Fire Farmers Union for Porn, Welfare, & Gay Sex" political party.
Judging by some of the other posts here, everyone is looking for an alternative to the same-old-same-old. You might get quite a following.
Although we in the US have had the technical ability to shoot down satellites for a long time, it was pretty obvious why we responded with a shoot-down of our own not long after the Chinese did theirs. We have each fired a shot across the other's bow, so to speak.
Thanks for the perspective. Very well put. I wish I had thought to frame it that way.
Dear hostile Anonymous Coward,
... yeah, sometimes. But I don't know about the right wing part. The truth is, I happen to support some things considered far right of center*, and other things considered far left of center*. Your ad hominem attack reveals more about you than I.
I'm disappointed you didn't reply with your name attached. Not because I want to flame you back, but because some of your points are worth a conversation, and frankly, if you're an AC, there's no telling whether I'm talking with one person or several, and therefore not much reason to try to engage in meaningful dialog.
that being said, I can see your points on Dems and foreign policy. Understand that in writing for brevity, I sacrificed nuance in my descriptions. However, I would still argue that on the whole, Dems are and generally have been more dovish than Republicans.
Corruption is no differentiator. Lots on both sides. The big difference is the Dems (IMHO) tend to have more subtlety and flair.
What in particular makes you think that I am a "freaking right wing nut"? A "freaking nut"
Regards,
NBY
* By "center", I am referring to the average centrist position here is the US. That means that it is a) very open to interpretation even here in the US, and b) probably considered to the right of average European "center".
Republicans used to be the party in favor of lower taxes & smaller government & farmers. Foreign policy tended to be hawkish. They'd let you have guns and God, but not porn or gay sex. Right wing.
...
Democrats used to be the party in favor of civil rights & bigger social programs & friendly with labor. Foreign policy tended to be dovish. You couldn't have guns or put up a Christmas tree on public land, but you could have porn and/or gay sex. Left wing.
Now they both tax the crap out of us, spend us into a world of deficit, screw the working/middle class and infringe on our rights while cutting social programs. Or maybe it has always been that way, and I'm only starting to notice. Hmm
Seriously though, although the Republicans are generally right of center and Dems are generally left of center, since there are only 2 parties each party covers a lot of ideological ground and there is some overlap in the middle. With both parties being mindlessly poll-driven, I feel like most of them are simply parroting the feel-good position of the day as it comes to them from their handlers, making both sides sound remarkably similar overall. Mostly they just argue over who gets the blame or the credit, depending which way the poll numbers are going.
I want a job like that.
That wasn't my take on the tome of responses here, but of course that's subjective.
I realize that by generalizing, I was excluding a broad spectrum of other responses. I went back and re-scanned responses to the articles I quoted. In retrospect, I actually think that you were closer to the heart of more posts than I was. Thanks for showing things in a different light.
I agree on embargo vs. boycott, my point was that the US can choose to engage China or to isolate ourselves from them, and isolation is neither good for us or for them.
Given the existing trade agreements between us and China's membership in the WTO, I don't think and official embargo would be realistic. Given the competition worldwide for Chinese business, I don't think that boycotts from individual corporations are realistic, either.
You are confusing economic disadvantage with discrimination based on ethnicity. It's not all about economics. I could be an intelligent Shudra in India and still not be as accepted as a Brahmin, based solely on my heritage.
In general, the tone of responses I have read prior to this article seems to say that Yahoo and Cisco should not cave in to Chinese pressure, and should stand for freedom.
In general, the tone of responses to this article seems to be that hotels should do as China asks, since their laws are sovereign in their country.
Of course not doing business there would mean effectively placing an embargo on them, which presents an alternate set of criticisms.
Also, market share numbers are often fudged by technology companies, especially Microsoft. I recall one particularly silly ppt slide MS reps used to trot out that showed NT marketshare in the mid-'90s, when Novell Netware was the dominant competitor to NT. I worked for a PC distributor at the time, and every so often a MS rep would come in to feed us some kool-aid. The slide in question showed a bar graph with 3 vertical bars. The tallest bar was NT shipments from a particular time frame. The next, slightly shorter bar was Novell Netware 4.x shipments from the same period, and the third bar was Novell Netware 3.x. The Microsoft dog-and-pony expert would point proudly at the graph, explaining that it showed Microsoft's market dominance, despite the fact that the aggregate Novell NW 3.x + 4.x totals were substantially greater than NT.
