(US)-constitutional protection dont apply to foreigners.. sure, that's fine with me... at least for as long as those foreigners dont enter the US...
Why ? simply put, USA is a country of immigrants... whose only right(?) to stay there derives from the slaughtering of this country's native inhabitants (remember Native American's fate.. or that of the Slaves packed in sea-faring bricks)...
Apart from this little glitch, there are plenty of US's overstepping their rights in pretty much every other country in the world :
USA has coaxed most of the world's countries into signing a treaty (sorry, dont remember the name, if it has one), barring them from bringing US citizens to Den Haag Tribunal, for whatever they have done (remember CIA's actions in the 1950-1980, and both bushes's actions afterwards...)
USA is consistently using its economic power to stomp on the so-called poor countries around the world (look at South America's economic history...)
When USA fancies something, USA takes... quite frequently at the expense of the original owner... look at Iraq's Oil for one of the most recent exemple... and most of the natural resources of the world, for the biggest one...
USA's pathological need to be seen as the good guy : so many Military operations (that, for a reminder, results firstly in thousands of exploded women, children, and more generally, innocent bystanders) have a name lexically close to free/freedom...
USA's frequent supporting of terrorism and dictatorships : look at the history of the following countries, and especially the role played by the CIA, military aid, or simply US military in those countries : Iran (Shah, 1953-1978) - Indonesia (Suharto, 1965) - Chile (Pinochet, 1973) - Iraq (Saddam Hussein, 1963-1985) - Uzbekhistan (US Army, 1998-2005)... and the longest commitment, Israel (Palestinians fate, 1950 to present)
There's much more, but I'll stop here, or I might be considered a terrorist... Whose current meaning is : someone who doesnt bless W's actions every morning... presently includes France's last president, Jacques Chirac, and growing parts of at least both the Middle East and Southern America, who historically have every single reason to be mad at USA's meddling with their internal politics...
--
Disclaimer : Dear W (or his planned successor), I'm a lone individual, please act reasonably, and don't hurt the 60 million persons who happen to live in the same country as myself... unlike what the USA consistently did throughout the world, roughly since the fall of the Sino-German empire...
PS : The United States of America used to be a democracy... at a time when your Founding Fathers didnt spin in their graves at all !!!
Well, actually, there seems to be a bug in the men(8) firmware, as while they actually have two brains (one behind the eyeballs, and the other around the middle of the body), they seem to cause multiple failures when operated simultaneously...
That seems not to be a problem for single geeks, through they are not reproducing fast enough:)
However, there seem to be a distinct specie, namely "women", which seem to be able to do casual multi-tasking... the unfortunate thing here is that they seem not to be designed for useful multi-tasking, such as real discussions, anything computer-related, reproduction, or plain old friendship (actual studies are a bit difficult to conduct in a laboratory setting, due to the innate instability of said subjects... and our legal department's strong stance on subject's dissection for further analysis)
Still conducting (scientific) studies on a strange activity when mixing men and women (seemingly night-activated & light-sensitive):-)
Ditch the kernel, adopt Linux...
Then, the UI experts at Microsoft can REALLY make an OS work... if they are willing to invent something, instead of just stealing (in an IP kind of meaning, that it, not ACTUAL dis-possessing someone of his "property") other people's ideas, such as Xerox (the GUI thingy), Apple (the looks of the 80's, and Mouse usage), XOrg (Compiz), Mosaic (Browser), TigerT (remember the special effects of Enlightenmnent ?), DEC (Dr Dos ?), Multiplan (Excel ?),... and so many others...
To sum up, William B. Gates III didn't pioneer anything computer-related, but is a genius in the industrialization of the following fields : marketing innovations (software as a service : pay more, longer), Vendor Lock-In (ever tried to buy a PC with anything apart from Glasses installed ?), Anti-trust Legislations Evasions (US, EU, and most parts of the world), worldwide lobbying (the OOXML Vs. ODF thingy),...
However, in a way, he only followed the tracks put forth by Nero, Al Capone, Enron, Pablo Escobar, and so many of the real innovators:)
9/11 was NOT as significant an event as you think it was... the decisive point, here, was the GW Bush election, which, IMHO, triggered the whole thing... But let me paint you a clearer picture:
Massive fraud & election-system abuse : remember Diebold, and the funny (in a dark-humor way) thing about Southern States' lack of ballot recount ???
