Grow a sense of humor. Not everybody is a humorless fanatic like you and the rest of your fellow crazies. This is a situation where metamod actually worked for a change.
Oh, please.
Metamods made my comment flamebait when it was never intended as such, just because some monkey didn't like it. On the one hand, the mere thought of having people from other countries here to "monitor our elections" repulses me, but on the other hand, since the Democrats are the only ones making any noise about the "validity" of the coming elections, maybe it will shut them up.
Here's a comment that is meant to be flamebait (and yes, I know it's a generality...): anyone that is supporting Kerry simply because they detest/hate/despise Bush are the ones to watch because in that group are the ones that are the real threat to this (or any) election. They will stop at nothing to make sure Bush is voted out of office. If that bothers you, here's a newsflash for you: I don't care if it bothers you.
You already know the result of the payoff, DOJ rolling over and playing dead with respect to an antitrust suit against MS that they had already won
This is completely off of my original post. It does cause me to wonder, though: Is it just coincidence that the lawyers involved there (for the DOJ, if I remember right) are flapping their wings like dying pigeons for SCOX right now?
1) You can't observe him!! 2) You can't test him!! 3) You can't repeat him!!
That's a red herring. It has nothing to do with the conversation.
My point is that there are people that accept the THEORIES of evolution and the Big Bang as "fact", when they cannot be repeated.
Repeating tests are nice, in that they show that the subject reacts the same way when a certain set of steps are done, but it doesn't prove anything by itself.
REPEATABLE means that one should be able to start at a point and do things to DUPLICATE what is being observed. Creating the universe from nothing, for example, has never been duplicated, and is therefore not repeatable. Nobody has ever created one species out of another.
...is that the exact same group that mocks the "ultra religious" because their beliefs are the people that accept shows like this without any question whatsoever. It seems to me that these people, whom I will call "ultra scientific" for lack of a better term, have more "faith" than the folk they mock.
The whole basis of Science depends on three things:
It must be observable
It must be testable
It must be repeatable
The Big Bang and Evolutionist theories fails those three points, and therefore aren't even facts from a scientific standpoint.
Consider, too, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and more holes begin to pop up in the fabric.
I'm interested to see what's going to happen in this election, but not in the same way that some may think.
I'm worried that illegal immigrants will be voting because of the efforts of "fringe Democrats". (By "fringe", I mean people who have such a severe hatred for President Bush because of his successful run in 2000 that they will stop at nothing to make sure that anyone else wins in 2004. These are the same people that have questioned the right of Nader to be on the ballot in several states, in the hope that the misplaced Nader-ites will vote for Kerry.)
I'm worried that some people would vote more than once, such as those that might be registered in more than one place because of loopholes in the system.
I hope that the OSCE is able to put those worries to rest.
I'm not a big fan of public polls, but looking at the numbers as they stand today, President Bush looks like he'll enjoy a decisive victory, unless he trips on his own feet in the coming weeks. We'll see how the numbers play out after the debates.
If President Bush DOES win decisively (and it's a distinct possibility, no matter what the Democrats say), it'll be interesting to see what the Whine du Jour will be for the next four years. (The current favorites are "Let's not elect him this time, either" and "Defeat President-Select Bush". Heh. Sore losers. That would be like me complaining that Clinton shouldn't have one his first term, because the MAJORITY didn't want him; they just couldn't decide between Bush-the-Elder and Perot. Of course, I know that Clinton won fairly, as the system dictates, so I didn't whine. I didn't like it, but I didn't whine.)
The best we'll get will be a US-friendly dictatorship with a mild respect for human rights and perhaps some democracy on a local level.
Assuming you are correct about the direction of the government in Iraq (which I do not agree with, but for the sake of argument, let's), it beats a dictator who has absolutely no respect (dare I say 'utter contempt'? Perhaps...) for the lives of his people.
You prefer to appoint all officials down to the lowest level.
In the case of the interrim government, it had to be done, so that (hopefully) people would be put in place that wouldn't try to slow the process of bringing in a new, permanent government into place. Not doing so would be like catching a bank robber, convicting him, and punishing him by giving him the combinations to all the safes of the local banks. It would defeat the purpose.
Stop pretending the future of Iraq will be brilliant. It will not be.
I never said the future of Iraq would be brilliant. Any success they achieve will be earned. Only Aristocracy can expect success to be handed to them. Everyone else has to fight for it in one way or another. It is a long road that lies ahead of the Iraqi people. The future of the Iraqi people is in their hands. I hope they are up to the task.
I hope the EU gets strong enough diplomatically and militarily to be an equal player with the USA, than you won't here any "whining" from us.
When (if!) the EU gets strong enough militarily to act as a single unit, the world will be a much different place, with different priorities.