I can also recall being told by management (same distributor) to ship at least 1 CAL with every order, for free if need be - whether it was ordered or not. Why? To artificially boost numbers of NT seats shipped. No matter what attempted "spin" you use, it still doesn't [...] unseat Windows as the most used [...] up to Enterprise Class/Mission Critical systems... I won't dispute the numbers in the home/desktop/small-to-mid server arenas (although, like I said, numbers aren't everything). I call BS on the enterprise/mission-critical stuff, though. Windows is still trying to make inroads into the mainframe/high end UNIX world. I'd argue that through the efforts of IBM and others, Linux can run better on higher-end gear than Windows.
I'm not saying you can't like MS products for whatever reason you see fit. But this isn't high school anymore. Popularity isn't everything.
I'm not taking a position for or against Sam, his statement, this bill, Yahoo, Google, the Chinese, the US, or any of that. I'm just surprised that a forum that has been so critical of cooperation with censorship would also be so critical of an attempt to give these companies some air cover, so to speak.
What do you see as the essential differences between the alleged request made of the hotels, and say, Cisco?
Dude, those are coming back, I just know it ...
It could be that they are trying to act in their own best interest by being nice to the police. It could be that in a some way, now that the fight is over and they lost, the anger that kept them fighting in the first place has dissipated. However you explain it, they exist. Perhaps you should reconsider your handle? No thanks, I like it just fine as it is. Just because I question your rant doesn't mean I'm gullible. Nice try, though.
I find it interesting that you feel your scepticism is more valid than the officer's experience.
That's a false argument; none of these situations seem to require shooting or tazing (tasing?). Properly used, less-lethal weapons save far more lives than they take, both for the subject and the officers. Proper use is a matter of training and judgement.
The kid threatening harm to him/herself may have received an unpleasant tasing, but did that prevent more substantial self-inflicted harm?
In Stalinist USSR, they could and did shoot/torture/imprison people for no damned good reason whatsoever.
I figured this was noteworthy, since it discussed technical scientific matters about Iran's nuclear program. Since politics and nuclear power, and other non-Linux related posts, have been topics here in the past, and indeed have their own set of tags, I figured this was relevant.
This article was certainly not intended as a troll, although perhaps I was naive (yes, I get the irony) to think I could post something like this without having AC's frothing at the mouth about bombing something.
... ? " It seems obvious to me they want to maintain the appearance (real or otherwise) of transparency in their nuclear program. It also seems obvious to me that they included different messages for consumption by a few different audiences:
The reason I bothered to post this is I found it interesting. For one thing, I found it interesting because it was the first visual I've gotten of their nuclear program other than low-res satelite shots of a building. I also find it interesting for the same reason you do. Despite your apparent hostility towards me, you have actually asked the same thing I was wondering: Why would they publicize a tour of a top-secret location?
Whatever your opinion of the Iranian leadership, they aren't stupid. We can safely assume that none of this emerged without the leadership's explicit consent and direction. Looking at the pictures and descriptions, we have to realize that whatever is there is there because the Iranian government wants us to see exactly what is in those pictures - including the Defense Minister. I included him because I was summarizing the articles, and this seemed like a salient point. Why did Iran include him?
Items of interest to me:
1 - First-gen centrifuges & descriptions of problems, failures.
2 - Second-gen centrifuges & descriptions of improved capabilities.
3 - Vague mentions of next-gen centrifuges & challenges in producing them.
4 - The centrifuge bearings.
5 - A woman working on the bearings - perhaps significant from a regime that wants to address the West's opinions on its policies towards women.
6 - Deliberate inclusion of the Defense Minister.
Anyway, to answer the question "Why would they
1 - Iran. At home, I imagine this is a feel-good, nationalistic story.
2 - United Nations, esp. IAEA. "See? We're transparent as can be."
3 - Russia. (maybe?) "Thanks for going out on a limb for us in the world press. Here's a photo op that might help our message."
4 - USA / Israel "We're not going to play the same closed, paranoid game that NK did. World opinion is going to be MUCH harder to swing against us. Yeah, our Defense Minister toured the place. So what? What are you going to do about it?"
I also tend to believe [tinfoil hat alert] that they probably included elements/imagery (other than the Defense Minister guy) in the photos designed to be apparent to western and Israeli intelligence that civilians probably don't recognize.[/tinfoil]
I am NOT advocating another war, airstrike, threat level, whatever. I am asking questions about what is really going on here.
Would Bush publicize a visit to Area 51? Just like the Iranians, I'm sure he would if he had something significant to gain. And just like any form of propaganda (USA, Iran, whomever), I don't think that it could be taken at face value without unfettered, independent third-party involvement.
Whoa. Cool.
Thanks for the info, all of you. Enjoy your new toy. How's it running so far?