Saddam did have ties to al Qaeda. He is well documented as a supporter of Palestinian terrorists. He has not, however, been shown to have a connection to 9/11... But who said he did?
Saddam didn't support al Qaeda. Your own congress couldn't find any link. Do you have the faintest idea how antagonistic Ba'athism and Islamic Fundementalism is (here's a clue: take a look at current day Syria)
As to Palestine, you do realize that *the* main breeding ground for Arab terrorism is the American support for (from an Arab perspective) Israeli Terrorism. See www.electronicintifada.net and try and understand how it looks from the other side.
The situation in Israel is of course not black and white - apart from anything else Israel is a relatively liberal democracy with respect for the individual and it's neighbours are not, but such complexities seem beyond the understanding of Americans and you keep making the situation worse with your stupid ideological gung-ho attitudes.
Name me a single conflict, that has had one country defeat and then occupy another for over a year, and taken just 1000 casualties?
Occupation of Uganda by Tanzania in the 1970's comes instantly to mind. Also German occupation of Denmark in WWII, (and possibly Norway if you ignore outside raids). British occupation of Egypt. Numerious other examples.
I study history and nothing comes to mind.
This would be the Janet and John Children's History of America?
There are many people on Slashdot that just hate Bush, and Americans in general,
Seems to be an awful lot of Americans that hate Bush too. Generally the intelligent and non-xenophopic ones.
Add to that Mass Graves, the support of terrorists (this is 100% true, you can't deny it)
Which support for terrorists? There was NO connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Quite the reverse as Ba'athism and Islamic Fundementalism don't mix - as you'd know if you'd ever read any Islamic history.
and you have a major wild card out
Iraq was quite nicely contained. Now you're just cutting heads off the Hydra
You Europeans just keep on electing your little Socialist "take care of me cradle to grave" governments
At least we have a civilized attitude to public health (see previous slashdot article) as opposed to the positively barbaric american system. A civilization should be viewed by how it treats it's most vunerable members, on which basis America is a complete and utter failure.
point to the US and complain how we are the cause of every problem in history of the world and we will sit over here on the other side of the pond and kindly ignore you.
Oh, if only you would sit on your side of the pond and ignore everyone else, instead of sticking your big fat uneducated noses into every world situation and making it worse becuase you don't understand history or diplomacy. Vietnam, Chile, Columbia, San-Salvador - the list is endless.
Small stores selling the full range of their products, with the emphasis of sound systems and TVs (although probably because these are the largest boxes so the items I've noticed). My nearest town of 30,000 has two - one in the main shopping area and another in a small affluent suberb with a single row of shops.
Just another specialized retailer aimed somewhat upmarket.
Period. I personally believe that neither will ever be provable.
Oh, evolution has been proven on numerous occassions both observationally (moths etc.) and experimentally (bacterial metabolis etc.). The only people who want to make out that evolution has not been proven are creationists because they're having some dfficulty getting proof for their alternative
Probably HeLa, which is one of the most agressive cell lines. One interesting aside on HeLa is that there is now a greater weight of HeLa cells around in the labs of the world than there ever was in Henrietta Lacks, the original source of the cells.
Nope. It's waaay more complex than that, including which photosynthetic cycle your plant uses (C4 or C3). Also above a certain C02 level plants open their stomata less and CO2 conxumption actually drops
First day I started as a postdoc I was shown to the office I was sharing with another postdoc. Walked into the room and found his wet socks pinned to the noticeboard - as he explained later, they'd got wet when he was cycling in and this was the best place to dry them.
Universities seem to foster strange behaviour. Once got sent around to see a lecturer in another department to negotiate use of his photometer microscope. My supervisor warned me before I went that he was 'a little ecentric', but even so I though I did rather well to keep a straight face when I found him in full boy scout uniform.
Aye, but the reason why people are being so picky about the difference between sub-orbital and orbit is that it really is a big deal. The jump from a sub-orbital vehicle to orbit is at least as hard, and probaby realistically several times harder, than getting to space in the first place.
Which is not to decry Rutan who's done an amazing job and has made a great step towards achieving orbit, but he does still have a very long way to go. Still, the longest journey starts with a single step.
Yes. As someone who remembers the IT industry back in the mid 80s when IBM held a similar satanistic position as Microsoft does now I can never quite bring myself to join in with the extreme loathing of the company.
If IBM has 'won' in the 80s with OS/2 and PS/2 then we'd be in a much worse state than we are now. At least, somewhere under it all, Gates and Allen are/were to some degree geeks (at least compared to the IBM suits). Gates has been pretty philanthropic and Allen funds some interesting stuff - I cannot imagine IBM ever doing anything similar.