It remains to be seen if the EU will act on their beliefs. France, for example, through all the bellyaching that they did about the United States and Britain going into Iraq more than a year ago, didn't do anything about it, even though they are a member of the UN Security Council. I would have thought that they would have at LEAST tried to put up a resolution condemning the invasion. There was nothing. (If there was, I didn't see it on the UN website.) The closest thing to an "action" that I have seen so far is the recent proclamation by Khofi Annon that it was illegal. (Why did it take him more than a year to come to that conclusion? Politics. He's hoping Kerry will win, too. He thinks that such declarations will help.)
As far as the UN goes, I'm not impressed with all the talk, when they're not willing to back anything up. The UN managed an end (of sorts) to the first Gulf War back in the 1990s. There were terms that Iraq's government needed to abide by. These terms were being enforced. Saddam was playing games with the UN weapons inspectors, until they got fed up and stopped trying. Saddam was warned by the United Nations that if they didn't comply, there would be "dire consequences". What did the UN have in mind when they composed and unanimously accepted this resolution, if not a forced change of regime? Lashing with a wet noodle? This is the sort of stuff that I am tired of seeing. Either the UN has to walk the walk or shut up and get out of the way of those that will.
The U.S. nominated itself world Cop in the post-U.S.S.R.
The United States has been playing World Cop for a long time.
After the fiasco in Somalia (which, as I recall, was a multi-nation event with US forces under the control of other nations, thank you Bill Clinton), I was quite content to tell the UN to stuff it, and let the United States keep to itself. I would rather we keep to ourselves and let the world deal with its own issues, but treaties and governments don't allow for it.
Why should ANY nation allow foreign control of their forces? It's a violation of a nation's soverignty, and it should not be tolerated. Working together is one thing. Being under the command of another country (or worse, the United Nations) is quite another.
The world wants to help other nations, but they don't want to put their money (or personnel) where their mouth is. The United States does what they say they will, and everyone else in the world freaks out? Please.
Cheney's been saying the U.S. should topple governments in the middle east to protect U.S. economic interests since the 70s.
Cheney isn't the Commander-in-Chief, President Bush is. Cheney can make all the recommendations he wants, but ultimately, it's President Bush that has to take credit or blame for what he does. Also, the President cannot take any military action without the consent of Congress.
The fact that most Americans don't know anything about the outside world does not mean that the outside world does not know a thing or two about America.
Having been to several countries around Europe and Northern Africa, I can honestly say that I (for one) don't care what the rest of the world thinks about my country's President. When I get to have a say in their leadership, then I'll care what they think about mine.
Some of these countries pulling a "holier than thou" attitude against the United States have a bunch of their own problems, just like we in the US have our own. They shouldn't be ready to throw stones until they're able to show that they know what they are talking about when they proclaim that they have a better idea than anyone else does. (...and YES, I am including the US. The difference is that the US is at least willing to do more in the world than sit back in their easy chair, dictating crap to the world. The world asked the US to play World Cop. Why are they whining when the US does what it's been asked? Because the US doesn't take dictation from the European countries.)
This sort of thing is exactly why I (generally) don't trust polls.
I learned in school that poll results can be influenced by several factors, including (but not limited to:
Tone of voice, if the question and/or choices are read to the participant (pollee, if you will).
Phrasing of the question and/or choices.
Number of people asked. I forget the way it's figured, but one has to ask a certain number of people at a minimum, to make a poll statistically accurate.
Bias of those asked. As you pointed out, one is going to get a decisive result in a particular direction, if the only people asked are those biased to support the desired outcome of the poll.
The honesty of the person answering the question(s).
I've seen a few polls that, based on the question and the way the choices were phrased, seemed biased, and the group asking the question in one particular "exit poll" (a local ABC affiliate, if I remember correctly) seemed to be fishing for a particular result. I didn't like it at all, and promptly put the questionaire down.
And this will teach more than any college course or class in existence.
You would have loved my college class...
Back when I was in college (a local two-year technical college, 1993), my dad sent me a box of 3.5" floppies. The floppies had whichever version of slackware had Linux kernel 0.99 pl10.
I got permission to put it on a system to play with. After playing the Floppy Shuffle for a while, I was done. I was Happy. It worked.
I came back the next day, sat down in front of the system I installed it on, and Windows 3.1 booted up! Someone in a night class had re-installed the OS. I almost freaked. My professor told me to relax, and re-install Linux. "This is a learning institution. That's going to happen a lot. Get over it," he said. I re-installed Linux several times over the next few weeks, and I learned a lot about how to get a system up from nothing to something that is usable, in a decent amount of time.
When I had a PC of my own at home (I had an Apple IIgs at the time, so I was excited to get the PC for this), I was able to install Linux on that, and even get it onto the Internet. (Slurp is a wonderful thing...)
When I finished school and went to work, I was the only one in the QA lab that knew unix at all, and it wasn't long before I was the one that took care of the Sun boxen (SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 5.x). MIS knew that if they got called up for help with a unix box, the problem was not something that could have been resolved quickly.
