Even if getting the job done means using Visio 'cos it's the best tool there is?
That's hypothetical since Visio isn't "the best tool". Even if it were, who cares? Do you drive a Ferrari "cos it's the best car there is"? Do you eat caviar every day "cos it's the best food there is"?
Would you be prepared to do that?
I do use Windows software when it is necessary to get the job done. Fortunately, that's getting increasingly rare. I haven't booted into Windows in months, in part because all my collaboration with Windows users happens through web apps these days. Which was my point.
It's not hard to ensure authenticity of digital images: cameras can digitally sign the images they create, and the integrity of the camera data path itself can also be protected. If the images aren't signed, then you can't prove they're real.
Digital SLRs, webcams, surveillance cams, cell phones, and other digital cameras should all have the option of producing signed (and geo-tagged) images.
If the media just reported some madmen flew airlines into WTC, called it a tragedy and got over it, would we be in this mess right now?
If the media had done that, they would have been lying. These terrorists were properly called Muslim terrorists because that's how they identified themselves. And we found that that label is justified: their religious texts can be interpreted to justify their actions, they are connected to large Muslim social movements, and they were funded by large Muslim organizations.
The "mess" we're in is because Bush handled the situation badly. But Bush would have found a way to funnel money to his buddies and cause the US to lose respect internationally no matter what. The problem isn't what the media reported on Iraq, the problem is that we elected a lousy president.
There are plenty of other terrorists around that are political and even environmental: Timothy McVey, Ted Kazinsky, and the two DC snipers come easily to mind.
None of those acted in the name of a religion.
No, they're calling it "Islamic" because that's a fear-inducing hot-word in an election
As well it should be. The link between Islam and terrorism, and the link between Islam and anti-democratic movements, is justified. In contrast to Islam, Christian churches, Jews, Buddhists, etc. are not engaged in large scale anti-democratic or anti-US activities.
No, all I'm saying is that if you work in a company which has a particular IT policy to use certain tools then it works best if you stick to those tools.
That is irrelevant; if you're working in such a company, the issue doesn't come up because people wouldn't have a choice between Windows and Linux in the first place.
But when a group of people need to coordinate efforts then they do need to standardise. At that point the choice is one for the group rather than individuals within the group.
Yes, and contrary to what you seem to think, that's not decided by majority vote, but by what actually gets the job done. If you have 80 Windows users and 20 Linux users that need to collaborate, Visio is off the table because it doesn't get the job done, no matter how much you may prefer it.
I'm a firm believer in freedom of choice.
No, you're not. You're using bogus arguments to try to impose your choice on others, and that makes you a bad team player.
The image of an arrogant and obese American steadfast in the belief that anything that is good in the world is due to the good ol' US of A is offensive as it is laughable.
Yes, the image is laughable because it's not true. Americans, by and large, don't know or care about the rest of the world--and why should they? And all we want our politicians to do is keep the US safe and prosperous, doing whatever it takes.
Nevertheless, it's a historical fact that US intervention in WWII and its aftermath, and its continued military dominance is what has made the last 50 years safe and prosperous for people like you and me. Without it, the world would likely be split between fascists and communists, and the world economy would be much smaller. The current world order is a tidy little cartel that Australia and Europe are just as complicit in as the US.
(Incidentally, if you look at the statistics, Australians are even more obese and less knowledgeable about world history than Americans, and the British aren't doing well either.)
just pointed out that the US is not the best
And I'm pointing out that you're full of shit if you think that you can even divvy up nations like that and compare. Despite some domestic political posturing, America, Europe, Australia, and Japan are all acting together. And Australia and Britain, in particular, are basically following the American party line because they know where their prosperity comes from.
In that scenario the accommodating approach is to use Visio.
But the situation isn't symmetrical. It's a lot easier for a Windows user to use a web-based app than for a Linux user to use Visio. And the accommodating approach is for Windows users to use the web-based app rather than insisting that everybody in the world run Windows.
So, it depends on what the situation is which choice is better, and I don't think it's very helpful to have a closed mind be that either "OSS is better" or "Windows is better". If you believe in open source then you may as well have a open mind too! How's that for a sound-bite?!
