I'll give Microsoft and the USPTO the benefit of the doubt here (insanity!) and assume that they really do produce the most great patents.
It just goes to show that there's a world of difference between a good idea and viable execution. Reminds me how Xerox had, by far, the best set of ideas in the industry in the late 70's and almost totally failed to do anything with them.
As someone who leans more toward the creative side as opposed to the marketing side, it's humbling to see how much we need each other. "If you build it they will come" isn't true. You need someone who understands how to make great ideas into practical products, then find the right people to market to and get it in front of their eyeballs. It's not easy or cheap.
Really, this kind of marketing ability is Apple's greatest innovation. They have great ideas, sure, but their ability to get them out to people is what sets them apart. Hopefully Microsoft can figure out how to do this before they start slashing their R&D budget in a downward spiral.
All this cheating is the obvious end result of our endless pursuit of the "ultimate". I remember souring on the Olympics in my teens. In a world of six billion people it's patently absurd to worry who is the single best at something. Most of the "victories" at this point are either cheats, or they're unrepeatable anomalies. But still we're looking to prove that some single person is the "ultimate". I wish we could just get over that obsession and accept that there's a lot of people who are really great what they do. As far as I'm concerned there is no "best", only many "greats".
I agree none of the browsers are perfect -- it's just that each additional rendering engine takes away from the productivity of the web without adding much. There needs to be some competition, but honestly not as much as there has been. So it just seems like the best thing to do would be to drop the one that is the furthest off target. I maintain that the furthest off target is the IE branch. I'd be happy with KHTML and Gecko sharing nearly the whole market.
But of course it's all just talk. We'll get IE 8, and I'm just about positive that whether it renders Acid2 or not, it'll introduce a whole host of new issues, and since we'll still have to develop for IE6 and IE7, everyone will have another distinct rendering engine to target. Increase development costs by 10%. No associated benefits. Sigh.
A good point, but can't they keep their developer IE API and still replace the desktop browser? Sorry to use Apple as an example again, but they have some kind of NSHTML rendering system that was (is?) used for their built-in help system. Of course it probably wouldn't render any HTML written since 1998, but it's there if someone wants to embed it. Or they can choose WebKit, like Safari does.
I don't believe Microsoft has to keep foisting this lousy browser on us year after year.
If I sound frustrated it is because in my web development work, it is almost always IE browsers (any version) that force the most awful hacking to get acceptable results. Basic coding usually works as expected in Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and Safari.
Maybe it sounds like a troll, but I'm serious: I think it makes more sense for them to build a Gecko wrapper than to try and fix the world's least compliant rendering engine. If you think this is a ridiculous proposal, note that Apple took this tack for Safari: they built their own UI on top of the existing KHTML rendering engine. And web developers were quite happy that they didn't have to target yet another browser.
As far as I'm concerned, rendering engines are becoming like networking libraries at this point: you choose one from the many high-quality free implementations that are already out there, and you build something cool with it. This is what Microsoft did with their TCP/IP stack. IE8 would likely be a much better browser if they redirected their rendering engine efforts into the UI.
I don't trust them. They ruined the work life of web designers everywhere. It'll be ten years before we've dug out of the hole created by IE 6 and 7. IE 8 can't solve any of that.
What are they trying to control at this point anyway? Why can't they just pack it in and make IE8 a Gecko based browser? As far as I'm concerned writing another web rendering engine at this point is a colossal waste of time. Wouldn't their customers be happier if they spent their development resources on something else?
The only thing you said that I'd disagree with is that the failures of this administration will discredit the neo-cons. A huge number of people haven't learned anything at all during this. I know because many of them are in my family and they still support Bush and hate liberals. Even if we do a course correction soon, we'll be back down this path again before too long.
when they faily spectacularly, like Iraq, you can bet that it is because whoever is truly calling the shots wanted it that way
I can't believe for a second that someone in the government is so powerful and prescient that they never screw up. Do you think we're the first government to ever have such infallibility? Or did all the empires that crumbled before ours were because "whoever was truly calling the shots" wanted them to?
A much more likely explanation is that lots of people with different motivations run things, and sometimes they work against each other and sometimes they screw up. In fact, anyone who has worked managing large groups has probably seen this happen.