I'd be surprised if they got EITHER senator from Maine. I was raised there, and I remember when they ran for Senate. (I didn't vote for either one of them.) Collins ran on a bunch of promises that she had no intention of keeping. She claimed at the time to have conservative leanings, but when she got to Washington, she showed her true colors. Snowe had her own issues to deal with.
It has been my personal observation that they both have slightly-left-of-center leanings. Many times, I have seen them take the Democratic side over the Republican side of the isle, even though both are supposed to be GOP members. I often wonder why they don't just quit pretending, and just shift party affiliation, just to get it over with.
Open the voting polls nationwide at the same time, and close them at the same time. I would suggest opening polls at 7:00am Eastern and closing them at 9:00pm PST (or 8:00pm, whatever the western-most US time zone is).
It would also be good to make it illegal for the press to "declare" a winner or project winners while the polls are open. The press has this nasty habit of affecting the voter turnout by declaring a winner one way or the other, then proving themselves to be utterly wrong (cf: Florida, 2000), often more than once. This would allow people to vote if they want, how they want. After the polls close, the press can talk all they want, and project all they want (even based on the returns, if that's what they want to do), and it won't affect the actual vote. Waiting for the East Coast to close, then making projections hurts the folk who live in the more-western time zones because people East talk with those on the West, share information that is being broadcast, and next thing you know, it's all over the place.
There are probably a few other things that should be done, but those right there would be a great start.
Where I gre up, I was taught all this, and I can point out the location of about 75% of the countries of the world, and (given a globe or map) find the rest in short order. Of the countries I can't find immediately, I can usually tell you what continent they are on.
I grew up in the only state of the Continental United States to border only one other. My home state borders two Canadian provinces, and we could take a ferry to a third.
Where I grew up, if you didn't know where OOB was, you were "from away".;)
I am irritated when people ask me, "What's up?"... After a while, I started giving them this annoying response:
"Up" is a direction going away from a previously agreed-upon point in space, such as the center of the earth.
That took care of that, and it satisfied even those that wanted to argue that "up" for me is almost exactly opposite of the direction that Australians would indicate.
I'll grant that the "vast majority" bit is reaching, but are you denying the still strong voice of the "KJV only" crowd in American Christianity? When non-KJV English translations started to appear, was there no uproar?
There was, and there still is, in some circles. Many (most?) of the Evangelical churches have adopted the modern English bibles, but there are a fair number of other churches that keep to the KJV for a variety of reasons.
... the idea that biblical figures really did speak in 1500s English has more currency with American Christians than you might think.
I'm a supporter of the KJV-only type, but not for reasons that you might think.
Aside from the fact that some words used 400 years ago have fallen into disuse, I think the language itself is more clear than modern English. Through the old English, it is very easy to tell, for example, whether something is being addressed to a simgle person or to a group (and sometimes the honor being given to someone) by the pronoun used.
Modern English, by contrast, has become "polite", in that the second-person singular has been replaced completely by the "formal" or second-person plural. (We don't have "thee" or "thou" and "you" anymore; we just have "you".)
It is a fact that very few English-only speakers seem to pick up on, until they try to learn another language. (French is the only language I know of that actually has a verb for "the use of 'tu'": tutoyer... One would find out about that quickly if one used the second-person singular at the wrong time...)
Besides all that, I figure that as far as English Bibles go, the KJV is the best. Armed with a good dictionary and a concordance, one shouldn't have any problems. (If the language you are most fluent in is not English, then this obviously shouldn't apply to you....)
As I recall, M$ made a big deal about being among the first to remove the Twin Towers from their flight simulator after 9/11.
If they can be that sensitive about the feelings of Americans (quick buck), they should be just as sensitive of the political and social feelings of other nations (quick buck).
M$ wouldn't DREAM of pushing a game with Nazis in it in Germany, would they? Of course not. The same rules apply here.
At one of my past jobs, there were three women in a lab of thirty (we did QA work on network equipment for a company that has since been split into four entities).
Company policy was that when our PCs had problems, we had to call MIS. Bear in mind that our grunt work was done by twenty or so PCs. Multiply that by 30 people, and you can get an idea of the number of systems we had. More than 80% of the time, if one of the women called MIS to report a problem, response-time was in the order of business DAYS, if at all. Response time if the men called? Usually within a business day.
It didn't take long for these women to ask one of the men to call MIS to report the problem, just so they could get their systems up and running again in a reasonable time.
The title of this message is clear: the attitude of the male members of the IT industry needs to be more tolerant of the fact that there are women out there that are capable of the work, and would be willing to do it, if we (the men) would only take them seriously, and give them the credit they deserve for their work.
Bring your voter registration card, and a sledgehammer for Diebold.
(1) The district in which I vote does not require any sort of identification from me to prove I am who I say that I am. In this day and age (and expecially considering the volitility of the coming election!), I find this disturbing.