I didn't say that the web-based application was "better". Nor did I say anything about Linux being better. All I said is that using web-based apps gives people a reasonable option to make the choice of OS irrelevant. In particular, it gives Linux users an option to use Linux while still collaborating with Windows users without inconveniencing the Windows users, and often making the overall collaboration work better than the native Windows app.
It's you who keeps insisting that Windows users should be able to impose their choice on the rest of the world. The only mind that's closed here is yours. Of course, that's typical for Windows fan-boys.
And what about vendor lock-in with Gliffy? It's not free. How do you get hold of your data if gliffy goes bust? What format will it be in? Is it an open format? Can I process it with a script?
I just gave Gliffy as an example to illustrate a point: there is no need anymore to be locked into Windows because of this stuff. But, yes, I believe Gliffy can export in various formats.
Of course, companies that picked Visio originally didn't give a damn about any of this, otherwise they wouldn't have picked Visio, so it's rather disingenuous to use it as the basis for objecting now.
Who is saying that they are useless? The point is that the debate over whether people should be able to own a hunting rifle is completely separate from the debate over whether people should be able to own revolvers, concealed weapons, semi-automatic weapons, or other guns.
Well, killing things, mostly. The majority of my protein intake is game meat. Antibiotic-free, hormone-free, free-range, and all for the marginal cost of a couple hundred bucks a year - basically the cost of licenses and gas.
Hunting rifles have little to do with the Second Amendment, gun control, personal defense, or freedom, so I don't see why you bring them up in this context.
(And game meat is actually not particularly healthy these days.)
It's odd that you wouldn't want to live in a 'nation of gun-wielding rednecks,' since that's when America was most free.
By law and government, the US wasn't "most free" back then. You could run away to the frontier, but then you were free simply because you were beyond the reach of the US government. Sure, if you did that, you probably needed guns, but the guns weren't what guaranteed your freedom. And since there's no frontier anymore, what do you need the guns for today?
Piss people off? By trying to fit in and be accommodating of other peoples preferences?
You: "Hi, I'd like yo to look at my UML diagram and maybe make some changes. You need to install Visio, so get yourself a Windows computer and a Visio license and install it. Oh, and then to exchange documents, we have to mail each other the files back and forth; please be sure to number them correctly by date so that we don't get confused about the versions. And don't use any non-standard fonts because they don't render correctly. OK, I'm attaching the Visio file to this message; please be sure to virus-check it."
Me: "Hi, I'd like you to look at my UML diagram and maybe make some changes. Just click here."
Now, who is more accommodating?
Except for some terminal whiners like you, even die-hard Windows users generally don't complain about getting a link to a web-based app. And why should they? Not only is it easy to use, they also see the benefits of instant, real-time collaboration.
It's rude when you send a Visio file to a Linux user. It's not rude when a Linux user sends you a URL.
Not in my eyes. Should it ever get to the point in the US where the 2nd Amendment is needed for the purpose that its proponents purport it's there for, I frankly would rather shoot myself. I have no interest to live through a major US revolution and then live in a nation of gun-wielding rednecks.
The image of an arrogant and obese American steadfast in the belief that anything that is good in the world is due to the good ol' US of A is offensive as it is laughable.
No more than the arrogant and obese Brit holding the same belief.
I know you guys are bought up saluting the flag and all that shit so you are pretty fucking brain washed by the time you turn 7, but you should really include the facts that you don't like in making your assessment. Particularly in the last 60-70 years, wherever the US has gone they have worked against the will of local populations, killed millions of innocent civilians, installed puppet totalitarian regimes, sold out allies, supported terrorists etc, etc, etc.
Peanuts compared to what the British empire did in its time.
And although the UK is simply too weak to get itself into too much trouble these days, it's busy cheering and egging on the US.
In terms of your liberal democracy, from studying your system and the Westminster system, I find the latter superior, certainly at defending liberty. That system has been evolving since long before the US existed and owes the Yankee "freedom man" nothing.
Ah, British history, a history of oppression, conquest, slavery, and social inequality.
True, but goes against all of the programming my fucked up country has burned into my being from childhood and I can't cope
How true: it does go against all the programming your fucked up country has burned into your brain from childhood, and evidently you can't cope.
Societies tend to skip over their own sins, either due to a lack of self-awareness or a genuine desire to cover up their own atrocities.
Yes, and Arabs have a massive case of that, trying to rewrite their rotten history into something it is not.