Ha, we have a similar one when getting off the ferry at Ostend: You have to remember the name of six famous Belgians in the time it takes to drive through Belgium.
They had a bit of a thing about names. After RAVERS I went to work on LOVERS (I kid you not) which was Local Vehicle Records - a sort of smaller version of RAVERS that ran on a PC.
BR was the strangest place to work, not least because half the staff seemed to be made up of train spotters. Mates of mine at the IT centre at Crewe had it particularly bad because the building was at the end of one of the platforms so those 'lucky' programmers with a window view could add to their tick list while 'working'. Indeed it was apparently something of a game among the more normal coders to shout 'there's a type 42x [or insert you engine type here] and watch the hordes run across to the windows tick books in hand.
Saddest collory to the game was that to pull this off you had to know something about engines yourself as shouting out a non-existant type would lead to a chorus of disputation and a long drawn out explanation of your error.
Myself, I servered my time for two years then went to work for a brewery.
That's not really fair. The ATP fiasco was all British Rail's own.
During the 80's I worked as a programmer on RAVERS (Rail Vehicle Records) which was BR's system for logging its movable assets. Interestingly there was (if I remember correctly) four records for ATPs on the live system, despite the fact that only one or two prototypes had been officialy produced.
Hmm, ok, apparently a non-mainstream mix - worth a look then. Some interesting artists doing celtic fusion stuff these days you don't find easily. I'm also fond of (very) early music.
So, browse to Folk, quick scan shows no Irish, Scottish, Celtic etc but British. A click reveals five albums by George Formby.
Falls off chair.
Must be shome mistake shurly, so back up to Folk, notice British/Irish. Might be better, heads down.
More albums, but nothing really of any interest. Universily the sort of stuff you can pick up for a couple of quid on permanent sale. The occasional thing I might listen to, but very few and far between.
Off mainstream Magnatune are far better. http://magnatune.com/ Anyone who has the incomparable Belinda Sykes and Joglaresa on their list has to be worth a long look
It's extremely difficult to come up with any other chemisty that could support life that isn't carbon-based. Carbon's ability to create a near infinite variety of different compounds, and in particular complex macromolecular structures, isn't found with any other element or combination of elements. Silicon doesn't come anywhere close.
Water OTOH might be more open to negotiation. It's difficult to concieve of life without some form of polar solvent cycle, but ammonia might substitute. Slightly more out on a limb and a non-polar solvent might work - such as ethane. The moons of the gas giants might be the best place to look for this.
Oxygen of course can be largely dispensed with. Indeed life almost certainly evolved with only a trace of it.
The real problem is not doctors - the amount of antibiotics they prescribe pales into insignificance compared to the volume of 'preventative' antibiotics shovelled into animal feed by farmers.
I've been using Cloudmark since it was in beta - which must be two or three years now.
It's a stunnigly good system, I have no connection with the company, but I can't praise it highly enough. 98% is an underestimate so far as I'm concerned - as I sell software my main email address is publically available on the net and yet it's perfectly usuable - spamnet gets rid of all the gunk.
Have you never heard of alternative history? There's a long tradition of SF stories which rewrite the past to some greater or lesser extent.
One of my favourites, from the 60's, is Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium" which postulates an alliance between the British Empire, Imperial Germany and Sweden arising before the (aborted) First World War. Another more recent series worth a look is Mary Gentle's 'Ash, A Secret History' which is set in the middle ages and reads like an historical novel, except that it's not quite the middle ages we know.
Why of why is not Geothermal energy on the agenda?
Both Europe and America are within cable distance of Iceland (or hydrogen could be generated in situ), which has massive geothermal resources. And whilst investment on the scale required would be massive, compared to the gulf war and other such incidental expenses for producing oil in unstable regions it's really not that significant. True the Icelanders would get very rich, but who would we prefere to be dependent on - a stable 1000 year old democracy or the snake-pit of the middle east?
The USA even has pretty major geothermal resources within it's own borders (Yellowstone, Alaska etc) although these are more difficult to exploit being deeper than in Iceland.
Slashdot Mirror
No, Iranians are Persians. Iraqi is much more of an ethnic mix - as befits one of the major crossroads of civilization over several millenia
Saddam did have ties to al Qaeda. He is well documented as a supporter of Palestinian terrorists. He has not, however, been shown to have a connection to 9/11... But who said he did?