(2) There has always been at least one police officer at the voting place where I vote. Taking a sledgehammer to the machine, regardless of one's intention, would get you arrested before you got near the machine.
(3) The machine that my district uses (come to think of it, the only machine I remember seeing, through 19 years of voting, through two states) tallies votes from a ballot card that is about 11 inches wide (give or take), and about the feel of a manilla folder. The voter makes a mark on the ballot such that an arrow is completed, indicating the candidate chosen. I cannot think of how this could be messed up-- no hanging chads! It's difficult to confuse, as it is clear which arrow points to which candidate. It has the advantage of providing a method of re-counting, and if one makes a mistake marking the ballot, I presume that one could ask for a replacement, and destroying the ballot-in-error.
Any voting system that invites error (poking holes through paper, ballots with candidates listed too close together, etc) must, of necessity, be disposed of. A vote must be clear, without room for doubt.
I wanted to let this drop because it's like arguing with the religous faithful,
My... What an incredible coincidence!
The reason is because it is impossible to arrive at those opinions unless you are trying to hone the rhetoric to suit the conservative agenda. A person who had independently gathered their knowledge would not display such a one sided train of thought that, somehow echos those that you profess not to know.
That's plain rubbish. I am automatically cynical of anything that proclaims extreme information, and I look for the truth in what is said by either side. To ME, that means that Bush, though he is not (nor has ever been) my first choice for President, is doing a better job than the alternative. UNFORTUNATELY, the "alternative" automatically means whoever the Democratic Party offers into the fray for reasons that I will gladly explain off of Slashdot. Suffice it to say that I believe our voting system to be broken, when any party that is not either Democratic or Republican honestly does not stand a snowball's chance of having its presidential candidate take the plurality.
One thing you will not, in good conscience, be able to call me is one sided. I resent it
Interesting. I feel the same way, for largely the same reasons.
You have no idea of the facts, you have no idea of the context, and you have no idea of that which is at stake yet you belittle those that DO care.
You know, I often feel the same way about people who feel the need to shout my opinions down with the Democratic Party's rhetoric.
Typical holier than thou conservative. Congrats, all those that you profess not to know would be proud.
Blah, blah... I've never professed to know everything. I reserve that mentality for those who care to preach Moore's Gospel. I'm open to be swayed, but not by someone waving their attitude in my face, telling me that everything I think is only mimicry.
If you honestly think that it is not possible for someone to independently arrive at a conservative point of view, then I really feel sorry for you. I've always thought that a wonderful facet of my country is that anyone can think what they want. With people like you around, I can see that I was gravely mistaken.
If you had done your homework, you'd know who Bill O'reilly is,
This is a clear "damned if you do, damned if you don't" case-- I had no idea who Bill O'Reilly was before Moore's movie was released, and every single Moore fan attributed any thought against it as being a copy of O'Reilly's opinion. I don't watch a lot of TV (in fact, when the TV is on, it's usually for the benefit of my kids), and I know where Fox stands on things. If I had said that I follow O'Reilly's rants, then I would be accused of parroting him, simply because of my beliefs. Nothing could be furthur from the truth.
you don't even know who they are - hypocrite.
Heh. I'm a hypocrite because I managed to form an opinion without listening to the people YOU CLAIMED that I got it from? You've got issues.
I follow the news well enough from at least a dozen news sites (few of which are American), from radio, and a couple newspapers. The only way to top that and still go through a "normal" life (like work and sleep), I think, is to actually be present when the news is being made.
You don't need to resort to name calling over whether or not I know the intimate details of people that you think everyone should know about.
you'd know what I said was true, and you'd know that everything you said was a regurgitation of the GOP line and not the product of research or critical thinking. Like a true Rush fan - "Ditto, I don't know how to think for myself, so whatever you said Rush, I agree with." That is pure lazy mindedness.
Spoken like a true jackass. You assume you're always right. You assume that I parrot Limbaugh. I haven't bothered to listen to him since around 1994, partly because I'm working when he's on, partly because I can't find a radio station that carries his program. Your crack about GOP lines is about as logically sound as anyone automatically discounting your comments because they reek of the Democratic Party's platform. So what? Political party shouldn't have anything to do with it. Why do you feel the need to assume that someone cannot arrive at opinions that happen to be "to the right", without playing sponge to talking heads?
When you know exactly where I get my information (and you don't), then we'll talk about that. In the mean time, let me assure you that you are COMPLETELY WRONG.
1. moveon.org is NOT a far left-wing organization - unless you listen to bill O'reilly. Visit their website, do a logic test. Now do the same at gop.org. logical fallacy after logical fallicy to explain the accusations of the "coalition of the wild-eyed"
Well, for STARTERS, I don't know who Bill O'Reilly is, aside from the fact that people who believe every word of Michael Moore and Al Gore hate his guts, and seem to love bringing his name up whenever someone makes a point that that they don't like.
