Strikes me as similar to something I read in "A Spell for Chameleon", Piers Anthony's first (and perhaps last decent) Xanth book.
Some person/thing (I forget the exact nature) wanted to know if he had a soul. He went to the Good Magician Humphrey, who would answer any question in return for a year's service. At the end of the year, the short answer was "yes." The long answer was, "Anyone who is so concerned about the existence of his soul that he will give up a year of his life for it, surely has one."
The hidden characters on NUMB3RS last night were plain-text characters, each smaller than a single pixel on the original image. Clever technology, that one.
Seems to me that steganography could make things just about impossible to find, let alone decode. The LSB idea is only the simplest one, and it's easy to imagine other ways that would make locating the bits much rougher. That's before encrypting the hidden bits, too.
Speaking of NUMB3RS, last night they tried to convey the idea of steganography - hiding data in images. So they zoomed in on the eyebrow of the woman (The image was implied as pr0n, though it was network TV and showed nothing.) in the picture and found clear text in there.
When you're sick, you go to a doctor. When you want to buy food, you go to the grocery store. Etc...
There are appropriate places to go and sources to consult for the things we do. Like it or not, we have constructed a highly technological society, with a basis in science. As such, it is increasingly important to consult scientists in order to keep that society properly running and moving forward. That doesn't say that we don't consult non-scientists, when appropriate.
Schools... Beyond that, it's the parents who don't bring their kids up with a sense of self-discipline and value for education. You know, the same parents who, when the kid misbehaves in school, come to the defense of "their poor child" instead of reinforcing the discipline.
While I'm not the elderly one you were asking, especially not infinitely wise, I am sufficiently elderly and wise to know about Usenet, and use it appropriately. I use "knews" and sometimes Thunderbird's news facilities. On my home system I bridge mailing list into local newsgroups on leafnode2.
No, they MUST be right. Because this means Microsoft has WON, and every time Microsoft WINS it means that they have WON FOREVER!! Competition need not apply.
Face it, Linux' opportunity has now been officially pronounced to have come and gone, so now it's Microsoft and ONLY Microsoft.
After all, their street address is One Microsoft Way!
It's more than just a street address, it's a prophecy!
Unfortunately, there is one beginning point for ANY copyright extension legislation:
The copyright on "Steamboat Willie" will NEVER expire. That's most likely not just a "lifetime of the Disney corporation" issue, because their property holdings, physical and IP, are so great that whoever buys their carcass someday will have the same interests.
So for a more reasonable goal, I'd like to see initial copyrights shortened. For Mickey's sake, there need to be "Eternity - 1 day" extensions available. But I'd like to make those extensions require some pain. Not enough pain to prevent Disney from buying into the idea, but enough pain so that EVERYONE will consider, "Do I really want to pay to extend this particular copyright?"
As it stands, the Public Domain is dying 20 years at a time. Maybe it would be nice to roll back copyright duration, but that just ain't gonna happen in this reality, in this decade, maybe century.
So I'd like a small victory, to at least see SOME material progressing out of copyright into the Public Domain.
The Constitution says "for limited time." That means that some sort of copyright expiration means is necessary in DRM, so that after the copyright expiration the medium becomes free and unencumbered - public domain. AFAIK there is NO expiration mechanism whatsoever in current DRM, therefore it violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
This is most likely moot, because in order to properly test this in court, we'd need DRM-protected media of material with an expired copyright. That hasn't happened, and probably never will happen. Congress has asserted their right to extend copyright as much as they wish, and the Supreme Court has agreed - 1 day less than eternity is "limited."
As long as the ??AA funnels money to Congress, and as long as Congress accepts it, copyrights will never expire, and the Public Domain is effectively DEAD.
I was glancing through the shelves of the video store the other day, and saw the "Doc Savage" movie there. One of these days when I have some lifespan to waste, I'd like to watch it. Any comments, to move it up or down on my priority list?