Saddam didn't support al Qaeda. Your own congress couldn't find any link. Do you have the faintest idea how antagonistic Ba'athism and Islamic Fundementalism is (here's a clue: take a look at current day Syria)
As to Palestine, you do realize that *the* main breeding ground for Arab terrorism is the American support for (from an Arab perspective) Israeli Terrorism. See www.electronicintifada.net
and try and understand how it looks from the other side.
The situation in Israel is of course not black and white - apart from anything else Israel is a relatively liberal democracy with respect for the individual and it's neighbours are not, but such complexities seem beyond the understanding of Americans and you keep making the situation worse with your stupid ideological gung-ho attitudes.
Ever read Graham Green's "The Quiet American"?
Name me a single conflict, that has had one country defeat and then occupy another for over a year, and taken just 1000 casualties?
Occupation of Uganda by Tanzania in the 1970's comes instantly to mind. Also German occupation of Denmark in WWII, (and possibly Norway if you ignore outside raids). British occupation of Egypt. Numerious other examples.
I study history and nothing comes to mind.
This would be the Janet and John Children's History of America?
There are many people on Slashdot that just hate Bush, and Americans in general,
Seems to be an awful lot of Americans that hate Bush too. Generally the intelligent and non-xenophopic ones.
Add to that Mass Graves, the support of terrorists (this is 100% true, you can't deny it)
Which support for terrorists? There was NO connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Quite the reverse as Ba'athism and Islamic Fundementalism don't mix - as you'd know if you'd ever read any Islamic history.
and you have a major wild card out
Iraq was quite nicely contained. Now you're just cutting heads off the Hydra
You Europeans just keep on electing your little Socialist "take care of me cradle to grave" governments
At least we have a civilized attitude to public health (see previous slashdot article) as opposed to the positively barbaric american system. A civilization should be viewed by how it treats it's most vunerable members, on which basis America is a complete and utter failure.
point to the US and complain how we are the cause of every problem in history of the world and we will sit over here on the other side of the pond and kindly ignore you.
Oh, if only you would sit on your side of the pond and ignore everyone else, instead of sticking your big fat uneducated noses into every world situation and making it worse becuase you don't understand history or diplomacy. Vietnam, Chile, Columbia, San-Salvador - the list is endless.
Small stores selling the full range of their products, with the emphasis of sound systems and TVs (although probably because these are the largest boxes so the items I've noticed). My nearest town of 30,000 has two - one in the main shopping area and another in a small affluent suberb with a single row of shops.
Just another specialized retailer aimed somewhat upmarket.
Actually it was the other way around and evolutionists won from a position in the 19th C where everyone was creationist.
What you see now is simply the final skirmishes mopping up the resistance in intellectually backward groups like american right-wing fundies
Period. I personally believe that neither will ever be provable.
Oh, evolution has been proven on numerous occassions both observationally (moths etc.) and experimentally (bacterial metabolis etc.). The only people who want to make out that evolution has not been proven are creationists because they're having some dfficulty getting proof for their alternative
Probably HeLa, which is one of the most agressive cell lines. One interesting aside on HeLa is that there is now a greater weight of HeLa cells around in the labs of the world than there ever was in Henrietta Lacks, the original source of the cells.
Nope. It's waaay more complex than that, including which photosynthetic cycle your plant uses (C4 or C3). Also above a certain C02 level plants open their stomata less and CO2 conxumption actually drops
First day I started as a postdoc I was shown to the office I was sharing with another postdoc. Walked into the room and found his wet socks pinned to the noticeboard - as he explained later, they'd got wet when he was cycling in and this was the best place to dry them.
Universities seem to foster strange behaviour. Once got sent around to see a lecturer in another department to negotiate use of his photometer microscope. My supervisor warned me before I went that he was 'a little ecentric', but even so I though I did rather well to keep a straight face when I found him in full boy scout uniform.
The idea isn't to necessarily make the trip much faster - though that will happen over time with conventional air travel
Hardly. We're going the other way of course, since Concorde was grounded the fastest flight time from London to NY has more than doubled.
Supersonic flight is quite different to subsonic, and we won't see that appearing again by the evolutionary increases in speed you imply.
Aye, but the reason why people are being so picky about the difference between sub-orbital and orbit is that it really is a big deal. The jump from a sub-orbital vehicle to orbit is at least as hard, and probaby realistically several times harder, than getting to space in the first place.
Which is not to decry Rutan who's done an amazing job and has made a great step towards achieving orbit, but he does still have a very long way to go. Still, the longest journey starts with a single step.
Yes. As someone who remembers the IT industry back in the mid 80s when IBM held a similar satanistic position as Microsoft does now I can never quite bring myself to join in with the extreme loathing of the company.