The whole thing about Iraq War : THEY DIDNT HAVE ANY weapons of mass destruction... but, shortly after the American invasion, they were riddled with fragmentation bombs, Uranium-enriched ammo, scores of Hi-Tech tanks & furtive bombers, and so much more
Another thing about Iraq : they were armed and financed by the Bush administration (father's), through three-letters agenciesto fight against the Evil(tm) Iranians(R)
The so-called freedom that was supposed to be brought to those states (Iraq, Afghanistan,.., ??) is, I think, in a pretty WORSE shape than before Bush's (son) attacks.. but you should ask the Marines that routinely and actively die there for no reason other than those countries's underground, dark, oily substances
The blazingly fast erosion of civil rights, privacy, and, more generally, of all the freedoms brought by US's constitution : look for privacy international 2007 report.. covered here in late december...
The world-wide spreading of the last point : it began in US, went on in Australia, pursued in United Kingdom, and is now spreading in France...
REAL Journalists are an endangered specie : how many independant media do you know of, in your country ?? (hint : look at overall financial ties)... for exemple, in France, I have to look for unbiased info in UK's news, or fringe newspapers...
All things considered, I'd rather live in China rather than the US... why ?
at least, there, they dont pretend to be a Democracy (read Noam Chomsky for references)
in a 60Millions-persons country (FR), with medias all repeating the same idea, they cant coax the population into voting for an European treaty
in a 250Million-persons country (USA), with ads for terror-related propaganda, they cant legally make GWB the President
So, with all those little points in mind, how would you rule a 1'200+ million-persons country (ZH, China)???
Add to that the fact that China invented the most useful things in the world, such as Printing, the Compass, Silk, Tea,... they still have a living religion that was born around the third millennium BC (hinting at the Shamanist knowledge embedded inside, such as Taiji Quan, Qi Gong, Acupuncture,...). Also, they own one of the largest portion of American Treasury Bonds, and are those that make the Economy going on without (much) inflation !!!!
-- Check my other posts... the picture will become even clearer... and darker... Hopefully, the current economic, politic, social, and religious system is on the brink of collapse... lets hope it will bring a more evenly distributed (and fair) economy and society... (Africa, anyone ?) Mayans (you know, one of the civilizations that Christianity stomped upon in the XVIth century) thought a lot about the second half of 12/2012, and modern science points that solar flares will kinda peak at that time, triggering all sorts of funny things, like geomagnetic storms, along with unstoppable gamma particles...
Yup, the same famous law enacted at a time when racketeering was in his infancy (ie. not widely used as a main business model for Top-List companies)....
This is clearly the case here... and seems to be a growing trend for those that fail to invent compelling products... RIAA is in the same business, as are the so-called "Innovation-driven" patent companies with no products whatsoever
Cant such companies compete with the collective minds of talented programmers ? What use are the billions they say they invest in R&D ? Lawyer & litigation fees ?
FYI, XP, and later Vista, is only an aggregation of ideas pioneered in several Open-Source, Linux-originated products :
Gnome, for its elegant UI
Enlightenment, for the visual effects
Compiz, or whatever it was named back then, for the 3D-desktop
Not to mention the original Windows UIs, stolen from the Xerox labs and MacOS designs...
-- Disclaimer
I am not an Historian
The whole business of IP laws was to promote incremental innovation, no ?
"Linux", "MacOS", "Xerox" are Copyrighted terms, protecting the inventions by their respective authors
"Windows", "Vista", "XP" are Copyrighted trade marks, designed to protect their right-holder, despites the fact that "windows" is only the plural of a common english noun
Sue me, and I'll shatter the IP laws in so many pieces that IP lawyers will be forced to do some real hard work in the process...
Books to be published... stay tuned
This message, passing through so many computer systems, whose security status cannot ALL be PROVEN to have been uncompromized at the time of this writing, may not even have been written by me !!!
That's the unfortunate thing with your so-called child(8) processes... when time comes, if they are like your common Windows childrens, they may grow older, and more feature-full
For example, some of them may learn to both do Math AND read... this leads to unexpected side-effects, such as growing gray matter
How to cope with that ? Any well behaved Unices's parents will induce a multiple personality 'disorder'. In this manner, each and every personality trait will be confined in its own nerve cell, producing a more stable kid, with fewer chances of Core Dump...
I, for one, envy the happy parents, as when I tried to raise the little buggers in this way, flawed peoples did take all my processes, and really chroot(2)'ed me... Now, I even come to doubt the real benefits of this whole Unixen fork(3)-ing...