Dvorak probably hasn't spent much time in Africa. In my travels in the poorest province of South Africa, I came across a lot of kids who had food and shelter (humble but sufficient) and were dying for computers. They want to learn, to be part of modern society, which they are fully aware of because many of them have DVD players at home and they rent American movies. Africa is not mostly made of starving babies with flies in their eyes.
I don't mean to diminish the suffering of the many places where people are starving, and obviously in those areas people need food and medical care and more basic education before they get to computers. But it is absurd to complain about a useful humanitarian effort because it's not a different humanitarian effort. It's not like the companies that make the components for the OLPC would be making foodstuffs otherwise. The OLPC has the potential to serve a very real need in those areas, and perhaps develop people who would go on to help with the problems he's concerned with.
In any case, I'm not so concerned about the Dvorak troll as I am about perpetuating the ideas that a) "poor" areas need only food and medicine and b) anything other than that is somehow a waste of resources. It's a complex world and there are many ways to help. If one inspires you, do it, it's better than doing nothing.
As someone with mod points at the moment, I considered undoing the "-1 Troll" on your previous post because most of what you said is true. But I didn't because your language _is_ trollish. You sound a bit like Sean Hannity, and whether I agree with you or not it's terribly annoying. If you have a point to make, just make it. The "shipped to Guantanamo" rhetoric and phrases like "sucks rod" just make you sound uneducated and trollish. Which lowers the quality of the discussion.
Just thought I'd give feedback instead of modding you.
"uglier than a meth whore"? C'mon man... you're not Dennis Leary.
Yeah, I'm not in favor of handouts either, but since it seems like we're going to spend billions of dollars anyways, I'd rather we spend it on constructive tasks rather than destructive.
I don't know for sure that such a thing would have helped reduce terrorism, but it sure seems that a humanitarian offering like that towards Muslim countries, combined with not messing around in their countries' politics would have to reduce the number of Muslims who hate us.
I just wish America was famous for being a peaceful and compassionate nation who is very much able to defend herself, rather than an arrogant, meddlesome, aggressive and selfish nation. I even wish Europe saw us that way. Because generally there's a lot less trouble when you're not a jerk. You don't want to be a pushover either, but you don't have to be a pushover to stop being a jerk. I firmly believe you can be kind and strong.
Actually I largely agree with you -- now that this thing has gone so far, packing up and going home may not solve things. There is too much bad blood. If we had let them alone in the first place we probably wouldn't have a terrorism problem. But now we do, and heck if I know how to properly solve it.
I posted to my political-ish blog the other day that if we had spent the money we're spending on Iraq on instead rebuilding the tsunami ravaged countries (several of which were strongly Muslim), that would have done a lot more good. Actually, if we had spent even 10% of that money it probably would have done more good.
Of course, that won't happen. People love tough dramatic "solutions" even when they prove to be ineffective. People have little interest in careful measured actions that actually work.
Unless someone can provide a clearly better idea, I do think we should still get out as soon as we can (which I don't have the knowledge to precisely define). But I agree that alone would not solve the problem. It might be a start, but it would take a lot more than that to turn the tide.
What makes you think that? It's not like there's any evidence of that because, you know, we _did_ fuck up the middle east. We went in and toppled democratically elected officials and regularly manipulated things to our benefit at their expense. It's serious stuff, and is bound to piss people off. To then say "well, I think they would have hated us anyways" smacks of imperialist propaganda.
Maybe they would have hated us anyways, but we simply don't know that and it's disingenuous to use it as an excuse.
Very nice people. But their understanding of non-religious things is wrong and strange.
At some point they were talking about a new testament biblical passage that dated from around 1900 years ago. The writings referred to the society of the day, which was fairly advanced. And then one of the guys said, "And when I went to school, they taught me that was the caveman days! Ha ha! Jerks!" He then shook his head and rolled his eyes. Everyone at the table save me nodded and laughed about how ridiculous secular teaching is.
This is something I see so often with Christians: they have a lack of knowledge, spend very little time thinking about a topic, and yet have absolute conviction that they're right. Sure, that's a common human flaw, but it seems most pronounced in the Christians I know. Even if you're a young-earth creationist certainly you should know that "cavemen" are not generally claimed to have been around 1900 years ago, but much earlier. I don't think anyone ever taught that the Romans were cavemen. Even if you think the earliest people were from 6000 years ago, you should be able to understand that society changed a lot from the time of Adam to the time of Jesus.