SECOND, -I- think they are Left Wing because (to ME, at least) Al Gore IS, and MoveOn.org seems to hang on every syllable he utters.
2. The association between Bush and Hitler by moveon.org was made by a private citizen in media presented as an entry into a contest - not moveon.org. The contestent didn't win, and kerry nor moveon.org never endorsed the ad. They also denouced the submitted ad.
I find it interesting that MoveOn.org feels so strongly about "denouncing" this crap that they left it on their site. If they REALLY disagreed with this point of view, they should remove it. If they didn't want to be accused of wrong-doing, they could just say "Yeah. It was here, we disagreed with it, so we removed it.", but they DIDN'T. Failure to remove it implies agreement. They run their website, not anyone else.
3. Bush/Cheney did however endorse and release an ad that included the Hitler picture that was submitted in moveon.org ad - again, perpetuating the half-truths of the Bill O'Reilly's of the world.
Is it wrong to point out opinions that are expressed and/or implied by sites that permit such rubbish to stay on their pages? I don't think so.
Fox is NOT "Fair and Balanced", diversify your news gathering instead of repeating the O'Reilly propaganda.
I'm going to say this once, so pay close attention: I don't watch Fox, I don't know who O'Reilly is (except for the fine books by ORA, but they are unrelated to this subject as far as I can tell), so lay off the accusations. If you can't handle the fact that there are people in the world that can actually come up with opinions ON THEIR OWN without parroting a talking head, that's too bad for you. Cope.
Seriously, be a conservative all you want - good for you - just do you research, learn both sides.
Yeah... at least -I- see two sides to everything, and I do my homework, thank you very much. People like you seem to think everything is one-sided, or at least in shades of grey. Practice what you preach.
Slashdot Mirror
Grow a sense of humor. Not everybody is a humorless fanatic like you and the rest of your fellow crazies. This is a situation where metamod actually worked for a change.
Oh, please.
Metamods made my comment flamebait when it was never intended as such, just because some monkey didn't like it. On the one hand, the mere thought of having people from other countries here to "monitor our elections" repulses me, but on the other hand, since the Democrats are the only ones making any noise about the "validity" of the coming elections, maybe it will shut them up.
Here's a comment that is meant to be flamebait (and yes, I know it's a generality...): anyone that is supporting Kerry simply because they detest/hate/despise Bush are the ones to watch because in that group are the ones that are the real threat to this (or any) election. They will stop at nothing to make sure Bush is voted out of office. If that bothers you, here's a newsflash for you: I don't care if it bothers you.
You already know the result of the payoff, DOJ rolling over and playing dead with respect to an antitrust suit against MS that they had already won
This is completely off of my original post. It does cause me to wonder, though: Is it just coincidence that the lawyers involved there (for the DOJ, if I remember right) are flapping their wings like dying pigeons for SCOX right now?
1) You can't observe him!!
2) You can't test him!!
3) You can't repeat him!!
That's a red herring. It has nothing to do with the conversation.
My point is that there are people that accept the THEORIES of evolution and the Big Bang as "fact", when they cannot be repeated.
Repeating tests are nice, in that they show that the subject reacts the same way when a certain set of steps are done, but it doesn't prove anything by itself.
REPEATABLE means that one should be able to start at a point and do things to DUPLICATE what is being observed. Creating the universe from nothing, for example, has never been duplicated, and is therefore not repeatable. Nobody has ever created one species out of another.
The whole basis of Science depends on three things:
The Big Bang and Evolutionist theories fails those three points, and therefore aren't even facts from a scientific standpoint.
Consider, too, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and more holes begin to pop up in the fabric.
Wow, how much Shawn Hannity do you listen to?
Uhh.. I don't know who that is.
I'm interested to see what's going to happen in this election, but not in the same way that some may think.
I'm worried that illegal immigrants will be voting because of the efforts of "fringe Democrats". (By "fringe", I mean people who have such a severe hatred for President Bush because of his successful run in 2000 that they will stop at nothing to make sure that anyone else wins in 2004. These are the same people that have questioned the right of Nader to be on the ballot in several states, in the hope that the misplaced Nader-ites will vote for Kerry.)
I'm worried that some people would vote more than once, such as those that might be registered in more than one place because of loopholes in the system.
I hope that the OSCE is able to put those worries to rest.
I'm not a big fan of public polls, but looking at the numbers as they stand today, President Bush looks like he'll enjoy a decisive victory, unless he trips on his own feet in the coming weeks. We'll see how the numbers play out after the debates.
If President Bush DOES win decisively (and it's a distinct possibility, no matter what the Democrats say), it'll be interesting to see what the Whine du Jour will be for the next four years. (The current favorites are "Let's not elect him this time, either" and "Defeat President-Select Bush". Heh. Sore losers. That would be like me complaining that Clinton shouldn't have one his first term, because the MAJORITY didn't want him; they just couldn't decide between Bush-the-Elder and Perot. Of course, I know that Clinton won fairly, as the system dictates, so I didn't whine. I didn't like it, but I didn't whine.)