--
Posted from the Maximally Flawed Security Facility, under Redmond,WA
Where I am sentenced to create some stable OSes for some shady firm .. have access to top-notch hardware, but I fear this is not the ideal position for experimenting a real-life fork(3), though:-)
Implement voice recognition : needs to know the language, and actual semantics & meaning for (most of) the languages to approach human understanding. Additionally, most languages are natively ambiguous (even when taking into account only their canonic meaning), so that translation can only be made contextually; Neural Nets and Markov Chains are good at that, but are about as easy to debug as an human being.... good luck with your Computer Therapist training
Implement a mean to recognize tone of voice, including person-specific tones : the way I say "this price is crazy" DOES influence its meaning.. how to recognize it automatically ? Take that, and the fact that, from one person to another, you can have same sounds, but different facial expression, hence different meanings... and you'll end up developing a Facial Recognition System, along with a Knowledge Base encompassing that of modern-life Ethnologists - definitive pre-requesite for choosing between slang's Woman and war's Weapon in "bomb"
Develop a mind reader : since the cultural background of speakers is not known beforehand, and the extract may not be enough for the Knowledge base to work,how to know enough of his contextual concepts in any other way ?
As an alternative to all previous points : implement a Surveillance Society(TM), with the abolishment of most Privacy Rights, so that you'll know some vague backgrounds for those individuals... if they expressed some of it in sight of some Surveillance Device beforehand
So, it a bit longer than initially thought... but, if considering the last point, it's getting here way faster than using Law-abiding processes...
-- Disclaimer, or "legal deathtrap" : Definitions:
"products" or "shit" : the terms "Surveillance Society", along with all the patents, copyrights and other legal deathtraps derived from them
"Legal entities" or "blobs" : individuals , groups, agencies, companies or other (stuff & combination of stuff) like that
"owner" or "bastards" : George Walker Bush, and the persons that agree with his "shit"... seems to include at least the following "blobs":
Former Video-Surveillance fan and Prime Minister of UK, Tony Blair
Former Australian thingy, John Howards
Current French President and former Interior Minister, who earned both salaries, along with a 175% increase in presidential salary for about SIX month, luxuries-fan, egotistical and megalomaniac, Nicolas Sarközy de Bosca
"representatives" or "SoB" : any "blobs" that talks regularly in a Court of Law and turns Richer in the process, without having much to do apart from reading some convoluted texts (produced & obfuscated by their peers)... similar to Middle Ages's Witches, except that they do not produce any medecine, visionary insights, or more generally, original thoughts...
"retaliation" or "fsck you" : careful application of "SoB" on a "blob" that we wish to weed out of existence
"retaliation" or "Hasta La Vista Baby" (alternate definition for people that do not have as of 2008 an US-stamped, biometrically-identified, GPS-tracked Passport) : reckless application of Marines, Tomahawks (the 20'000 Kg version), Uranium-enriched munitions, Torture, and Shady Contractors to designated "blobs" and any other "blobs" that happen to live in the same country (or general area, provide that it doesnt involve US land, at least for the portion that "bastards" may one day visit)
Claims:
Claim 1 : The "shit" and their various legal offsprings are the exclusive property of the "bastards"
"A human body" doesn't exist, and will never in the foresee-able future : you need at least some oxygen... and some nutriments... and some photons... and some gravity field... and... you get the point, "body" doesn't exist.
The same goes for "mind", as the brain (if it's really here that it resides... neurologists seem to have doubts) isn't self-sufficient
Take care of the physical corpse's needs only, without any contacts, and any newborn will die within weeks (adults will wither)
Take care of the brain only while eating junk & exercising little, and the body & brain will deteriorate
Physical exercises increases the physiology, which in turn increases the neurological system's capacity
Some old scientific experiments proved that muscles exercised themselves when one dreamt of using them
The whole body/mind distinction, along with the various technological analogues for Humans are flawed:
Hydrolic systems in the 18th century ? Mechanical systems in the 19th ? Computers in the 20th ? What flaw will the 21st come up with ? As an exercise of the same kind, try to explain what "purple" is to a born-blind adult..
All those systems have a common flaw : the more knowledge (control) you add, the less responsive they become...
... for Humans, it is the exact opposite, and no simple analogy can be used to describe that...
... except maybe other living organisms's interactions... but nobody understands them fully while everybody know (more or less) what it's like to be one !!!