>I see no religious problems other than religion itself, which I do see as a huge problem, basically the result of fear, gullibility, and >ignorance in various combinations. As far as moral and ethical issues go, we've been really poor at dealing with them among humans; there >is no indication we will be any better if or when we introduce (or find, or are found by) other forms of life. Things will get more >complicated, more divisive, and we'll make a further muddle of it. In my opinion. As to my "unconfirmed beliefs", that'd be 99% of what >I think about in every domain. I've a confidence-based world view, not a conviction based one. So you'll have to be more specific.:)
So for a few whimsical, but serious questions. Let's assume that we find the key to AI/AL. * Are we then obligated to free our computer running AI? Conversely, is not freeing it slavery? * Before answering the first question, it appears that we have to figure out how to categorize AI, since we do own animals. * What happens when we build AI/AL more intelligent than ourselves? Who does the categorizing? * Is turning off an AI/AL system, of human-caliber intelligence, murder? What about due diligence on backup power, etc? * When an AI/AL is freed, what about compensation of the owner of the hardware? * When a AI/AL emerges, is it then a minor? When does it become an adult?
Whimsical questions, but if AI/AL as you suggest appears, they will become real.
As for consciousness arising in humans, "Snow Crash", though just fun (and flawed, but sufficiently fun to overcome it) fiction, had some interesting ideas.
That assumes that there is still something exportable still being made in America. As a nation, we've worked HARD to destroy our entire manufacturing and agricultural base.
I only glanced at the article, because I thought a detailed reading would be too rough on the blood pressure. But taking the 50% more expensive, compensated for inflation, it's potentially far, far worse than that.
We have somewhere in the 150k troops in Iraq, and IIRQ there were about 500k troops in Viet Nam. So that's approximately 1/3 the troops for 50% more cost. Part of the equation is that in the Viet Nam era, we used a lot of soldiers for cooking and other jobs that are contracted out in Iraq. In light of these numbers I'd be curious to know how many true combat troops there are in Iraq vs Viet Nam, for those cost numbers.
Since you're mentioning the zeroconf space, it's also worth noting that they pointed RFC1918 at "192.", though I guess they discounted everything but "192.168.", but in the meantime they completely forgot about 172.16.-172.31. and gave 10. to cable companies.
I've been thinking for some time that 172.16-31 might be a better place to hide my LAN, away from normal expectations. In a very meager way, this confirms it.
That's the idea! Your business "as you know it" is SUPPOSED to be at risk. If in a dynamic field like computing and internet, your business "as you know it" is NOT at risk, you're holding everyone back. This stuff is still in a disruptive phase, and that means threatening existing business models.
Look at the ??AA, for instance. Their whole beef is that "...our business as we know it is at risk." What has really happened is that the ??AA has 5 roles: 1: Talent discovery and management 2: Studio facilities and management 3: Editorial 4: Promotion 5: Distribution In one fell swoop, the internet has made #5 almost completely obsolete, and has the easy potential to remove big chunks out of #4. Modern electronics makes #2 largely obsolete for the RIAA, and is starting to encroach on that for the MPAA.
If the ??AA were thoughtful and wise, they would embrace this change and start learning to make lemonade out of the lemons. For instance, the disappearance of #5 means the ability to shed a lot of physical infrastucture and the attendant costs. It could completely change the face of a music store and its HUGE inventory.
Instead, through legislation and judicial coercion they're trying to preserve "...our business as we know it" at the expense of innovation.
Microsoft has classically behaved the same way, "managing innovation." What they really mean is that they're holding the pace of innovation back in check, so that they can remain on top.
We're on Virgin Mobile, as practically-never cellphone users. It runs $20 every 3 months to prepay minutes, so for $6-7 a month we have that bit of connection when we need it.
As for "really cool enough," I once had to use their phone-tree service, and was taken back, a bit. There are phone-trees that sound mechanical like synthesized speech or reconstituted recorded phonyms, there are phone-trees that were dicated by a polite, bland voice. THIS phone-tree sounded like a marketing executive's concept of "really cool" as recorded by a young black woman. At each jump of the tree I almost thought it really was a person talking. I finally did get a real person, and I didn't have to use any "secret 'representative' code". She was polite and helped me solve my problem, but she sounded ordinary, not "hip" or "really cool".