Assuming you are correct about the direction of the government in Iraq (which I do not agree with, but for the sake of argument, let's), it beats a dictator who has absolutely no respect (dare I say 'utter contempt'? Perhaps...) for the lives of his people.
In the case of the interrim government, it had to be done, so that (hopefully) people would be put in place that wouldn't try to slow the process of bringing in a new, permanent government into place. Not doing so would be like catching a bank robber, convicting him, and punishing him by giving him the combinations to all the safes of the local banks. It would defeat the purpose.
I never said the future of Iraq would be brilliant. Any success they achieve will be earned. Only Aristocracy can expect success to be handed to them. Everyone else has to fight for it in one way or another. It is a long road that lies ahead of the Iraqi people. The future of the Iraqi people is in their hands. I hope they are up to the task.
As far as the UN goes, I'm not impressed with all the talk, when they're not willing to back anything up. The UN managed an end (of sorts) to the first Gulf War back in the 1990s. There were terms that Iraq's government needed to abide by. These terms were being enforced. Saddam was playing games with the UN weapons inspectors, until they got fed up and stopped trying. Saddam was warned by the United Nations that if they didn't comply, there would be "dire consequences". What did the UN have in mind when they composed and unanimously accepted this resolution, if not a forced change of regime? Lashing with a wet noodle? This is the sort of stuff that I am tired of seeing. Either the UN has to walk the walk or shut up and get out of the way of those that will.
The United States has been playing World Cop for a long time.
After the fiasco in Somalia (which, as I recall, was a multi-nation event with US forces under the control of other nations, thank you Bill Clinton), I was quite content to tell the UN to stuff it, and let the United States keep to itself. I would rather we keep to ourselves and let the world deal with its own issues, but treaties and governments don't allow for it.
Why should ANY nation allow foreign control of their forces? It's a violation of a nation's soverignty, and it should not be tolerated. Working together is one thing. Being under the command of another country (or worse, the United Nations) is quite another.
The world wants to help other nations, but they don't want to put their money (or personnel) where their mouth is. The United States does what they say they will, and everyone else in the world freaks out? Please.
Cheney isn't the Commander-in-Chief, President Bush is. Cheney can make all the recommendations he wants, but ultimately, it's President Bush that has to take credit or blame for what he does. Also, the President cannot take any military action without the consent of Congress.
Some of these countries pulling a "holier than thou" attitude against the United States have a bunch of their own problems, just like we in the US have our own. They shouldn't be ready to throw stones until they're able to show that they know what they are talking about when they proclaim that they have a better idea than anyone else does. (...and YES, I am including the US. The difference is that the US is at least willing to do more in the world than sit back in their easy chair, dictating crap to the world. The world asked the US to play World Cop. Why are they whining when the US does what it's been asked? Because the US doesn't take dictation from the European countries.)
- Tone of voice, if the question and/or choices are read to the participant (pollee, if you will).
- Phrasing of the question and/or choices.
- Number of people asked. I forget the way it's figured, but one has to ask a certain number of people at a minimum, to make a poll statistically accurate.
- Bias of those asked. As you pointed out, one is going to get a decisive result in a particular direction, if the only people asked are those biased to support the desired outcome of the poll.
- The honesty of the person answering the question(s).
I've seen a few polls that, based on the question and the way the choices were phrased, seemed biased, and the group asking the question in one particular "exit poll" (a local ABC affiliate, if I remember correctly) seemed to be fishing for a particular result. I didn't like it at all, and promptly put the questionaire down.You would have loved my college class...
Back when I was in college (a local two-year technical college, 1993), my dad sent me a box of 3.5" floppies. The floppies had whichever version of slackware had Linux kernel 0.99 pl10.
I got permission to put it on a system to play with. After playing the Floppy Shuffle for a while, I was done. I was Happy. It worked.
I came back the next day, sat down in front of the system I installed it on, and Windows 3.1 booted up! Someone in a night class had re-installed the OS. I almost freaked. My professor told me to relax, and re-install Linux. "This is a learning institution. That's going to happen a lot. Get over it," he said. I re-installed Linux several times over the next few weeks, and I learned a lot about how to get a system up from nothing to something that is usable, in a decent amount of time.
When I had a PC of my own at home (I had an Apple IIgs at the time, so I was excited to get the PC for this), I was able to install Linux on that, and even get it onto the Internet. (Slurp is a wonderful thing...)
When I finished school and went to work, I was the only one in the QA lab that knew unix at all, and it wasn't long before I was the one that took care of the Sun boxen (SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 5.x). MIS knew that if they got called up for help with a unix box, the problem was not something that could have been resolved quickly.