Of Course, "Joe Sixpack" will think that he cant help it if he's not smart... that is true for a VERY SMALL MINORITY of "Joes Sixpacks"... others simply have to sit still for some time in front of some (processed) dead trees and/or (processed) sand, leaving for some hours a zombifying box, respectively called "book", "computer" and "TV screen" !!!
--
Disclaimer:
Copyrighted by Me... will grow into a book, soon...
All that I write is backed by solid facts... but this is SlashDot:)
I'm not a Neurologist
I'm not some kind of Therapist
I'm not an M.D
I'm not a religious Nut
I'm not an Enemy (Hello, automated Echelon reader.. thanks for watching, and btw, can you tell what I think ?)
My Name is definitely not Joe Sixpack
The ONLY (that I know of) organs that we can use are from Pigs.. it doesnt work from any ape-produced organs
But there are other Strange things:
Didn't some religious guys in the middle east (who now have several Billions of followers, located in some large parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and some Thousands, if not more in America) ?
They even claimed (in that same book that they are following) that the Pig is some kind of ancestor of Man !!
Makes you wonder what kind of knowledge they still possess, as the same followers introduced to Middle-aged Europe most that was lost from wars (Mathematics, Philosophy, Mechanics, Optics, Musics, Architecture)
Unfortunately, all their knowledge didn't permeate to Europe at the VII and after, as Christianity was repelling them (the Charles Martel, around 740 AD, and later the Inquisition & Crusades) !!:
Medecine : Europe suffered many epidemics, dut to bad hygiene and loss of traditional medicines
Religion/Chamanism : whole cultures lost to the advent of the "treatment" of Heresy by the (essentially Catholic, but not only) Christian religion in 1184 AD, and general hostility towards other religions, up to the 19-th century AD in spain
How great it would have been to Have the knowledge of someone like Avicenna : Born in 980-1084 AD, father of Occidental Medical Science (and much more material than today's Medical Curriculum), who did so much in his life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna that it's highly unfortunate not to know his real name (Ibn'Sina), and his native country (Iran)... which used to be the center of a VERY sucessful civilization, way more advanced, at least in the architectural point of view, than the Ancient Greeks, around the FOURTH MILLENIUM Before Christian Era... for exemple, they built skyscrapers, advanced irrigation and waste extraction systems..
Yup, you guessed it... the religion in question is Islam...
Of course, Joe Sixpack and his friends will tell you that they are inherently a part of the Axis of Evil(TM)...
-- Disclaimer, or "legal deathtrap" : Definitions:
"products" or "shit" : the terms "Axis of Evil", along with all the patents, copyrights and other legal deathtraps derived from them
"Legal entities" or "blobs" : individuals , groups, agencies, companies or other (stuff & combination of stuff) like that
"owner" or "bastards" : George Walker Bush, and the persons that agree with his "shit"... seems to include at least the following "blobs":
Former Video-Surveillance fan and Prime Minister of UK, Tony Blair
Former Australian thingy, John Howards
Current French President and former Interior Minister, who earned both salaries, along with a 175% increase in presidential salary for about SIX month, luxuries-fan, egotistical and megalomaniac, Nicolas Sarközy de Bosca
"representatives" or "SoB" : any "blobs" that talks regularly in a Court of Law and turns Richer in the process, without having much to do apart from reading some convoluted texts (produced & obfuscated by their peers)... similar to Middle Ages's Witches, except that they do not produce any medecine, visionary insights, or more generally, original thoughts...
"retaliation" or "fsck you" : careful application of "SoB" on a "blob" that we wish to weed out of existence
"retaliation" or "Hasta La Vista Baby" (alternate definition for people that do
Slashdot Mirror
Why ? simply put, USA is a country of immigrants
Apart from this little glitch, there are plenty of US's overstepping their rights in pretty much every other country in the world :
- USA has coaxed most of the world's countries into signing a treaty (sorry, dont remember the name, if it has one), barring them from bringing US citizens to Den Haag Tribunal, for whatever they have done (remember CIA's actions in the 1950-1980, and both bushes's actions afterwards
...)
- USA is consistently using its economic power to stomp on the so-called poor countries around the world (look at South America's economic history
...)
- When USA fancies something, USA takes
... quite frequently at the expense of the original owner ... look at Iraq's Oil for one of the most recent exemple ... and most of the natural resources of the world, for the biggest one ...
- USA's pathological need to be seen as the good guy : so many Military operations (that, for a reminder, results firstly in thousands of exploded women, children, and more generally, innocent bystanders) have a name lexically close to free/freedom
...