Sometime I think it would be really nifty to see civil/criminal charges for actions like this. Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist, specifically because of IE. Forcing use of IE is somewhat akin to "aiding and abetting" criminal activity.
I'm not sure exactly who but the "new car model year" mentality into software, but it's really annoying. For that matter, most Linux distributions seem to run by that model, too.
Then there's Gentoo Linux. (Ignore for a moment all the snarky remarks about waiting for it to compile, though maybe I'll come back to that, later.)
Gentoo does have releases, and the current one is 2006.1. But the releases just aren't that important. What's more important is keeping your software up to date and making sure that you get Gentoo Linux Security Advisories (GLSA) taken care of. Typically, if a system is kept properly up to date, changing a release level is a matter of changing 1 (/etc/make.profile->../usr/portage/profiles/...) symlink, and then checking that your packages are still up to date. It's about the least disruptive "revision update" ever seen, usually a non-event.
That said, other things happen along the way that can be more disruptive, like gcc and glibc (I still haven't done gcc-4.1 and glibc-2.4) migrations, monolithic to modular X, kernel 2.4 to 2.6, devfs to udev, etc. But even at that, these changes taken singly can be more easily managed than taking them all at once with a reinstall or upgrade.
As long as you don't let your system get too far behind, Gentoo Linux simply doesn't have the "new car model year" mentality.
Back to compiling. Yes, it's a pain, but I've never had fewer problems having things just work. The prerequisites were on my system, it compiled on my system, and aside from waiting for the compilations, it pretty much "just works." Back when I was running a binary/rpm based distribution I couldn't make that same claim. For the greatest part, the problems I've had have been with binary-distributed software, not source-distributed. (Exception, haven't been able to get Doomsday to work on amd64, but it's only officially distributed for x86 and ppc.)
It's not the truck that gets used to haul things...
It's the truck that apparently only ever gets used to haul an ego - he bed looks perfectly pristine and there's no hitch.
Personally I have about the smallest vehicles I can wrap around my (rather tall) family. Plus with the overwhelming number of SUVs and ego-hauling trucks on the roads these days I don't feel safe in as small a car as I used to.
With open source, as others have said, the source is out there - for anyone to fix or exploit. At the same time, there are well-known people who are discussing open source security, there are well-disclosed flaws and fixes. There is a process and it gives every appearance of working most of the time. Moreover, its operation is generally transparent so we can see when it works and when it doesn't. When it doesn't work, we can also see people upset and trying to fix it.
Back to those well-known people... About the only Linux Luminary I've met in person is John Maddog Hall, and I have a friend who has submitted a kernel patch. But I've read enough by some of the others to know something about them, and to appreciate them as people. At the very least, I feel I can trust the combination of these people and an open process certainly more than my own code security audit capability. As long as the source is open, and these people are doing the things that they've been doing, it gives me some comfort on the software.
Contrast that with closed source... The authors of closed source software are generally "top men" like the ones who are in charge of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Won't name anyone, but you are assured that they are, "top programmers." Even if you do find some names, for the most part since the process itself is not open, you know nothing about the people, unless they've authored articles you've read.
Who are these people? On what do I base my trust?
Plus I've also seen enough of corporate practices to know that some of that software may not even have a maintainer. The old guy left, his manager has a new mission with high visibility from above, and just hasn't had time to backfill, may not have even known that the old guy was doing this, etc, etc.
Actually I was wondering more about barely-supervised contracts, and "feeding at the trough." ie, corruption. This war has one key difference, in that many of the non-combat duties that used to be handled by soldiers are now being handled by contractors. Rumbles in the news hint that these contracts are not being well supervised.