I'd be surprised if they got EITHER senator from Maine. I was raised there, and I remember when they ran for Senate. (I didn't vote for either one of them.) Collins ran on a bunch of promises that she had no intention of keeping. She claimed at the time to have conservative leanings, but when she got to Washington, she showed her true colors. Snowe had her own issues to deal with.
It has been my personal observation that they both have slightly-left-of-center leanings. Many times, I have seen them take the Democratic side over the Republican side of the isle, even though both are supposed to be GOP members. I often wonder why they don't just quit pretending, and just shift party affiliation, just to get it over with.
....but it will never see the light of day:
Open the voting polls nationwide at the same time, and close them at the same time. I would suggest opening polls at 7:00am Eastern and closing them at 9:00pm PST (or 8:00pm, whatever the western-most US time zone is).
It would also be good to make it illegal for the press to "declare" a winner or project winners while the polls are open. The press has this nasty habit of affecting the voter turnout by declaring a winner one way or the other, then proving themselves to be utterly wrong (cf: Florida, 2000), often more than once. This would allow people to vote if they want, how they want. After the polls close, the press can talk all they want, and project all they want (even based on the returns, if that's what they want to do), and it won't affect the actual vote. Waiting for the East Coast to close, then making projections hurts the folk who live in the more-western time zones because people East talk with those on the West, share information that is being broadcast, and next thing you know, it's all over the place.
There are probably a few other things that should be done, but those right there would be a great start.
Heh. I think it's just a sign of the times.
;)
Where I gre up, I was taught all this, and I can point out the location of about 75% of the countries of the world, and (given a globe or map) find the rest in short order. Of the countries I can't find immediately, I can usually tell you what continent they are on.
I grew up in the only state of the Continental United States to border only one other. My home state borders two Canadian provinces, and we could take a ferry to a third.
Where I grew up, if you didn't know where OOB was, you were "from away".
... Americans not knowing how to spell "Canada."
;)
Yeah: C-eh-N-eh-D-eh.
The bigger question should be:
"Is it pronounced 'CAN-a-da' or 'ca-NAY-da'?"
That took care of that, and it satisfied even those that wanted to argue that "up" for me is almost exactly opposite of the direction that Australians would indicate.
There was, and there still is, in some circles. Many (most?) of the Evangelical churches have adopted the modern English bibles, but there are a fair number of other churches that keep to the KJV for a variety of reasons.
I'm a supporter of the KJV-only type, but not for reasons that you might think.
Aside from the fact that some words used 400 years ago have fallen into disuse, I think the language itself is more clear than modern English. Through the old English, it is very easy to tell, for example, whether something is being addressed to a simgle person or to a group (and sometimes the honor being given to someone) by the pronoun used.
Modern English, by contrast, has become "polite", in that the second-person singular has been replaced completely by the "formal" or second-person plural. (We don't have "thee" or "thou" and "you" anymore; we just have "you".)
It is a fact that very few English-only speakers seem to pick up on, until they try to learn another language. (French is the only language I know of that actually has a verb for "the use of 'tu'": tutoyer... One would find out about that quickly if one used the second-person singular at the wrong time...)
Besides all that, I figure that as far as English Bibles go, the KJV is the best. Armed with a good dictionary and a concordance, one shouldn't have any problems. (If the language you are most fluent in is not English, then this obviously shouldn't apply to you....)
Depends on where you are.
Where I grew up (southern Maine), the assumption was French. (French was required from grade 6 to grade 8 where I lived at the time.)
As I recall, M$ made a big deal about being among the first to remove the Twin Towers from their flight simulator after 9/11.
If they can be that sensitive about the feelings of Americans (quick buck), they should be just as sensitive of the political and social feelings of other nations (quick buck).
M$ wouldn't DREAM of pushing a game with Nazis in it in Germany, would they? Of course not. The same rules apply here.
At one of my past jobs, there were three women in a lab of thirty (we did QA work on network equipment for a company that has since been split into four entities).
Company policy was that when our PCs had problems, we had to call MIS. Bear in mind that our grunt work was done by twenty or so PCs. Multiply that by 30 people, and you can get an idea of the number of systems we had. More than 80% of the time, if one of the women called MIS to report a problem, response-time was in the order of business DAYS, if at all. Response time if the men called? Usually within a business day.
It didn't take long for these women to ask one of the men to call MIS to report the problem, just so they could get their systems up and running again in a reasonable time.
The title of this message is clear: the attitude of the male members of the IT industry needs to be more tolerant of the fact that there are women out there that are capable of the work, and would be willing to do it, if we (the men) would only take them seriously, and give them the credit they deserve for their work.
(1) The district in which I vote does not require any sort of identification from me to prove I am who I say that I am. In this day and age (and expecially considering the volitility of the coming election!), I find this disturbing.