And even if someone did tell him there were cavemen in 100 AD -- I don't know -- wasn't there a whole world beyond the Mediterranean on which the Bible says nothing? Even if there was a developed society in that area, isn't it conceivable that there were people living a sort of "caveman" life elsewhere at that time? It just bugs me how little thinking goes into the average Christian's position, and how it's usually driven by a desire to support their belief than by a desire for understanding.
Of course this is just one small group of people with wacky misunderstandings of the world and secular education. Most Christians aren't this confused. But most people who lack critical thinking abilities are drawn to fundamental Christianity for some reason.
Militant Islam (or terrorism) seems like a threat to our way of life to me.
Sure, I can see that. But Iraq was a fairly progressive secular Islamic state. There wasn't a substantial base of militant Islam there. Or if there was Saddam had it pretty well under control. They had a strong centralized government. They invaded kuwait instead of performing suicide bombings.
Even if you felt militant Islam was a clear and present danger (something I'm not convinced of), invading Iraq was a very ill conceived move.
And then, as you say, the execution was questionable, too.
I don't think there's a conspiracy. I don't think that most of the people who oppose the war and the expansion of power think there's a conspiracy. Pointing out that politicians tend to be power hungry and tend to serve special interests does not make one a conspiracy theorist.
I find it terribly significant that while we went into Iraq to boot out Saddam, ostensibly because of his wicked ways, most of the "solutions" proposed at this point are far more wicked than Saddam was on his worst day. Complete genocide? Really?
And it's not just in this thread. It's a common sentiment I often hear from the same people who supported ousting Saddam: It's a mess over there: just wipe them all out.
I hope that the irony of that sentiment, after condemning Saddam's comparatively minor crimes, is apparent.
And I hope that next time around some of the people who harbored such hypocritical notions have learned something about judging things they don't understand.
My point is that there are plenty of examples where an armed populous does not result in peace. I'm _not_ saying that an armed populous can't be peaceful (of course they can, there are examples of this as well), but an armed populous is not the _cause_ of peace. There really doesn't seem to be a strong correlation. No matter how many people in LA carry guns, no matter how likely it is you'll get killed for messing with someone, people still mess with each other. Seemingly because they're very unhappy with their lives (and part of that is because there's so much violence around them). At the same time, no matter how many guns people in Canada own, they're not any more likely to go and blow off their neighbor's head. Because they're relatively happy with their lives.
That said, I don't strongly disagree with most of what you're saying:)
if people in the USA were on average willing to commit extreme violence to protect themselves, there'd be far less violent crime in this country.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think there's plenty of evidence to show that is simply not how it works. The old west is an example of it not working: everyone was ready to kill and yet things were not peaceful. Pretty much any inner city where lots of people have guns would also serve as an example of this failing. All the shootings don't seem to stop further shootings. Pretty much any war zone or terrorized area shows the idea that violence stops violence to be false.
As a note: I'm actually pro gun rights. Not because I think they solve problems: they don't. I'm for gun rights because I don't believe they don't _cause_ problems either. And I don't like making laws against things like that (I'm pro marijuana legalization, too, for example).
My sense is that violence decreases when people have a good life. One that they don't want to screw up. If their life is shit, if they have a secret death wish, no amount of fear of self defense is going to keep them from trying to get what they want. This is the main problem with a punishment-as-deterrent approach: some people, usually the ones that are most likely to be motivated to commit a crime, are not afraid of punishment. Because their life already sucks.
I'm not saying there _shouldn't_ be punishment, just that it is not a solution in itself. Rather, we need to find a way to make people's lives more valuable to them. This usually comes from financial stability, a long life expectancy (which highly violent societies undercut), and healthy family and friends. Then punishment matters. But at that point, fear of punishment is usually no longer needed because they are less likely to want to cause trouble.
I'm speeding over a pretty weighty subject here, but I felt compelled to voice my disagreement with your last premise.
I don't know about Tiger (haven't upgraded yet) but the recent Quicktime 7.3 update is a pile of crap.
I'm not a power user, and I really just use Quicktime for porn, but it definitely took a major step backwards in this release: the select/copy/paste functionality has been removed from most movie types. Also the A/V controls (brightness, contrast) no longer work on many formats. These were things that _worked_ in 7.2 and have been _disabled_ in 7.3. I don't know what they're trying to do, but it seems like they're trying to make Quicktime completely useless. Those little features were the only reason I used Quicktime at all (instead of VLC, for example).