As to what the AC who responded to you said, he's certainly exposed a lot of 'plans of Democrats' to do fiscally irresponsible things. I'm absolutely certain he must have a good source for the plans he's commenting on.
Regardless of what the AC said, it really sums up to the fact that it's generally good for the nation when there's the Hill and the White House are in opposite hands. That's when checks and balances work, as under Clinton and NOT since 2000.
We may well have had an opportunity to win hearts and minds in Iraq, by deposing a dictator.
But we blew it.
Part of the selling of the War in Iraq was minimizing the price tag. Part of minimizing the price tag was silencing certain voices, and some of those voices weren't even critics, they were the people planning for post-War activity in Iraq. Evidently to someone, it was obvious that it was going to be harder to keep Iraq under control post-War than it would be winning the War itself. That would translate to a higher price tag, which might mean that the War could not have been sold.
McCain would like to put in more troops, but IMHO we've poisoned the well. Had we had more troops at the outset, things might be different now. Of course had we kept a more diligent lid on the place the war would never have been necessary. (Also IMHO, they were working on WMD - with their most *loyal* scientists. But that's a far cry from their *best* scientists, and they may never have gotten there at that rate.)
One real question about the Iraq War... We keep hearing as much about the cost in $$$ as we do about the cost in lives. I lived through Viet Nam, and remember hearing about the cost in lives, but almost nothing about the cost in $$$. Yet I also keep hearing about our troops be under/improperly equipped in Iraq, and that we're running the War on-the-cheap. Yet it's so expensive. What's going on? How does this war compare in "cost effectiveness" with previous wars?
These RIAA lawsuits are financial ruin for most people. I find it plausible that someone, when smacked with out of these suits, would look at their financial future going down the drain, themselves condemned to poverty for the rest of their lives, and commit suicide. (Not necessarily likely, but plausible.)
Has this happened, yet?
Can a human death yet be blamed on these lawsuits?
Slashdot Mirror
Strikes me as similar to something I read in "A Spell for Chameleon", Piers Anthony's first (and perhaps last decent) Xanth book.
Some person/thing (I forget the exact nature) wanted to know if he had a soul. He went to the Good Magician Humphrey, who would answer any question in return for a year's service. At the end of the year, the short answer was "yes." The long answer was, "Anyone who is so concerned about the existence of his soul that he will give up a year of his life for it, surely has one."
The hidden characters on NUMB3RS last night were plain-text characters, each smaller than a single pixel on the original image. Clever technology, that one.
Seems to me that steganography could make things just about impossible to find, let alone decode. The LSB idea is only the simplest one, and it's easy to imagine other ways that would make locating the bits much rougher. That's before encrypting the hidden bits, too.
Speaking of NUMB3RS, last night they tried to convey the idea of steganography - hiding data in images. So they zoomed in on the eyebrow of the woman (The image was implied as pr0n, though it was network TV and showed nothing.) in the picture and found clear text in there.
In other words...
When you're sick, you go to a doctor.
When you want to buy food, you go to the grocery store.
Etc...
There are appropriate places to go and sources to consult for the things we do. Like it or not, we have constructed a highly technological society, with a basis in science. As such, it is increasingly important to consult scientists in order to keep that society properly running and moving forward. That doesn't say that we don't consult non-scientists, when appropriate.
Schools... Beyond that, it's the parents who don't bring their kids up with a sense of self-discipline and value for education. You know, the same parents who, when the kid misbehaves in school, come to the defense of "their poor child" instead of reinforcing the discipline.
While I'm not the elderly one you were asking, especially not infinitely wise, I am sufficiently elderly and wise to know about Usenet, and use it appropriately. I use "knews" and sometimes Thunderbird's news facilities. On my home system I bridge mailing list into local newsgroups on leafnode2.
No, they MUST be right. Because this means Microsoft has WON, and every time Microsoft WINS it means that they have WON FOREVER!! Competition need not apply.
Face it, Linux' opportunity has now been officially pronounced to have come and gone, so now it's Microsoft and ONLY Microsoft.