You're unlikely to find a Roman document questioning their treatment of subjugate populations, and mainstream American culture is no different.
Western culture, including American culture, is very different. You can find plenty of US history books, commentary, and Wikipedia entries condemning just about every war and foreign policy decision over the last two centuries. People may not agree with those condemnations (or simply not care), but the facts and statements are certainly not suppressed.
In contrast, most Middle Eastern nations suppress opinions that don't follow the official party line on history.
Try publishing an article saying that Mohammed was a religious fraud and an opportunistic war-lord in Pakistan or Egypt and see what the government will do to you. Heck, these countries get pushed out of shape even over slightly critical cartoons published in Denmark. In the US, saying the same thing about Washington or Jesus may not make you very popular, but the government basically won't care.
Wikipedia is your reference? My, you are educated.
I picked Wikipedia as a reference for you because (1) it gets the basic facts about the history of the Middle East right and (2) it's suitable to your level of historical understanding.
An eloquent statement. That's a common European attitude to consider anyone who doesn't live an exactly western lifestyle as inferior. It's only a few hundred years old.
Of course it's a common European attitude. Europeans understand the problems that the Middle East has because Europe used to be the same kind of dump that the Middle East is today.
Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did.
The founding fathers foremost believed in freedom and rights for Americans. Initially, they falsely assumed that they could accomplish this through isolationism, but the real world kept intruding. And at that point, Americans started getting involved in world politics and build a strong military. The US has been fighting wars and using its military to ensure its safety in the world ever since. But unlike Europeans or Middle Easterners, so far, it has managed to use its military without bringing total destruction on itself or its neighbors.
Funded, not constructed. The US did do a good job of stabilizing the world in the wake of that disaster, but it was through diplomacy and economic incentive, not inane foreign policy and secret police.
That's a nice theory, but it's not in line with facts. US intervention in German society was massive and heavy handed, from Germany's constitution to de-Nazification. The US pressured the other allies to reconstruct Europe the way the US wanted, and it could do that because the other allies were weak. And the Cold War involved everything from espionage to government-sponsored murder--on all sides.
So, we agree that the US did the right things during and right after WWII. You delude yourself, however, into thinking that US actions after WWII were all sugar and roses; they were as interventionist and heavy-handed as they have been in the Middle East in more recent times. The difference is that they actually mostly worked, but aren't working well in the Middle East. The problem with recent US interventions in the Middle East is not one of the level of pride one should take in them, but in the fact that they have been failures.
Because?
Because Europeans haven't learned what you think they have learned. European attitudes are not all that different from American attitudes: Europeans want their politicians to bring home the bacon, they don't like or trust the Middle East or Islam, they don't give a f*ck about privacy or personal freedoms, and they consider themselves superior to the rest of the world while knowing virtually nothing about it and ignoring their own history.
What Europeans have actually learned is that it's best if white Europeans don't squabble amongst themselves, and that the US is willing to do Europe's dirty work for free.
I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted.
So? We don't disagree there. The "military industrial complex" is bad economic policy, and Bush screwed up massively in the Middle East.
You're just making the mistake of assuming that things used to be better and have somehow deteriorated. Fucked up as things may seem to you today, they actually used to be worse.
The US needs to rethink and massively overhaul both domestic and foreign policy. But that would be doomed to failure if people start that process with false ideas about how things used to be.
I'll be sure to look that word up on my new guide to education: Wikipedia.
You should, because it's evidently still beyond the level of historical education that you actually seem to have.
The Middle East was a social and political dump before the Europeans got involved, and it still is. And given Arab aspirations for re-building their empire and imposing their religion on others, I don't even particularly care that the West imposed its rule on the region.
Except every other developed western nation since WWII (which I consider a definitive paradigm shift worldwide.) The whole of Europe have learned their lesson. For some reason we don't seem to get it.
First of all, the Europe you see today was largely constructed by the US; if it had been up to the French, British, and Russians, they would have repeated the mistakes of WWI and we'd have had WWIII by now.
Furthermore, you really have no clue about the attitudes or motivations behind European politics.
Are you a hedonist or a Nazi? I can't really tell.
England and America have directly been involved in dividing up Arab land
Sure, and why not? It's not like there was a flourishing democracy there, or an outpouring of mutual aid. In the first half of this century, ideas of fascism, Arab nationalism, and empires were widespread.