Poking around online to try and find a downgrade path, I found that a lot of Final Cut users were totally screwed by this update as well. And the downgrade path is to reinstall the OS from scratch and selectively update around Quicktime 7.3.
Meh... Apple is doing a lot of things right. And they're doing a lot of things wrong. I'd like to see them understand which is which, and hold on to the right things and work on improving the wrong things. Is that really too much to ask?
Bugs and such I understand, but who the hell thinks it's a good idea to disable existing functionality?
I made the above comment about Russia and Germany before checking out your website and learning that you were raised in Russia. Now I'm extra curious: what would lead you to believe that a small well funded army (like Germany or the US) could so cleanly defeat a huge underfunded army (like Russia or China)?
Oh: and I like (clean) cops too... but really these days the vast majority of people in developed countries are 90% motivated by the carrot and not the stick. I understand the stick needs to be there for the exceptions, but I don't understand the fixation and promotion of it when the carrot has proved so much more effective.
I personally believe that just about everything is predicated on [violence].
I think that is a very simplified view that ignores all the progress humans have made above our not-so-distant relatives who claw and bite each other to death in the jungles and plains.
Yes: violence is the foundation of organization in nature. And it has been a major force in humanity's structure as well. But you and I both spend nearly zero of our time engaged in violence or fearing violence: the fact is that violence has become less relevant to life in developed countries to an amazing degree. It may have been more important once, but we've largely gone beyond that now. We've (most of us) learned that violence is not an effective strategy in large progressive social groups like ours (i.e. the US and similarly developed societies).
In fact the whole freaking out about 9/11 and the war are just signs at how far we've distanced ourselves from violence. Most people recognize that it has a very limited role in modern society. Our clashing with not-entirely-modern societies highlights this, I think.
Europe has nowhere near enough arms, Russia's broke, China doesn't have transport. We could absolutely smear Iraq if we chose to, and still retain most of our combat capability
You sound, no kidding, like Germany talking about Russia. And we all know how that went. I think you seriously underestimate how 5 billion people under threat might stand up to a few hundred million. Even with better technology and more money.
It also helps that the 5 billion feel entirely justified in their self defense and the aggressive few have misgivings (rightfully so) about what they're doing. Obviously the numbers of actual troops would be smaller, but you've got to take into account the scale of America against the world. Hell, we're pretty well tasked just holding down the fort in Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that if united against us (admittedly an "if"), the world could put down America in no time.
And that's a good thing. As much as I love America, it's people, and what it is supposed to stand for, I would be the first person to hasten and cheer it's downfall if it resorted to genocide. I doubt I'm the only person on the planet who would stand up against such a thing.
Which brings us back to violence. Though I will stand by my statement that violence has a minimal role in our lives today, it does have a role: I am also an advocate of self defense. It is important that people defend themselves, both on an individual and a national level. It isn't the basis of society, but it does help keep the small percentage of crazies at bay.
If violence isn't solving your problems... You're not using enough of it
Amusing. I assume you use this logic in running your own life then? Lots of punching people in the face? The occasional killing?
See, the problem with violence is that it generally results in a backlash. And nobody -nobody- is invincible if they piss off enough people.
Other nations would stop screwing around with us
Well you've succeeded: I have no recourse but to bring up Germany's excellent historic track record for stopping people from screwing around with them by being aggressive.
they're disagreements about superstitious bullshit
Some of it is, sure, but a lot of it relates to centuries of real injustice. I don't even remember the details (there's too damn many), but the book "Battle For God" by Karen Armstrong details how these groups have, through many massacres and assassinations, gone far beyond the point where either would back down. That kind of retributive behavior is common human nature. In that regard the Iraqis are no more ridiculous than us.
Figuring out how to end a centuries old blood feud is left as an exercise to the reader.
We already have the military might to simply wipe Iraq off the map. That would solve the problem, real quick.
I realize you were being facetious, but I have to point out that wiping Iraq off the map would not solve any problem at all, and would cause a host of new problems the likes of which America has never seen.
I'm a bit weary with our arrogance. It's worth noting that military power did not forever save any of the previous empires that fell apart.
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I'll give Microsoft and the USPTO the benefit of the doubt here (insanity!) and assume that they really do produce the most great patents.
It just goes to show that there's a world of difference between a good idea and viable execution. Reminds me how Xerox had, by far, the best set of ideas in the industry in the late 70's and almost totally failed to do anything with them.
