... we can search for sites about Cuban Cigars, we can even read other peoples reviews of them. We just can't buy them.:(
Of course you can. Just go to Cuba via Mexico and put the cigars into a Mexican cigar box before you go back to the US. If you ask nicely in Cuba, the vendors will even do this for you. Or you could move to a free country that doesn't place restrictions on where you can travel to.
Why would the best of the best in every discipline stay in your country if they could leave for another country, unless they receive better treatment, housing, vehicles, service, etc. than other people?
Not everyone is entirely motivated by personal wealth. Many distinguished academic researchers are attracted by research funding - there is no reason that a communist economy couldn't provide better research facilities than a capitalist system; certainly the universities of the former Soviet Union were held in high regard. Similarly, athletes may be motivated by good sports facilities as much as personal sponsorship deals. It is perfectly possible for a communist society to motivate people without dismissing the notion of equality.
How do you have communism without a one-party system - would it not invariably be chaotic, since a change of government means a change of the entire plan of allocation of economic resources?
A zero party system would be better than a one party system, but if you insist on having political parties, there is no reason that you couldn't have more than one. Why would the changes in allocation of resources be any more problematic than the systems we currently have. After a change of goverment in the UK, there is generally a massive change in the amount of funding that goes towards the welfare state - to schools, hospitals, etc. It doesn't cause major problems now, why would it if the economic system were communist?
The contracts with the makers of voting machinery might stipulate that if a full recount of the remaining 90% of polling places is required due to any discrepancies between results A, B, and C, then the makers of the polling equipment will be liable for, say, half the costs of those extra manual counts.
Why only half? Assuming that the full recount doesn't find that the discrepency was due to grossly inaccurate hand counting in the sample, should the manufacturer not be liable for the full costs of the failure of their equipment? I am sure they will demand the full profits if it all works smoothly. Of course, there would have to be some tolerance built in to the comparison with the hand count, but that should be simple enough.
we really need to scrap 90% of the distributions out there, there are way too many, and out of the mainstream ones, we only need a few (less than a dozen, if not even less)
Why? And who is "we"? What on Earth makes you think that you have any right whatsoever to prevent people from doing what they wish with the code? Has the whole concept of "FREE" completely passed you by?
Gentoo, regardless of what stage you start from, will teach you more about Linux (and by extension Unix) than debian will
I think that translates as "Gentoo is more difficult to install", but I could be wrong. I haven't tried it yet. It is the next on my list if I ever decide I've had enough of Debian.
According to this BBC report, North Korea is claiming to have destroyed a mountain as part of a large hydro-electric project. They are apparently considering a request to allow a British diplomat to inspect the scene.
I understand how the Cuban missile crisis could make some Americans hostile to Castro, but there are a couple of things about the context of the situation that you don't mention. For a start, the CIA's attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs preceded the missile crisis by about a year, so the US certainly can't claim to have done nothing to provoke Castro. It is also convenient to forget that NATO was complaining about Soviet missiles in Cuba, having just installed a nuclear arsenal in Turkey to point at the Warsaw Pact. Fortunately nuclear war was averted, but the whole situation was a lot more complicated than "US good, everyone else bad".
I would also reccomend installing a pedal lock and taking the battery inside at night (or the alternator cable). A hidden cutout switch could also work. Install a switch for the fuel pump below the shift boot or something.
The low tension wires to the started motor are an excellent place to break the circuit. When they try stealing the car, it seems like it has a dead battery. Some bozos in Manchester tried to steal my girlfriend's car which I had installed such a switch into. A quick walk around the block and we found the car perfectly safe in the middle of the road - they had tried push-starting it.
You can take quotes out of context all you like (and the part about saving lives is important) but you still have not shown any correlation whatsoever between the establishment of the oil for food programme and any increase in the murder rate in Iraq. Your assertion that the programme was in any way responsible for killing people is ridiculous.
Feeding children and eliminating polio is not "killing millions".
I'll take that rant to mean that your links don't support the assertion that the oil for food programme was responsible for the deaths of millions of Iraqis.
The oil for food programme may have been abused by some people, presumably including Saddam Hussein. That does not negate the fact that it prevented millions of innocent people from dying in Iraq.
If you wish to complain that the oil for food programme was abused by some people, fine. If you wish to complain that millions of people in Iraq suffered, also fine. But please don't complain that people suffered because of the oil for food programme - it simply isn't true.
We may well come to different conclusions about the worth of a programme that saved lives but allowed corrupt people to siphon off some of the money, but that is the reality of the world we live in. There are no simple black or white choices. The UN had the chance to save lives and relieve suffering. The fact that the system could be abused is not a reason to pass up that chance. Maybe better auditing could have been put in place, but that does not make the programme responsible for killing innocent people.
Well, it is certainly in East Asia (considerably nearer to Japan than India) and South of China and Russia. I'll confess to not knowing where the location of the geographic centre of Asia off the top of my head, but Korea being SE of it seems a reasonable guess to me. Do you know better?