They proved that we have no moral superiority when it comes to torture and human rights.
They have merely proved that the US isn't perfect. That should come as no surprise if you look at US history. Look at how the US behaved relative to Mexico or the Phillipines. The US has always thrown its weight around and taken what it wanted. That's what American voters want their government to do. And why not?
America is not the same place it used to be.
No, it is actually a better place than it was a century ago or even half a century ago. There is less racism, less torture, less unjustified military intervention, less empire building.
Throughout its history, the US has primarily looked out for its own interests and improved lives for its own citizens. Occasionally it has tried to do a little bit for other nations when it was convenient to do so.
That may not be much, but it is still a whole lot more than you can say for most other nations.
There's no fricking practical need in the world to throw that "Islamic" adjective on there.
You mean other than that most of the terrorists they refer to actually happen to be Muslim?
It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
There's no "implied racism" there: it's a fact that a large fraction of the people who have been perpetrating terrorism against the US have been Muslim.
You know what has always pissed me off about McCain and his cohorts (and many others too) when talking about terrorism? Calling it "Islamic terrorism"
They're calling it "Islamic terrorism" because, say, Catholic terrorism, Buddhist terrorism, or atheist terrorism simply aren't problems for the US right now.
That will only work if the others are prepared to use Gliffy, or something else. If they aren't then he's stuck with Visio.
The nice thing about web based apps is that they remove most of those kinds of objections: there are no file compatibility issues, and people don't have to install anything or use a particular platform.
Unless of course he wants to stop collaborating with his co-workers, but of course that might have other consequences.
It might also have consequences for his coworkers if they stop collaborating with him.
And it seems to me that his coworkers are the ones that are causing problems if they refuse to use a web-basd app.
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Even if getting the job done means using Visio 'cos it's the best tool there is?
That's hypothetical since Visio isn't "the best tool". Even if it were, who cares? Do you drive a Ferrari "cos it's the best car there is"? Do you eat caviar every day "cos it's the best food there is"?
Would you be prepared to do that?
I do use Windows software when it is necessary to get the job done. Fortunately, that's getting increasingly rare. I haven't booted into Windows in months, in part because all my collaboration with Windows users happens through web apps these days. Which was my point.
It's not hard to ensure authenticity of digital images: cameras can digitally sign the images they create, and the integrity of the camera data path itself can also be protected. If the images aren't signed, then you can't prove they're real.
Digital SLRs, webcams, surveillance cams, cell phones, and other digital cameras should all have the option of producing signed (and geo-tagged) images.
If the media just reported some madmen flew airlines into WTC, called it a tragedy and got over it, would we be in this mess right now?
If the media had done that, they would have been lying. These terrorists were properly called Muslim terrorists because that's how they identified themselves. And we found that that label is justified: their religious texts can be interpreted to justify their actions, they are connected to large Muslim social movements, and they were funded by large Muslim organizations.
The "mess" we're in is because Bush handled the situation badly. But Bush would have found a way to funnel money to his buddies and cause the US to lose respect internationally no matter what. The problem isn't what the media reported on Iraq, the problem is that we elected a lousy president.
There are plenty of other terrorists around that are political and even environmental: Timothy McVey, Ted Kazinsky, and the two DC snipers come easily to mind.
None of those acted in the name of a religion.
No, they're calling it "Islamic" because that's a fear-inducing hot-word in an election
As well it should be. The link between Islam and terrorism, and the link between Islam and anti-democratic movements, is justified. In contrast to Islam, Christian churches, Jews, Buddhists, etc. are not engaged in large scale anti-democratic or anti-US activities.
This guy switched to Linux at work too. You know, the guy from the original article.
Yes, and that tells you that corporate policy is that people have a choice between Windows and Linux.
That means that you are the one who isn't a team player if you insist on forcing Windows-only tools on others.
And yes I do believe in choice. If people choose to use Visio then I don't have a problem with that. Do you?
I believe in cooperation and getting the job done. You obviously don't.
No, all I'm saying is that if you work in a company which has a particular IT policy to use certain tools then it works best if you stick to those tools.
That is irrelevant; if you're working in such a company, the issue doesn't come up because people wouldn't have a choice between Windows and Linux in the first place.