As someone who leans more toward the creative side as opposed to the marketing side, it's humbling to see how much we need each other. "If you build it they will come" isn't true. You need someone who understands how to make great ideas into practical products, then find the right people to market to and get it in front of their eyeballs. It's not easy or cheap.
Really, this kind of marketing ability is Apple's greatest innovation. They have great ideas, sure, but their ability to get them out to people is what sets them apart. Hopefully Microsoft can figure out how to do this before they start slashing their R&D budget in a downward spiral.
Cheers.
All this cheating is the obvious end result of our endless pursuit of the "ultimate". I remember souring on the Olympics in my teens. In a world of six billion people it's patently absurd to worry who is the single best at something. Most of the "victories" at this point are either cheats, or they're unrepeatable anomalies. But still we're looking to prove that some single person is the "ultimate". I wish we could just get over that obsession and accept that there's a lot of people who are really great what they do. As far as I'm concerned there is no "best", only many "greats".
Cheers.
I agree none of the browsers are perfect -- it's just that each additional rendering engine takes away from the productivity of the web without adding much. There needs to be some competition, but honestly not as much as there has been. So it just seems like the best thing to do would be to drop the one that is the furthest off target. I maintain that the furthest off target is the IE branch. I'd be happy with KHTML and Gecko sharing nearly the whole market.
But of course it's all just talk. We'll get IE 8, and I'm just about positive that whether it renders Acid2 or not, it'll introduce a whole host of new issues, and since we'll still have to develop for IE6 and IE7, everyone will have another distinct rendering engine to target. Increase development costs by 10%. No associated benefits. Sigh.
Cheers.
A good point, but can't they keep their developer IE API and still replace the desktop browser? Sorry to use Apple as an example again, but they have some kind of NSHTML rendering system that was (is?) used for their built-in help system. Of course it probably wouldn't render any HTML written since 1998, but it's there if someone wants to embed it. Or they can choose WebKit, like Safari does.
I don't believe Microsoft has to keep foisting this lousy browser on us year after year.
If I sound frustrated it is because in my web development work, it is almost always IE browsers (any version) that force the most awful hacking to get acceptable results. Basic coding usually works as expected in Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror, and Safari.
Cheers.
Maybe it sounds like a troll, but I'm serious: I think it makes more sense for them to build a Gecko wrapper than to try and fix the world's least compliant rendering engine. If you think this is a ridiculous proposal, note that Apple took this tack for Safari: they built their own UI on top of the existing KHTML rendering engine. And web developers were quite happy that they didn't have to target yet another browser.
As far as I'm concerned, rendering engines are becoming like networking libraries at this point: you choose one from the many high-quality free implementations that are already out there, and you build something cool with it. This is what Microsoft did with their TCP/IP stack. IE8 would likely be a much better browser if they redirected their rendering engine efforts into the UI.
Cheers.
I don't trust them. They ruined the work life of web designers everywhere. It'll be ten years before we've dug out of the hole created by IE 6 and 7. IE 8 can't solve any of that.
What are they trying to control at this point anyway? Why can't they just pack it in and make IE8 a Gecko based browser? As far as I'm concerned writing another web rendering engine at this point is a colossal waste of time. Wouldn't their customers be happier if they spent their development resources on something else?
Cheers.
Yeah, that is a pretty good explanation.
The only thing you said that I'd disagree with is that the failures of this administration will discredit the neo-cons. A huge number of people haven't learned anything at all during this. I know because many of them are in my family and they still support Bush and hate liberals. Even if we do a course correction soon, we'll be back down this path again before too long.
Cheers.
when they faily spectacularly, like Iraq, you can bet that it is because whoever is truly calling the shots wanted it that way
I can't believe for a second that someone in the government is so powerful and prescient that they never screw up. Do you think we're the first government to ever have such infallibility? Or did all the empires that crumbled before ours were because "whoever was truly calling the shots" wanted them to?
A much more likely explanation is that lots of people with different motivations run things, and sometimes they work against each other and sometimes they screw up. In fact, anyone who has worked managing large groups has probably seen this happen.
Cheers.
Dvorak probably hasn't spent much time in Africa. In my travels in the poorest province of South Africa, I came across a lot of kids who had food and shelter (humble but sufficient) and were dying for computers. They want to learn, to be part of modern society, which they are fully aware of because many of them have DVD players at home and they rent American movies. Africa is not mostly made of starving babies with flies in their eyes.