If IBM has 'won' in the 80s with OS/2 and PS/2 then we'd be in a much worse state than we are now. At least, somewhere under it all, Gates and Allen are/were to some degree geeks (at least compared to the IBM suits). Gates has been pretty philanthropic and Allen funds some interesting stuff - I cannot imagine IBM ever doing anything similar.
Or the equivalent weight.
Ha, we have a similar one when getting off the ferry at Ostend: You have to remember the name of six famous Belgians in the time it takes to drive through Belgium.
;-)
An Hercule Poirot doesn't count
They had a bit of a thing about names. After RAVERS I went to work on LOVERS (I kid you not) which was Local Vehicle Records - a sort of smaller version of RAVERS that ran on a PC.
BR was the strangest place to work, not least because half the staff seemed to be made up of train spotters. Mates of mine at the IT centre at Crewe had it particularly bad because the building was at the end of one of the platforms so those 'lucky' programmers with a window view could add to their tick list while 'working'. Indeed it was apparently something of a game among the more normal coders to shout 'there's a type 42x [or insert you engine type here] and watch the hordes run across to the windows tick books in hand.
Saddest collory to the game was that to pull this off you had to know something about engines yourself as shouting out a non-existant type would lead to a chorus of disputation and a long drawn out explanation of your error.
Myself, I servered my time for two years then went to work for a brewery.
Ah, freudian slip there. Before being a coder I trained as a biochemist and ATP is a rather common abbreviation in that field!
That's not really fair. The ATP fiasco was all British Rail's own.
During the 80's I worked as a programmer on RAVERS (Rail Vehicle Records) which was BR's system for logging its movable assets. Interestingly there was (if I remember correctly) four records for ATPs on the live system, despite the fact that only one or two prototypes had been officialy produced.
Hmm, ok, apparently a non-mainstream mix - worth a look then. Some interesting artists doing celtic fusion stuff these days you don't find easily. I'm also fond of (very) early music.
So, browse to Folk, quick scan shows no Irish, Scottish, Celtic etc but British. A click reveals five albums by George Formby.
Falls off chair.
Must be shome mistake shurly, so back up to Folk, notice British/Irish. Might be better, heads down.
More albums, but nothing really of any interest. Universily the sort of stuff you can pick up for a couple of quid on permanent sale. The occasional thing I might listen to, but very few and far between.
Off mainstream Magnatune are far better. http://magnatune.com/ Anyone who has the incomparable Belinda Sykes and Joglaresa on their list has to be worth a long look
It's extremely difficult to come up with any other chemisty that could support life that isn't carbon-based. Carbon's ability to create a near infinite variety of different compounds, and in particular complex macromolecular structures, isn't found with any other element or combination of elements. Silicon doesn't come anywhere close.
Water OTOH might be more open to negotiation. It's difficult to concieve of life without some form of polar solvent cycle, but ammonia might substitute. Slightly more out on a limb and a non-polar solvent might work - such as ethane. The moons of the gas giants might be the best place to look for this.
Oxygen of course can be largely dispensed with. Indeed life almost certainly evolved with only a trace of it.
The real problem is not doctors - the amount of antibiotics they prescribe pales into insignificance compared to the volume of 'preventative' antibiotics shovelled into animal feed by farmers.
I've been using Cloudmark since it was in beta - which must be two or three years now.
It's a stunnigly good system, I have no connection with the company, but I can't praise it highly enough. 98% is an underestimate so far as I'm concerned - as I sell software my main email address is publically available on the net and yet it's perfectly usuable - spamnet gets rid of all the gunk.
Yes, but the build quality of american housing is generally pretty awful. Most would never even get a look in with european planning requlations.
More blues-rock than rock-blues eh?
Have you never heard of alternative history? There's a long tradition of SF stories which rewrite the past to some greater or lesser extent.
One of my favourites, from the 60's, is Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium" which postulates an alliance between the British Empire, Imperial Germany and Sweden arising before the (aborted) First World War. Another more recent series worth a look is Mary Gentle's 'Ash, A Secret History' which is set in the middle ages and reads like an historical novel, except that it's not quite the middle ages we know.
Why of why is not Geothermal energy on the agenda?
Both Europe and America are within cable distance of Iceland (or hydrogen could be generated in situ), which has massive geothermal resources. And whilst investment on the scale required would be massive, compared to the gulf war and other such incidental expenses for producing oil in unstable regions it's really not that significant. True the Icelanders would get very rich, but who would we prefere to be dependent on - a stable 1000 year old democracy or the snake-pit of the middle east?
The USA even has pretty major geothermal resources within it's own borders (Yellowstone, Alaska etc) although these are more difficult to exploit being deeper than in Iceland.