But when a group of people need to coordinate efforts then they do need to standardise. At that point the choice is one for the group rather than individuals within the group.
Yes, and contrary to what you seem to think, that's not decided by majority vote, but by what actually gets the job done. If you have 80 Windows users and 20 Linux users that need to collaborate, Visio is off the table because it doesn't get the job done, no matter how much you may prefer it.
I'm a firm believer in freedom of choice.
No, you're not. You're using bogus arguments to try to impose your choice on others, and that makes you a bad team player.
Yes, the image is laughable because it's not true. Americans, by and large, don't know or care about the rest of the world--and why should they? And all we want our politicians to do is keep the US safe and prosperous, doing whatever it takes.
Nevertheless, it's a historical fact that US intervention in WWII and its aftermath, and its continued military dominance is what has made the last 50 years safe and prosperous for people like you and me. Without it, the world would likely be split between fascists and communists, and the world economy would be much smaller. The current world order is a tidy little cartel that Australia and Europe are just as complicit in as the US.
(Incidentally, if you look at the statistics, Australians are even more obese and less knowledgeable about world history than Americans, and the British aren't doing well either.)
just pointed out that the US is not the best
And I'm pointing out that you're full of shit if you think that you can even divvy up nations like that and compare. Despite some domestic political posturing, America, Europe, Australia, and Japan are all acting together. And Australia and Britain, in particular, are basically following the American party line because they know where their prosperity comes from.
In that scenario the accommodating approach is to use Visio.
But the situation isn't symmetrical. It's a lot easier for a Windows user to use a web-based app than for a Linux user to use Visio. And the accommodating approach is for Windows users to use the web-based app rather than insisting that everybody in the world run Windows.
So, it depends on what the situation is which choice is better, and I don't think it's very helpful to have a closed mind be that either "OSS is better" or "Windows is better". If you believe in open source then you may as well have a open mind too! How's that for a sound-bite?!
I didn't say that the web-based application was "better". Nor did I say anything about Linux being better. All I said is that using web-based apps gives people a reasonable option to make the choice of OS irrelevant. In particular, it gives Linux users an option to use Linux while still collaborating with Windows users without inconveniencing the Windows users, and often making the overall collaboration work better than the native Windows app.
It's you who keeps insisting that Windows users should be able to impose their choice on the rest of the world. The only mind that's closed here is yours. Of course, that's typical for Windows fan-boys.
And what about vendor lock-in with Gliffy? It's not free. How do you get hold of your data if gliffy goes bust? What format will it be in? Is it an open format? Can I process it with a script?
I just gave Gliffy as an example to illustrate a point: there is no need anymore to be locked into Windows because of this stuff. But, yes, I believe Gliffy can export in various formats.
Of course, companies that picked Visio originally didn't give a damn about any of this, otherwise they wouldn't have picked Visio, so it's rather disingenuous to use it as the basis for objecting now.
Who is saying that they are useless? The point is that the debate over whether people should be able to own a hunting rifle is completely separate from the debate over whether people should be able to own revolvers, concealed weapons, semi-automatic weapons, or other guns.
Well, killing things, mostly. The majority of my protein intake is game meat. Antibiotic-free, hormone-free, free-range, and all for the marginal cost of a couple hundred bucks a year - basically the cost of licenses and gas.
Hunting rifles have little to do with the Second Amendment, gun control, personal defense, or freedom, so I don't see why you bring them up in this context.
(And game meat is actually not particularly healthy these days.)
It's odd that you wouldn't want to live in a 'nation of gun-wielding rednecks,' since that's when America was most free.
By law and government, the US wasn't "most free" back then. You could run away to the frontier, but then you were free simply because you were beyond the reach of the US government. Sure, if you did that, you probably needed guns, but the guns weren't what guaranteed your freedom. And since there's no frontier anymore, what do you need the guns for today?
Piss people off? By trying to fit in and be accommodating of other peoples preferences?
You: "Hi, I'd like yo to look at my UML diagram and maybe make some changes. You need to install Visio, so get yourself a Windows computer and a Visio license and install it. Oh, and then to exchange documents, we have to mail each other the files back and forth; please be sure to number them correctly by date so that we don't get confused about the versions. And don't use any non-standard fonts because they don't render correctly. OK, I'm attaching the Visio file to this message; please be sure to virus-check it."