I don't mean to diminish the suffering of the many places where people are starving, and obviously in those areas people need food and medical care and more basic education before they get to computers. But it is absurd to complain about a useful humanitarian effort because it's not a different humanitarian effort. It's not like the companies that make the components for the OLPC would be making foodstuffs otherwise. The OLPC has the potential to serve a very real need in those areas, and perhaps develop people who would go on to help with the problems he's concerned with.
In any case, I'm not so concerned about the Dvorak troll as I am about perpetuating the ideas that a) "poor" areas need only food and medicine and b) anything other than that is somehow a waste of resources. It's a complex world and there are many ways to help. If one inspires you, do it, it's better than doing nothing.
Cheers.
That's fine, but it's less effective at informing or persuading people. Just letting you know.
I don't limit myself to highbrow constructions either, but it depends on the audience and my intent.
Cheers.
As someone with mod points at the moment, I considered undoing the "-1 Troll" on your previous post because most of what you said is true. But I didn't because your language _is_ trollish. You sound a bit like Sean Hannity, and whether I agree with you or not it's terribly annoying. If you have a point to make, just make it. The "shipped to Guantanamo" rhetoric and phrases like "sucks rod" just make you sound uneducated and trollish. Which lowers the quality of the discussion.
Just thought I'd give feedback instead of modding you.
"uglier than a meth whore"? C'mon man... you're not Dennis Leary.
Cheers.
Yeah, I'm not in favor of handouts either, but since it seems like we're going to spend billions of dollars anyways, I'd rather we spend it on constructive tasks rather than destructive.
I don't know for sure that such a thing would have helped reduce terrorism, but it sure seems that a humanitarian offering like that towards Muslim countries, combined with not messing around in their countries' politics would have to reduce the number of Muslims who hate us.
I just wish America was famous for being a peaceful and compassionate nation who is very much able to defend herself, rather than an arrogant, meddlesome, aggressive and selfish nation. I even wish Europe saw us that way. Because generally there's a lot less trouble when you're not a jerk. You don't want to be a pushover either, but you don't have to be a pushover to stop being a jerk. I firmly believe you can be kind and strong.
Cheers.
Actually I largely agree with you -- now that this thing has gone so far, packing up and going home may not solve things. There is too much bad blood. If we had let them alone in the first place we probably wouldn't have a terrorism problem. But now we do, and heck if I know how to properly solve it.
I posted to my political-ish blog the other day that if we had spent the money we're spending on Iraq on instead rebuilding the tsunami ravaged countries (several of which were strongly Muslim), that would have done a lot more good. Actually, if we had spent even 10% of that money it probably would have done more good.
Of course, that won't happen. People love tough dramatic "solutions" even when they prove to be ineffective. People have little interest in careful measured actions that actually work.
Unless someone can provide a clearly better idea, I do think we should still get out as soon as we can (which I don't have the knowledge to precisely define). But I agree that alone would not solve the problem. It might be a start, but it would take a lot more than that to turn the tide.
Cheers.
What makes you think that? It's not like there's any evidence of that because, you know, we _did_ fuck up the middle east. We went in and toppled democratically elected officials and regularly manipulated things to our benefit at their expense. It's serious stuff, and is bound to piss people off. To then say "well, I think they would have hated us anyways" smacks of imperialist propaganda.
Maybe they would have hated us anyways, but we simply don't know that and it's disingenuous to use it as an excuse.
Sigh.
Very nice people. But their understanding of non-religious things is wrong and strange.
At some point they were talking about a new testament biblical passage that dated from around 1900 years ago. The writings referred to the society of the day, which was fairly advanced. And then one of the guys said, "And when I went to school, they taught me that was the caveman days! Ha ha! Jerks!" He then shook his head and rolled his eyes. Everyone at the table save me nodded and laughed about how ridiculous secular teaching is.
This is something I see so often with Christians: they have a lack of knowledge, spend very little time thinking about a topic, and yet have absolute conviction that they're right. Sure, that's a common human flaw, but it seems most pronounced in the Christians I know. Even if you're a young-earth creationist certainly you should know that "cavemen" are not generally claimed to have been around 1900 years ago, but much earlier. I don't think anyone ever taught that the Romans were cavemen. Even if you think the earliest people were from 6000 years ago, you should be able to understand that society changed a lot from the time of Adam to the time of Jesus.