After all, their street address is One Microsoft Way!
It's more than just a street address, it's a prophecy!
Unfortunately, there is one beginning point for ANY copyright extension legislation:
The copyright on "Steamboat Willie" will NEVER expire. That's most likely not just a "lifetime of the Disney corporation" issue, because their property holdings, physical and IP, are so great that whoever buys their carcass someday will have the same interests.
So for a more reasonable goal, I'd like to see initial copyrights shortened. For Mickey's sake, there need to be "Eternity - 1 day" extensions available. But I'd like to make those extensions require some pain. Not enough pain to prevent Disney from buying into the idea, but enough pain so that EVERYONE will consider, "Do I really want to pay to extend this particular copyright?"
As it stands, the Public Domain is dying 20 years at a time. Maybe it would be nice to roll back copyright duration, but that just ain't gonna happen in this reality, in this decade, maybe century.
So I'd like a small victory, to at least see SOME material progressing out of copyright into the Public Domain.
The Constitution says "for limited time." That means that some sort of copyright expiration means is necessary in DRM, so that after the copyright expiration the medium becomes free and unencumbered - public domain. AFAIK there is NO expiration mechanism whatsoever in current DRM, therefore it violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
This is most likely moot, because in order to properly test this in court, we'd need DRM-protected media of material with an expired copyright. That hasn't happened, and probably never will happen. Congress has asserted their right to extend copyright as much as they wish, and the Supreme Court has agreed - 1 day less than eternity is "limited."
As long as the ??AA funnels money to Congress, and as long as Congress accepts it, copyrights will never expire, and the Public Domain is effectively DEAD.
I was glancing through the shelves of the video store the other day, and saw the "Doc Savage" movie there. One of these days when I have some lifespan to waste, I'd like to watch it. Any comments, to move it up or down on my priority list?
>I see no religious problems other than religion itself, which I do see as a huge problem, basically the result of fear, gullibility, and :)
>ignorance in various combinations. As far as moral and ethical issues go, we've been really poor at dealing with them among humans; there
>is no indication we will be any better if or when we introduce (or find, or are found by) other forms of life. Things will get more
>complicated, more divisive, and we'll make a further muddle of it. In my opinion. As to my "unconfirmed beliefs", that'd be 99% of what
>I think about in every domain. I've a confidence-based world view, not a conviction based one. So you'll have to be more specific.
So for a few whimsical, but serious questions. Let's assume that we find the key to AI/AL.
* Are we then obligated to free our computer running AI? Conversely, is not freeing it slavery?
* Before answering the first question, it appears that we have to figure out how to categorize AI, since we do own animals.
* What happens when we build AI/AL more intelligent than ourselves? Who does the categorizing?
* Is turning off an AI/AL system, of human-caliber intelligence, murder? What about due diligence on backup power, etc?
* When an AI/AL is freed, what about compensation of the owner of the hardware?
* When a AI/AL emerges, is it then a minor? When does it become an adult?
Whimsical questions, but if AI/AL as you suggest appears, they will become real.
As for consciousness arising in humans, "Snow Crash", though just fun (and flawed, but sufficiently fun to overcome it) fiction, had some interesting ideas.
I've seen a bumper sticker around town.
"Impeach Cheney first"
That assumes that there is still something exportable still being made in America. As a nation, we've worked HARD to destroy our entire manufacturing and agricultural base.
A few days later...
I only glanced at the article, because I thought a detailed reading would be too rough on the blood pressure. But taking the 50% more expensive, compensated for inflation, it's potentially far, far worse than that.
We have somewhere in the 150k troops in Iraq, and IIRQ there were about 500k troops in Viet Nam. So that's approximately 1/3 the troops for 50% more cost. Part of the equation is that in the Viet Nam era, we used a lot of soldiers for cooking and other jobs that are contracted out in Iraq. In light of these numbers I'd be curious to know how many true combat troops there are in Iraq vs Viet Nam, for those cost numbers.