Those links are much better. Now, presumably you read this quote in the second one:
Finally, whatever illicit gains Saddam may or may not have been able to skim off, the program did provide a basic food ration for all 27 million residents of Iraq. Between 1996-2001, the average Iraqi's daily food intake increased from 1200 to 2200 kilocalories per day. Malnutrition among Iraqi children dropped by 50% during the life of the program, as did deaths of children under five in the center and south of the country. During the same period, polio was eradicated from Iraq, thanks to vaccination campaigns funded by the program.
How does that support your assertion that the oil for food programme was responsible for killing millions of Iraqis?
Oh, you've got a quote from WorldNetDaily - well it must be true then. I've never heard of wnd.com before, but a very quick glance at their front page makes it abundantly clear that they are not an independent news source.
If you want to frighten me with your scary stories about how ineffectual the UN is, please try linking to a site that at least pretends to be impartial.
What planet are you on? The oil for food programme was a UN sponsored attempt to relieve the suffering that ordinary Iraqis were experiencing as a result of the sanctions imposed by UN resolution 661 (which was drafted by Spain, UK and US).
I think you need to brush up on your knowledge of nuclear weapons. Atomic bombs, like the ones dropped on Japan, used fission. The more sophisticated Hydrogen bomb uses fusion. Wikipedia has a good introduction to the subject.
we have not used nuclear weapons as a pre-emtive measure against anyone.
So is the fact that the invasion of Iraq was non-nuclear supposed to give comfort to the N. Korean government? Nuclear weapons are a deterrent against conventional attacks as well.
Men like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Kim Jong only respond to force nothing less. If you believe cowboy diplomacy got us into this mess please explain why years of UN dealing with Iraq we never saw the end of Saddam, and Talban [sic] in Afghanistan????
The reason that years of diplomacy didn't get rid of Saddam Hussein is because that was not the aim of the diplomacy. The aim was to contain Iraq militarily - and it worked! That is why there are no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Containment was working and the region was stable, until that idiot Bush came along and screwed the whole thing up.
Nations at peace will be able to develop nuclear weapons. It is unrealistic to think that states in the 21st century will not be able to develop technology that the allies developed in the first half of the 20th century. The only way to reduce the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons is to reduce the need for them to possess nuclear weapons.
That requires at least two things. Firstly, countries have to feel safe from external aggression. I don't have complete answers for this, but it will probably require a massive strengthening of the UN or some equivalent international body. Secondly, the most aggressive nations on Earth will have to get rid of (most) of their nuclear weapons. That includes the US.
Whatever the solutions to avoiding nuclear proliferation, Bush's policies aren't part of them. Labelling a group of countries "evil" and then invading one of them is not the way to reassure N.Korea that they have no need to fear attack. It would also help if Americans could get over their hatred of all things communist. The US trades extensively with China, yet imposes sanctions on Cuba. If the White House could learn to respect the sovereignty of other nations, it might not need to waste such massive amounts of money on defence and security.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has said in the past Mr Bush would not have invaded Iraq if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons capable of use.
I think he is undoubtedly correct. As Robin Cook (a former British foreign secretary) said in his resignation speech immediately prior to the invasion of Iraq:
it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion.
If you really believe that the US will be able to march into S.E. asia and win a war, I suggest you have another look at your history books. If you think nuking another country into oblivion will make you safe, you have clearly learned nothing from 9/11 about the vincibility of even the strongest nations.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you can. Just go to Cuba via Mexico and put the cigars into a Mexican cigar box before you go back to the US. If you ask nicely in Cuba, the vendors will even do this for you. Or you could move to a free country that doesn't place restrictions on where you can travel to.
Not everyone is entirely motivated by personal wealth. Many distinguished academic researchers are attracted by research funding - there is no reason that a communist economy couldn't provide better research facilities than a capitalist system; certainly the universities of the former Soviet Union were held in high regard. Similarly, athletes may be motivated by good sports facilities as much as personal sponsorship deals. It is perfectly possible for a communist society to motivate people without dismissing the notion of equality.
How do you have communism without a one-party system - would it not invariably be chaotic, since a change of government means a change of the entire plan of allocation of economic resources?
A zero party system would be better than a one party system, but if you insist on having political parties, there is no reason that you couldn't have more than one. Why would the changes in allocation of resources be any more problematic than the systems we currently have. After a change of goverment in the UK, there is generally a massive change in the amount of funding that goes towards the welfare state - to schools, hospitals, etc. It doesn't cause major problems now, why would it if the economic system were communist?
OK, rifles at the ready. Whatever the court decides, don't let the bastards steal citizens' rights to [privacy|information]
I do not think the word "keep" means what you think it means!
Why only half? Assuming that the full recount doesn't find that the discrepency was due to grossly inaccurate hand counting in the sample, should the manufacturer not be liable for the full costs of the failure of their equipment? I am sure they will demand the full profits if it all works smoothly. Of course, there would have to be some tolerance built in to the comparison with the hand count, but that should be simple enough.