And even if someone did tell him there were cavemen in 100 AD -- I don't know -- wasn't there a whole world beyond the Mediterranean on which the Bible says nothing? Even if there was a developed society in that area, isn't it conceivable that there were people living a sort of "caveman" life elsewhere at that time? It just bugs me how little thinking goes into the average Christian's position, and how it's usually driven by a desire to support their belief than by a desire for understanding.
Of course this is just one small group of people with wacky misunderstandings of the world and secular education. Most Christians aren't this confused. But most people who lack critical thinking abilities are drawn to fundamental Christianity for some reason.
Anyways.
Militant Islam (or terrorism) seems like a threat to our way of life to me.
Sure, I can see that. But Iraq was a fairly progressive secular Islamic state. There wasn't a substantial base of militant Islam there. Or if there was Saddam had it pretty well under control. They had a strong centralized government. They invaded kuwait instead of performing suicide bombings.
Even if you felt militant Islam was a clear and present danger (something I'm not convinced of), invading Iraq was a very ill conceived move.
And then, as you say, the execution was questionable, too.
I don't think there's a conspiracy. I don't think that most of the people who oppose the war and the expansion of power think there's a conspiracy. Pointing out that politicians tend to be power hungry and tend to serve special interests does not make one a conspiracy theorist.
Cheers.
I find it terribly significant that while we went into Iraq to boot out Saddam, ostensibly because of his wicked ways, most of the "solutions" proposed at this point are far more wicked than Saddam was on his worst day. Complete genocide? Really?
And it's not just in this thread. It's a common sentiment I often hear from the same people who supported ousting Saddam: It's a mess over there: just wipe them all out.
I hope that the irony of that sentiment, after condemning Saddam's comparatively minor crimes, is apparent.
And I hope that next time around some of the people who harbored such hypocritical notions have learned something about judging things they don't understand.
Cheers.
My point is that there are plenty of examples where an armed populous does not result in peace. I'm _not_ saying that an armed populous can't be peaceful (of course they can, there are examples of this as well), but an armed populous is not the _cause_ of peace. There really doesn't seem to be a strong correlation. No matter how many people in LA carry guns, no matter how likely it is you'll get killed for messing with someone, people still mess with each other. Seemingly because they're very unhappy with their lives (and part of that is because there's so much violence around them). At the same time, no matter how many guns people in Canada own, they're not any more likely to go and blow off their neighbor's head. Because they're relatively happy with their lives.
:)
That said, I don't strongly disagree with most of what you're saying
if people in the USA were on average willing to commit extreme violence to protect themselves, there'd be far less violent crime in this country.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think there's plenty of evidence to show that is simply not how it works. The old west is an example of it not working: everyone was ready to kill and yet things were not peaceful. Pretty much any inner city where lots of people have guns would also serve as an example of this failing. All the shootings don't seem to stop further shootings. Pretty much any war zone or terrorized area shows the idea that violence stops violence to be false.
As a note: I'm actually pro gun rights. Not because I think they solve problems: they don't. I'm for gun rights because I don't believe they don't _cause_ problems either. And I don't like making laws against things like that (I'm pro marijuana legalization, too, for example).
My sense is that violence decreases when people have a good life. One that they don't want to screw up. If their life is shit, if they have a secret death wish, no amount of fear of self defense is going to keep them from trying to get what they want. This is the main problem with a punishment-as-deterrent approach: some people, usually the ones that are most likely to be motivated to commit a crime, are not afraid of punishment. Because their life already sucks.
I'm not saying there _shouldn't_ be punishment, just that it is not a solution in itself. Rather, we need to find a way to make people's lives more valuable to them. This usually comes from financial stability, a long life expectancy (which highly violent societies undercut), and healthy family and friends. Then punishment matters. But at that point, fear of punishment is usually no longer needed because they are less likely to want to cause trouble.
I'm speeding over a pretty weighty subject here, but I felt compelled to voice my disagreement with your last premise.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses, though.
Cheers.
I don't know about Tiger (haven't upgraded yet) but the recent Quicktime 7.3 update is a pile of crap.
I'm not a power user, and I really just use Quicktime for porn, but it definitely took a major step backwards in this release: the select/copy/paste functionality has been removed from most movie types. Also the A/V controls (brightness, contrast) no longer work on many formats. These were things that _worked_ in 7.2 and have been _disabled_ in 7.3. I don't know what they're trying to do, but it seems like they're trying to make Quicktime completely useless. Those little features were the only reason I used Quicktime at all (instead of VLC, for example).