Me: "Hi, I'd like you to look at my UML diagram and maybe make some changes. Just click here."
Now, who is more accommodating?
Except for some terminal whiners like you, even die-hard Windows users generally don't complain about getting a link to a web-based app. And why should they? Not only is it easy to use, they also see the benefits of instant, real-time collaboration.
It's rude when you send a Visio file to a Linux user. It's not rude when a Linux user sends you a URL.
Not in my eyes. Should it ever get to the point in the US where the 2nd Amendment is needed for the purpose that its proponents purport it's there for, I frankly would rather shoot myself. I have no interest to live through a major US revolution and then live in a nation of gun-wielding rednecks.
The image of an arrogant and obese American steadfast in the belief that anything that is good in the world is due to the good ol' US of A is offensive as it is laughable.
No more than the arrogant and obese Brit holding the same belief.
I know you guys are bought up saluting the flag and all that shit so you are pretty fucking brain washed by the time you turn 7, but you should really include the facts that you don't like in making your assessment. Particularly in the last 60-70 years, wherever the US has gone they have worked against the will of local populations, killed millions of innocent civilians, installed puppet totalitarian regimes, sold out allies, supported terrorists etc, etc, etc.
Peanuts compared to what the British empire did in its time.
And although the UK is simply too weak to get itself into too much trouble these days, it's busy cheering and egging on the US.
In terms of your liberal democracy, from studying your system and the Westminster system, I find the latter superior, certainly at defending liberty. That system has been evolving since long before the US existed and owes the Yankee "freedom man" nothing.
Ah, British history, a history of oppression, conquest, slavery, and social inequality.
True, but goes against all of the programming my fucked up country has burned into my being from childhood and I can't cope
How true: it does go against all the programming your fucked up country has burned into your brain from childhood, and evidently you can't cope.
Societies tend to skip over their own sins, either due to a lack of self-awareness or a genuine desire to cover up their own atrocities.
Yes, and Arabs have a massive case of that, trying to rewrite their rotten history into something it is not.
You're unlikely to find a Roman document questioning their treatment of subjugate populations, and mainstream American culture is no different.
Western culture, including American culture, is very different. You can find plenty of US history books, commentary, and Wikipedia entries condemning just about every war and foreign policy decision over the last two centuries. People may not agree with those condemnations (or simply not care), but the facts and statements are certainly not suppressed.
In contrast, most Middle Eastern nations suppress opinions that don't follow the official party line on history.
Try publishing an article saying that Mohammed was a religious fraud and an opportunistic war-lord in Pakistan or Egypt and see what the government will do to you. Heck, these countries get pushed out of shape even over slightly critical cartoons published in Denmark. In the US, saying the same thing about Washington or Jesus may not make you very popular, but the government basically won't care.
Wikipedia is your reference? My, you are educated.
I picked Wikipedia as a reference for you because (1) it gets the basic facts about the history of the Middle East right and (2) it's suitable to your level of historical understanding.
An eloquent statement. That's a common European attitude to consider anyone who doesn't live an exactly western lifestyle as inferior. It's only a few hundred years old.
Of course it's a common European attitude. Europeans understand the problems that the Middle East has because Europe used to be the same kind of dump that the Middle East is today.
Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did.
The founding fathers foremost believed in freedom and rights for Americans. Initially, they falsely assumed that they could accomplish this through isolationism, but the real world kept intruding. And at that point, Americans started getting involved in world politics and build a strong military. The US has been fighting wars and using its military to ensure its safety in the world ever since. But unlike Europeans or Middle Easterners, so far, it has managed to use its military without bringing total destruction on itself or its neighbors.
Funded, not constructed. The US did do a good job of stabilizing the world in the wake of that disaster, but it was through diplomacy and economic incentive, not inane foreign policy and secret police.
That's a nice theory, but it's not in line with facts. US intervention in German society was massive and heavy handed, from Germany's constitution to de-Nazification. The US pressured the other allies to reconstruct Europe the way the US wanted, and it could do that because the other allies were weak. And the Cold War involved everything from espionage to government-sponsored murder--on all sides.
So, we agree that the US did the right things during and right after WWII. You delude yourself, however, into thinking that US actions after WWII were all sugar and roses; they were as interventionist and heavy-handed as they have been in the Middle East in more recent times. The difference is that they actually mostly worked, but aren't working well in the Middle East. The problem with recent US interventions in the Middle East is not one of the level of pride one should take in them, but in the fact that they have been failures.