Have a look at the link in the story: www.pwc.com.nyud.net:8090...
This will have no impact on PWC's servers. Then again, I would have thought that they could afford to buy enough bandwidth to keep up.
Why? And who is "we"? What on Earth makes you think that you have any right whatsoever to prevent people from doing what they wish with the code? Has the whole concept of "FREE" completely passed you by?
I think that translates as "Gentoo is more difficult to install", but I could be wrong. I haven't tried it yet. It is the next on my list if I ever decide I've had enough of Debian.
According to this BBC report, North Korea is claiming to have destroyed a mountain as part of a large hydro-electric project. They are apparently considering a request to allow a British diplomat to inspect the scene.
I understand how the Cuban missile crisis could make some Americans hostile to Castro, but there are a couple of things about the context of the situation that you don't mention. For a start, the CIA's attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs preceded the missile crisis by about a year, so the US certainly can't claim to have done nothing to provoke Castro. It is also convenient to forget that NATO was complaining about Soviet missiles in Cuba, having just installed a nuclear arsenal in Turkey to point at the Warsaw Pact. Fortunately nuclear war was averted, but the whole situation was a lot more complicated than "US good, everyone else bad".
The low tension wires to the started motor are an excellent place to break the circuit. When they try stealing the car, it seems like it has a dead battery. Some bozos in Manchester tried to steal my girlfriend's car which I had installed such a switch into. A quick walk around the block and we found the car perfectly safe in the middle of the road - they had tried push-starting it.
I assure you, there are things that bother me more than Saddam's wealth.
20 million is a pittance for a head of state to find. Besides, are you going to honestly try to tell me that the US has never funded terrorism?
If you don't have any pets, consider getting a dog.
Feeding children and eliminating polio is not "killing millions".
The oil for food programme may have been abused by some people, presumably including Saddam Hussein. That does not negate the fact that it prevented millions of innocent people from dying in Iraq.
If you wish to complain that the oil for food programme was abused by some people, fine. If you wish to complain that millions of people in Iraq suffered, also fine. But please don't complain that people suffered because of the oil for food programme - it simply isn't true.
We may well come to different conclusions about the worth of a programme that saved lives but allowed corrupt people to siphon off some of the money, but that is the reality of the world we live in. There are no simple black or white choices. The UN had the chance to save lives and relieve suffering. The fact that the system could be abused is not a reason to pass up that chance. Maybe better auditing could have been put in place, but that does not make the programme responsible for killing innocent people.
Well, it is certainly in East Asia (considerably nearer to Japan than India) and South of China and Russia. I'll confess to not knowing where the location of the geographic centre of Asia off the top of my head, but Korea being SE of it seems a reasonable guess to me. Do you know better?
How does that support your assertion that the oil for food programme was responsible for killing millions of Iraqis?
If you want to frighten me with your scary stories about how ineffectual the UN is, please try linking to a site that at least pretends to be impartial.
What planet are you on? The oil for food programme was a UN sponsored attempt to relieve the suffering that ordinary Iraqis were experiencing as a result of the sanctions imposed by UN resolution 661 (which was drafted by Spain, UK and US).
I think you need to brush up on your knowledge of nuclear weapons. Atomic bombs, like the ones dropped on Japan, used fission. The more sophisticated Hydrogen bomb uses fusion. Wikipedia has a good introduction to the subject.
So is the fact that the invasion of Iraq was non-nuclear supposed to give comfort to the N. Korean government? Nuclear weapons are a deterrent against conventional attacks as well.
The reason that years of diplomacy didn't get rid of Saddam Hussein is because that was not the aim of the diplomacy. The aim was to contain Iraq militarily - and it worked! That is why there are no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Containment was working and the region was stable, until that idiot Bush came along and screwed the whole thing up.
That requires at least two things. Firstly, countries have to feel safe from external aggression. I don't have complete answers for this, but it will probably require a massive strengthening of the UN or some equivalent international body. Secondly, the most aggressive nations on Earth will have to get rid of (most) of their nuclear weapons. That includes the US.
Whatever the solutions to avoiding nuclear proliferation, Bush's policies aren't part of them. Labelling a group of countries "evil" and then invading one of them is not the way to reassure N.Korea that they have no need to fear attack. It would also help if Americans could get over their hatred of all things communist. The US trades extensively with China, yet imposes sanctions on Cuba. If the White House could learn to respect the sovereignty of other nations, it might not need to waste such massive amounts of money on defence and security.
What, peace for half a century?
According to the BBC:
I think he is undoubtedly correct. As Robin Cook (a former British foreign secretary) said in his resignation speech immediately prior to the invasion of Iraq:
If you really believe that the US will be able to march into S.E. asia and win a war, I suggest you have another look at your history books. If you think nuking another country into oblivion will make you safe, you have clearly learned nothing from 9/11 about the vincibility of even the strongest nations.