Poking around online to try and find a downgrade path, I found that a lot of Final Cut users were totally screwed by this update as well. And the downgrade path is to reinstall the OS from scratch and selectively update around Quicktime 7.3.
Meh... Apple is doing a lot of things right. And they're doing a lot of things wrong. I'd like to see them understand which is which, and hold on to the right things and work on improving the wrong things. Is that really too much to ask?
Bugs and such I understand, but who the hell thinks it's a good idea to disable existing functionality?
Cheers.
I made the above comment about Russia and Germany before checking out your website and learning that you were raised in Russia. Now I'm extra curious: what would lead you to believe that a small well funded army (like Germany or the US) could so cleanly defeat a huge underfunded army (like Russia or China)?
Oh: and I like (clean) cops too... but really these days the vast majority of people in developed countries are 90% motivated by the carrot and not the stick. I understand the stick needs to be there for the exceptions, but I don't understand the fixation and promotion of it when the carrot has proved so much more effective.
Cheers.
Thanks for the solid reply.
I personally believe that just about everything is predicated on [violence].
I think that is a very simplified view that ignores all the progress humans have made above our not-so-distant relatives who claw and bite each other to death in the jungles and plains.
Yes: violence is the foundation of organization in nature. And it has been a major force in humanity's structure as well. But you and I both spend nearly zero of our time engaged in violence or fearing violence: the fact is that violence has become less relevant to life in developed countries to an amazing degree. It may have been more important once, but we've largely gone beyond that now. We've (most of us) learned that violence is not an effective strategy in large progressive social groups like ours (i.e. the US and similarly developed societies).
In fact the whole freaking out about 9/11 and the war are just signs at how far we've distanced ourselves from violence. Most people recognize that it has a very limited role in modern society. Our clashing with not-entirely-modern societies highlights this, I think.
Europe has nowhere near enough arms, Russia's broke, China doesn't have transport. We could absolutely smear Iraq if we chose to, and still retain most of our combat capability
You sound, no kidding, like Germany talking about Russia. And we all know how that went. I think you seriously underestimate how 5 billion people under threat might stand up to a few hundred million. Even with better technology and more money.
It also helps that the 5 billion feel entirely justified in their self defense and the aggressive few have misgivings (rightfully so) about what they're doing. Obviously the numbers of actual troops would be smaller, but you've got to take into account the scale of America against the world. Hell, we're pretty well tasked just holding down the fort in Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that if united against us (admittedly an "if"), the world could put down America in no time.
And that's a good thing. As much as I love America, it's people, and what it is supposed to stand for, I would be the first person to hasten and cheer it's downfall if it resorted to genocide. I doubt I'm the only person on the planet who would stand up against such a thing.
Which brings us back to violence. Though I will stand by my statement that violence has a minimal role in our lives today, it does have a role: I am also an advocate of self defense. It is important that people defend themselves, both on an individual and a national level. It isn't the basis of society, but it does help keep the small percentage of crazies at bay.
Cheers.
If violence isn't solving your problems... You're not using enough of it
Amusing. I assume you use this logic in running your own life then? Lots of punching people in the face? The occasional killing?
See, the problem with violence is that it generally results in a backlash. And nobody -nobody- is invincible if they piss off enough people.
Other nations would stop screwing around with us
Well you've succeeded: I have no recourse but to bring up Germany's excellent historic track record for stopping people from screwing around with them by being aggressive.
Cheers.
they're disagreements about superstitious bullshit
Some of it is, sure, but a lot of it relates to centuries of real injustice. I don't even remember the details (there's too damn many), but the book "Battle For God" by Karen Armstrong details how these groups have, through many massacres and assassinations, gone far beyond the point where either would back down. That kind of retributive behavior is common human nature. In that regard the Iraqis are no more ridiculous than us.
Figuring out how to end a centuries old blood feud is left as an exercise to the reader.
Cheers.
We already have the military might to simply wipe Iraq off the map. That would solve the problem, real quick.
I realize you were being facetious, but I have to point out that wiping Iraq off the map would not solve any problem at all, and would cause a host of new problems the likes of which America has never seen.
I'm a bit weary with our arrogance. It's worth noting that military power did not forever save any of the previous empires that fell apart.
Cheers.