- USA's frequent supporting of terrorism and dictatorships : look at the history of the following countries, and especially the role played by the CIA, military aid, or simply US military in those countries : Iran (Shah, 1953-1978) - Indonesia (Suharto, 1965) - Chile (Pinochet, 1973) - Iraq (Saddam Hussein, 1963-1985) - Uzbekhistan (US Army, 1998-2005)
... and the longest commitment, Israel (Palestinians fate, 1950 to present)
There's much more, but I'll stop here, or I might be considered a terrorist... Whose current meaning is : someone who doesnt bless W's actions every morning--
Disclaimer : Dear W (or his planned successor), I'm a lone individual, please act reasonably, and don't hurt the 60 million persons who happen to live in the same country as myself
PS : The United States of America used to be a democracy
Well, actually, there seems to be a bug in the men(8) firmware, as while they actually have two brains (one behind the eyeballs, and the other around the middle of the body), they seem to cause multiple failures when operated simultaneously ... :)
... the unfortunate thing here is that they seem not to be designed for useful multi-tasking, such as real discussions, anything computer-related, reproduction, or plain old friendship (actual studies are a bit difficult to conduct in a laboratory setting, due to the innate instability of said subjects ... and our legal department's strong stance on subject's dissection for further analysis)
:-)
That seems not to be a problem for single geeks, through they are not reproducing fast enough
However, there seem to be a distinct specie, namely "women", which seem to be able to do casual multi-tasking
Still conducting (scientific) studies on a strange activity when mixing men and women (seemingly night-activated & light-sensitive)
Ditch the kernel, adopt Linux ... ... if they are willing to invent something, instead of just stealing (in an IP kind of meaning, that it, not ACTUAL dis-possessing someone of his "property") other people's ideas, such as Xerox (the GUI thingy), Apple (the looks of the 80's, and Mouse usage), XOrg (Compiz), Mosaic (Browser), TigerT (remember the special effects of Enlightenmnent ?), DEC (Dr Dos ?), Multiplan (Excel ?), ... and so many others ... ...
:)
Then, the UI experts at Microsoft can REALLY make an OS work
To sum up, William B. Gates III didn't pioneer anything computer-related, but is a genius in the industrialization of the following fields : marketing innovations (software as a service : pay more, longer), Vendor Lock-In (ever tried to buy a PC with anything apart from Glasses installed ?), Anti-trust Legislations Evasions (US, EU, and most parts of the world), worldwide lobbying (the OOXML Vs. ODF thingy),
However, in a way, he only followed the tracks put forth by Nero, Al Capone, Enron, Pablo Escobar, and so many of the real innovators
- Massive fraud & election-system abuse : remember Diebold, and the funny (in a dark-humor way) thing about Southern States' lack of ballot recount ???
- The whole thing about Iraq War : THEY DIDNT HAVE ANY weapons of mass destruction
... but, shortly after the American invasion, they were riddled with fragmentation bombs, Uranium-enriched ammo, scores of Hi-Tech tanks & furtive bombers, and so much more
- Another thing about Iraq : they were armed and financed by the Bush administration (father's), through three-letters agenciesto fight against the Evil(tm) Iranians(R)
- The so-called freedom that was supposed to be brought to those states (Iraq, Afghanistan,
.., ??) is, I think, in a pretty WORSE shape than before Bush's (son) attacks .. but you should ask the Marines that routinely and actively die there for no reason other than those countries's underground, dark, oily substances
- The blazingly fast erosion of civil rights, privacy, and, more generally, of all the freedoms brought by US's constitution : look for privacy international 2007 report
.. covered here in late december ...
- The world-wide spreading of the last point : it began in US, went on in Australia, pursued in United Kingdom, and is now spreading in France
...
- REAL Journalists are an endangered specie : how many independant media do you know of, in your country ?? (hint : look at overall financial ties)
... for exemple, in France, I have to look for unbiased info in UK's news, or fringe newspapers ...
All things considered, I'd rather live in China rather than the US--
Check my other posts
Hopefully, the current economic, politic, social, and religious system is on the brink of collapse
Mayans (you know, one of the civilizations that Christianity stomped upon in the XVIth century) thought a lot about the second half of 12/2012, and modern science points that solar flares will kinda peak at that time, triggering all sorts of funny things, like geomagnetic storms, along with unstoppable gamma particles
This is clearly the case here
Cant such companies compete with the collective minds of talented programmers ? What use are the billions they say they invest in R&D ? Lawyer & litigation fees ?