Since you're mentioning the zeroconf space, it's also worth noting that they pointed RFC1918 at "192.", though I guess they discounted everything but "192.168.", but in the meantime they completely forgot about 172.16.-172.31. and gave 10. to cable companies.
I've been thinking for some time that 172.16-31 might be a better place to hide my LAN, away from normal expectations. In a very meager way, this confirms it.
That's the idea! Your business "as you know it" is SUPPOSED to be at risk. If in a dynamic field like computing and internet, your business "as you know it" is NOT at risk, you're holding everyone back. This stuff is still in a disruptive phase, and that means threatening existing business models.
Look at the ??AA, for instance. Their whole beef is that "...our business as we know it is at risk." What has really happened is that the ??AA has 5 roles:
1: Talent discovery and management
2: Studio facilities and management
3: Editorial
4: Promotion
5: Distribution
In one fell swoop, the internet has made #5 almost completely obsolete, and has the easy potential to remove big chunks out of #4. Modern electronics makes #2 largely obsolete for the RIAA, and is starting to encroach on that for the MPAA.
If the ??AA were thoughtful and wise, they would embrace this change and start learning to make lemonade out of the lemons. For instance, the disappearance of #5 means the ability to shed a lot of physical infrastucture and the attendant costs. It could completely change the face of a music store and its HUGE inventory.
Instead, through legislation and judicial coercion they're trying to preserve "...our business as we know it" at the expense of innovation.
Microsoft has classically behaved the same way, "managing innovation." What they really mean is that they're holding the pace of innovation back in check, so that they can remain on top.
We're on Virgin Mobile, as practically-never cellphone users. It runs $20 every 3 months to prepay minutes, so for $6-7 a month we have that bit of connection when we need it.
As for "really cool enough," I once had to use their phone-tree service, and was taken back, a bit. There are phone-trees that sound mechanical like synthesized speech or reconstituted recorded phonyms, there are phone-trees that were dicated by a polite, bland voice. THIS phone-tree sounded like a marketing executive's concept of "really cool" as recorded by a young black woman. At each jump of the tree I almost thought it really was a person talking. I finally did get a real person, and I didn't have to use any "secret 'representative' code". She was polite and helped me solve my problem, but she sounded ordinary, not "hip" or "really cool".
Sometime I think it would be really nifty to see civil/criminal charges for actions like this. Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist, specifically because of IE. Forcing use of IE is somewhat akin to "aiding and abetting" criminal activity.
I'm not sure exactly who but the "new car model year" mentality into software, but it's really annoying. For that matter, most Linux distributions seem to run by that model, too.
Then there's Gentoo Linux. (Ignore for a moment all the snarky remarks about waiting for it to compile, though maybe I'll come back to that, later.)
Gentoo does have releases, and the current one is 2006.1. But the releases just aren't that important. What's more important is keeping your software up to date and making sure that you get Gentoo Linux Security Advisories (GLSA) taken care of. Typically, if a system is kept properly up to date, changing a release level is a matter of changing 1 (/etc/make.profile->../usr/portage/profiles/...) symlink, and then checking that your packages are still up to date. It's about the least disruptive "revision update" ever seen, usually a non-event.
That said, other things happen along the way that can be more disruptive, like gcc and glibc (I still haven't done gcc-4.1 and glibc-2.4) migrations, monolithic to modular X, kernel 2.4 to 2.6, devfs to udev, etc. But even at that, these changes taken singly can be more easily managed than taking them all at once with a reinstall or upgrade.
As long as you don't let your system get too far behind, Gentoo Linux simply doesn't have the "new car model year" mentality.
Back to compiling. Yes, it's a pain, but I've never had fewer problems having things just work. The prerequisites were on my system, it compiled on my system, and aside from waiting for the compilations, it pretty much "just works." Back when I was running a binary/rpm based distribution I couldn't make that same claim. For the greatest part, the problems I've had have been with binary-distributed software, not source-distributed. (Exception, haven't been able to get Doomsday to work on amd64, but it's only officially distributed for x86 and ppc.)