(2) There has always been at least one police officer at the voting place where I vote. Taking a sledgehammer to the machine, regardless of one's intention, would get you arrested before you got near the machine.
(3) The machine that my district uses (come to think of it, the only machine I remember seeing, through 19 years of voting, through two states) tallies votes from a ballot card that is about 11 inches wide (give or take), and about the feel of a manilla folder. The voter makes a mark on the ballot such that an arrow is completed, indicating the candidate chosen. I cannot think of how this could be messed up-- no hanging chads! It's difficult to confuse, as it is clear which arrow points to which candidate. It has the advantage of providing a method of re-counting, and if one makes a mistake marking the ballot, I presume that one could ask for a replacement, and destroying the ballot-in-error.
Any voting system that invites error (poking holes through paper, ballots with candidates listed too close together, etc) must, of necessity, be disposed of. A vote must be clear, without room for doubt.
My... What an incredible coincidence!
That's plain rubbish. I am automatically cynical of anything that proclaims extreme information, and I look for the truth in what is said by either side. To ME, that means that Bush, though he is not (nor has ever been) my first choice for President, is doing a better job than the alternative. UNFORTUNATELY, the "alternative" automatically means whoever the Democratic Party offers into the fray for reasons that I will gladly explain off of Slashdot. Suffice it to say that I believe our voting system to be broken, when any party that is not either Democratic or Republican honestly does not stand a snowball's chance of having its presidential candidate take the plurality.
Interesting. I feel the same way, for largely the same reasons.
You know, I often feel the same way about people who feel the need to shout my opinions down with the Democratic Party's rhetoric.
Blah, blah... I've never professed to know everything. I reserve that mentality for those who care to preach Moore's Gospel. I'm open to be swayed, but not by someone waving their attitude in my face, telling me that everything I think is only mimicry.
If you honestly think that it is not possible for someone to independently arrive at a conservative point of view, then I really feel sorry for you. I've always thought that a wonderful facet of my country is that anyone can think what they want. With people like you around, I can see that I was gravely mistaken.
This is a clear "damned if you do, damned if you don't" case-- I had no idea who Bill O'Reilly was before Moore's movie was released, and every single Moore fan attributed any thought against it as being a copy of O'Reilly's opinion. I don't watch a lot of TV (in fact, when the TV is on, it's usually for the benefit of my kids), and I know where Fox stands on things. If I had said that I follow O'Reilly's rants, then I would be accused of parroting him, simply because of my beliefs. Nothing could be furthur from the truth.
Heh. I'm a hypocrite because I managed to form an opinion without listening to the people YOU CLAIMED that I got it from? You've got issues.
I follow the news well enough from at least a dozen news sites (few of which are American), from radio, and a couple newspapers. The only way to top that and still go through a "normal" life (like work and sleep), I think, is to actually be present when the news is being made.
You don't need to resort to name calling over whether or not I know the intimate details of people that you think everyone should know about.
Spoken like a true jackass. You assume you're always right. You assume that I parrot Limbaugh. I haven't bothered to listen to him since around 1994, partly because I'm working when he's on, partly because I can't find a radio station that carries his program. Your crack about GOP lines is about as logically sound as anyone automatically discounting your comments because they reek of the Democratic Party's platform. So what? Political party shouldn't have anything to do with it. Why do you feel the need to assume that someone cannot arrive at opinions that happen to be "to the right", without playing sponge to talking heads?
When you know exactly where I get my information (and you don't), then we'll talk about that. In the mean time, let me assure you that you are COMPLETELY WRONG.
Well, for STARTERS, I don't know who Bill O'Reilly is, aside from the fact that people who believe every word of Michael Moore and Al Gore hate his guts, and seem to love bringing his name up whenever someone makes a point that that they don't like.
SECOND, -I- think they are Left Wing because (to ME, at least) Al Gore IS, and MoveOn.org seems to hang on every syllable he utters.
I find it interesting that MoveOn.org feels so strongly about "denouncing" this crap that they left it on their site. If they REALLY disagreed with this point of view, they should remove it. If they didn't want to be accused of wrong-doing, they could just say "Yeah. It was here, we disagreed with it, so we removed it.", but they DIDN'T. Failure to remove it implies agreement. They run their website, not anyone else.
Is it wrong to point out opinions that are expressed and/or implied by sites that permit such rubbish to stay on their pages? I don't think so.
I'm going to say this once, so pay close attention: I don't watch Fox, I don't know who O'Reilly is (except for the fine books by ORA, but they are unrelated to this subject as far as I can tell), so lay off the accusations. If you can't handle the fact that there are people in the world that can actually come up with opinions ON THEIR OWN without parroting a talking head, that's too bad for you. Cope.
Yeah... at least -I- see two sides to everything, and I do my homework, thank you very much. People like you seem to think everything is one-sided, or at least in shades of grey. Practice what you preach.
Yeah... Believe it or not, I saw it coming.