FYI, XP, and later Vista, is only an aggregation of ideas pioneered in several Open-Source, Linux-originated products :
- Gnome, for its elegant UI
- Enlightenment, for the visual effects
- Compiz, or whatever it was named back then, for the 3D-desktop
Not to mention the original Windows UIs, stolen from the Xerox labs and MacOS designs--
Disclaimer
That's the unfortunate thing with your so-called child(8) processes ... when time comes, if they are like your common Windows childrens, they may grow older, and more feature-full ... this leads to unexpected side-effects, such as growing gray matter
... Now, I even come to doubt the real benefits of this whole Unixen fork(3)-ing ...
.. have access to top-notch hardware, but I fear this is not the ideal position for experimenting a real-life fork(3), though :-)
For example, some of them may learn to both do Math AND read
How to cope with that ? Any well behaved Unices's parents will induce a multiple personality 'disorder'. In this manner, each and every personality trait will be confined in its own nerve cell, producing a more stable kid, with fewer chances of Core Dump...
I, for one, envy the happy parents, as when I tried to raise the little buggers in this way, flawed peoples did take all my processes, and really chroot(2)'ed me
--
Posted from the Maximally Flawed Security Facility, under Redmond,WA
Where I am sentenced to create some stable OSes for some shady firm
So, it a bit longer than initially thought ... but, if considering the last point, it's getting here way faster than using Law-abiding processes ...
:
--
Disclaimer, or "legal deathtrap" :
Definitions
Claims :
- "A human body" doesn't exist, and will never in the foresee-able future : you need at least some oxygen
... and some nutriments ... and some photons ... and some gravity field ... and ... you get the point, "body" doesn't exist.
- The same goes for "mind", as the brain (if it's really here that it resides
... neurologists seem to have doubts) isn't self-sufficient
- Take care of the physical corpse's needs only, without any contacts, and any newborn will die within weeks (adults will wither)
- Take care of the brain only while eating junk & exercising little, and the body & brain will deteriorate
- Physical exercises increases the physiology, which in turn increases the neurological system's capacity
- Some old scientific experiments proved that muscles exercised themselves when one dreamt of using them
The whole body/mind distinction, along with the various technological analogues for Humans are flawed- Hydrolic systems in the 18th century ? Mechanical systems in the 19th ? Computers in the 20th ? What flaw will the 21st come up with ? As an exercise of the same kind, try to explain what "purple" is to a born-blind adult
..
- All those systems have a common flaw : the more knowledge (control) you add, the less responsive they become
...
- ... for Humans, it is the exact opposite, and no simple analogy can be used to describe that
...
- ... except maybe other living organisms's interactions
... but nobody understands them fully while everybody know (more or less) what it's like to be one !!!
Of Course, "Joe Sixpack" will think that he cant help it if he's not smart--
Disclaimer
Copyrighted by Me
All that I write is backed by solid facts
I'm not a Neurologist
I'm not some kind of Therapist
I'm not an M.D
I'm not a religious Nut
I'm not an Enemy (Hello, automated Echelon reader
My Name is definitely not Joe Sixpack
But there are other Strange things :
:
Didn't some religious guys in the middle east (who now have several Billions of followers, located in some large parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and some Thousands, if not more in America) ?
They even claimed (in that same book that they are following) that the Pig is some kind of ancestor of Man !!
Makes you wonder what kind of knowledge they still possess, as the same followers introduced to Middle-aged Europe most that was lost from wars (Mathematics, Philosophy, Mechanics, Optics, Musics, Architecture)
Unfortunately, all their knowledge didn't permeate to Europe at the VII and after, as Christianity was repelling them (the Charles Martel, around 740 AD, and later the Inquisition & Crusades) !!
How great it would have been to Have the knowledge of someone like Avicenna : Born in 980-1084 AD, father of Occidental Medical Science (and much more material than today's Medical Curriculum), who did so much in his life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna that it's highly unfortunate not to know his real name (Ibn'Sina), and his native country (Iran) ... which used to be the center of a VERY sucessful civilization, way more advanced, at least in the architectural point of view, than the Ancient Greeks, around the FOURTH MILLENIUM Before Christian Era ... for exemple, they built skyscrapers, advanced irrigation and waste extraction systems ..
... the religion in question is Islam ...
Of course, Joe Sixpack and his friends will tell you that they are inherently a part of the Axis of Evil(TM) ...
:
Yup, you guessed it
--
Disclaimer, or "legal deathtrap" :
Definitions