Because?
Because Europeans haven't learned what you think they have learned. European attitudes are not all that different from American attitudes: Europeans want their politicians to bring home the bacon, they don't like or trust the Middle East or Islam, they don't give a f*ck about privacy or personal freedoms, and they consider themselves superior to the rest of the world while knowing virtually nothing about it and ignoring their own history.
What Europeans have actually learned is that it's best if white Europeans don't squabble amongst themselves, and that the US is willing to do Europe's dirty work for free.
I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted.
So? We don't disagree there. The "military industrial complex" is bad economic policy, and Bush screwed up massively in the Middle East.
You're just making the mistake of assuming that things used to be better and have somehow deteriorated. Fucked up as things may seem to you today, they actually used to be worse.
The US needs to rethink and massively overhaul both domestic and foreign policy. But that would be doomed to failure if people start that process with false ideas about how things used to be.
I'll be sure to look that word up on my new guide to education: Wikipedia.
You should, because it's evidently still beyond the level of historical education that you actually seem to have.
But... but... they hate our freedoms!!! Right?!?!? Right?!?!?
More precisely, they hate that we have those freedoms while they don't, and they believe that we are responsible for them not having those freedoms.
[Middle Eastern nations] were flourishing democracies with vast untapped resources threatening to break free of the bonds of colonial Europe.
Read something about the history of the Middle East before you spout such bullshit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_East
The Middle East was a social and political dump before the Europeans got involved, and it still is. And given Arab aspirations for re-building their empire and imposing their religion on others, I don't even particularly care that the West imposed its rule on the region.
Except every other developed western nation since WWII (which I consider a definitive paradigm shift worldwide.) The whole of Europe have learned their lesson. For some reason we don't seem to get it.
First of all, the Europe you see today was largely constructed by the US; if it had been up to the French, British, and Russians, they would have repeated the mistakes of WWI and we'd have had WWIII by now.
Furthermore, you really have no clue about the attitudes or motivations behind European politics.
Are you a hedonist or a Nazi? I can't really tell.
Well, I can tell that you are an uneducated lout.
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd
Yeah, same to you: with your attitude, you're really going to piss people off.
England and America have directly been involved in dividing up Arab land
Sure, and why not? It's not like there was a flourishing democracy there, or an outpouring of mutual aid. In the first half of this century, ideas of fascism, Arab nationalism, and empires were widespread.
They proved that we have no moral superiority when it comes to torture and human rights.
They have merely proved that the US isn't perfect. That should come as no surprise if you look at US history. Look at how the US behaved relative to Mexico or the Phillipines. The US has always thrown its weight around and taken what it wanted. That's what American voters want their government to do. And why not?
America is not the same place it used to be.
No, it is actually a better place than it was a century ago or even half a century ago. There is less racism, less torture, less unjustified military intervention, less empire building.
Throughout its history, the US has primarily looked out for its own interests and improved lives for its own citizens. Occasionally it has tried to do a little bit for other nations when it was convenient to do so.
That may not be much, but it is still a whole lot more than you can say for most other nations.
There's no fricking practical need in the world to throw that "Islamic" adjective on there.
You mean other than that most of the terrorists they refer to actually happen to be Muslim?
It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
There's no "implied racism" there: it's a fact that a large fraction of the people who have been perpetrating terrorism against the US have been Muslim.
You know what has always pissed me off about McCain and his cohorts (and many others too) when talking about terrorism? Calling it "Islamic terrorism"
They're calling it "Islamic terrorism" because, say, Catholic terrorism, Buddhist terrorism, or atheist terrorism simply aren't problems for the US right now.
This educational video explains the biology behind this observation:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
That will only work if the others are prepared to use Gliffy, or something else. If they aren't then he's stuck with Visio.
The nice thing about web based apps is that they remove most of those kinds of objections: there are no file compatibility issues, and people don't have to install anything or use a particular platform.
Unless of course he wants to stop collaborating with his co-workers, but of course that might have other consequences.
It might also have consequences for his coworkers if they stop collaborating with him.
And it seems to me that his coworkers are the ones that are causing problems if they refuse to use a web-basd app.