It's not the truck that gets used to haul things...
It's the truck that apparently only ever gets used to haul an ego - he bed looks perfectly pristine and there's no hitch.
Personally I have about the smallest vehicles I can wrap around my (rather tall) family. Plus with the overwhelming number of SUVs and ego-hauling trucks on the roads these days I don't feel safe in as small a car as I used to.
With open source, as others have said, the source is out there - for anyone to fix or exploit. At the same time, there are well-known people who are discussing open source security, there are well-disclosed flaws and fixes. There is a process and it gives every appearance of working most of the time. Moreover, its operation is generally transparent so we can see when it works and when it doesn't. When it doesn't work, we can also see people upset and trying to fix it.
Back to those well-known people... About the only Linux Luminary I've met in person is John Maddog Hall, and I have a friend who has submitted a kernel patch. But I've read enough by some of the others to know something about them, and to appreciate them as people. At the very least, I feel I can trust the combination of these people and an open process certainly more than my own code security audit capability. As long as the source is open, and these people are doing the things that they've been doing, it gives me some comfort on the software.
Contrast that with closed source...
The authors of closed source software are generally "top men" like the ones who are in charge of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Won't name anyone, but you are assured that they are, "top programmers." Even if you do find some names, for the most part since the process itself is not open, you know nothing about the people, unless they've authored articles you've read.
Who are these people? On what do I base my trust?
Plus I've also seen enough of corporate practices to know that some of that software may not even have a maintainer. The old guy left, his manager has a new mission with high visibility from above, and just hasn't had time to backfill, may not have even known that the old guy was doing this, etc, etc.
Actually I was wondering more about barely-supervised contracts, and "feeding at the trough." ie, corruption. This war has one key difference, in that many of the non-combat duties that used to be handled by soldiers are now being handled by contractors. Rumbles in the news hint that these contracts are not being well supervised.
As to what the AC who responded to you said, he's certainly exposed a lot of 'plans of Democrats' to do fiscally irresponsible things. I'm absolutely certain he must have a good source for the plans he's commenting on.
Regardless of what the AC said, it really sums up to the fact that it's generally good for the nation when there's the Hill and the White House are in opposite hands. That's when checks and balances work, as under Clinton and NOT since 2000.
We may well have had an opportunity to win hearts and minds in Iraq, by deposing a dictator.
But we blew it.
Part of the selling of the War in Iraq was minimizing the price tag. Part of minimizing the price tag was silencing certain voices, and some of those voices weren't even critics, they were the people planning for post-War activity in Iraq. Evidently to someone, it was obvious that it was going to be harder to keep Iraq under control post-War than it would be winning the War itself. That would translate to a higher price tag, which might mean that the War could not have been sold.
McCain would like to put in more troops, but IMHO we've poisoned the well. Had we had more troops at the outset, things might be different now. Of course had we kept a more diligent lid on the place the war would never have been necessary. (Also IMHO, they were working on WMD - with their most *loyal* scientists. But that's a far cry from their *best* scientists, and they may never have gotten there at that rate.)
One real question about the Iraq War...
We keep hearing as much about the cost in $$$ as we do about the cost in lives. I lived through Viet Nam, and remember hearing about the cost in lives, but almost nothing about the cost in $$$. Yet I also keep hearing about our troops be under/improperly equipped in Iraq, and that we're running the War on-the-cheap. Yet it's so expensive.
What's going on?
How does this war compare in "cost effectiveness" with previous wars?
My point is simple. Find one of these people, preferably with some screening for sensibility and stability, then call 60 Minutes, Larry King, etc.
These RIAA lawsuits are financial ruin for most people. I find it plausible that someone, when smacked with out of these suits, would look at their financial future going down the drain, themselves condemned to poverty for the rest of their lives, and commit suicide. (Not necessarily likely, but plausible.)
Has this happened, yet?
Can a human death yet be blamed on these lawsuits?