Had Derby and MySQL and the like not been available,
Somebody would have written a free-ish SQL had not the likes of MySQL been available. FOSS developers aren't really good innovators(*) but they are darned good engineers and implementors and somewhere out there, somebody will be making what starts as a free clone of some sort of a popular RDBMS, and then evolves its own philosophy.
(*) By that, I mean, FOSS people aren't going to come up with some literary vision of computing, but, once they have a spec, they can write you a good one.
A government that acknowledges that most people have some genetic complaint that will appear later in life, and puts the appropriate resources in would be able to give people the support they need, with preventative treatment, lifestyle advice, etc.
I would be more willing to bet that the government is the last place you would want to have accumulating genetic data.
n summary, knowledge can be used for good or bad, and the constant fear that it will be used for ill is simply the dim view we hold of humanity.
Some knowledge is worse than others. What does the knowledge of making an atomic bomb do that is positive?
Personally, I'm hoping that, if we get the knowledge and technology that used to be considered 'future society', we'll get the appropriate changes in attitudes to go with it.
It can't happen, because, at the end of the day, people with bad genes aren't as good, and never will be. That's the thing. Once people learn something or someone isn't as good, that's just it, the floodgates open and they move on.
Last time I checked, most liberal secularists openly accept differences.
No they don't. They are just as fanatical about their ideals as people on the opposite side of the idealogical divide. Besides, the thing is, the people most likely to commit genocide are those who think they are incapable of wrong.
Let's say we find out that africans, asians, and europeans have differences in genes that we didn't notice before.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying, what if we find that people with some gene, call it, for example, T-1742 ABC, are 10% more likely to be murderers. If you did the math, and the social cost of murder, you might be able to make the economic case that you should ethnically cleanse your society of them (of course, through deportations... but if no one wanted them... then, well, there's other solutions).
Of course, it doesn't even have to be that evil. I mean, we could make the serious argument that why should people without cancer genes pay for cancer treatments in people who have them?
I'm not talking about racism along existing racial lines... I'm talking about a new kind of racism, based on genetic analysis. Or, it could even be a national health care plan allocating less resources to those with weaker genes. It could be men or women administering genetic tests to partners and screening each other or unborn children for genetic problems. Really, the sky is the limit.
Of course, if such things happened to take place along fault lines that coincided with today's racial labels, that's one thing. And we haven't even gotten to the parts about using cloned human skin to make human skin coats...
Well, the dark side of secularism looms its ugly head. Pretty much all physical evidence proves that people are not equal, and, every day we investigate our genes only proves it more and more.
Equality is a religious belief, born of the idea that people great and small are luminous beings, each possessing a soul that beyond our means to measure and categorize.
Evolutionary biologists can say that animals are all "equal" in some abstract way, but, science has already told us that fish live better underwater than humans, that birds can fly and fish cannot, and now, we will find out that we humans too, have different genes that render us better or worse at fighting diseases, giving us a better or worse propensity to engage in certain kinds of athletics or certain types of thought. Even the idea of free will is under academic assault, as scientists unravel the very structure of our minds.
With this knowledge will come new kinds of racism, a racism based on genetics and statistics and all other facts that are provably true. To oppose social engineering based on genetics and population statistics might well be as quaint in academic circles as someone opposed to vaccines is today. We may find it loathsome that the Nazis exterminated the Jews in Europe to achieve their peaceful society, but, will find it loathsome in the future when we decide whether or not breed out or exterminate a class of people with a particular gene that we might calculate to be disruptive or costly?
Congratulations people! You've crushed the Church and disproved God, only to find that made genetic Nazism not only the most logical course of social action, but also the most inevitable.
You have made the very liberalism to which you supposedly ascribe obsolete. Nicely done.
Wrong. You also need to know what's going on around you
You do. That's what churches are for, and you under estimate them.
Look, you can't even begin to make the argument that religion is not a surviving strategy when Christianity has survived for 2000 years and Islam has survived and prospered for 1500, regardless of the types of governments that they have confronted.
Wrong. You also need to know what's going on around you
You will get that information in a tightly nit religious community. Everyone will know everyone. Just walk into a Virginia Baptist church and you can see that. Most likely, the serial killer will be the weird guy, you'll know that if the serial killer say he's being robbed, he's probably lying, so that, if you see somone shooting the serial killer, you'll say, "about time".
So the grandparent poster is right: without a reliable source of information - news, in this context - you can't make informed decisions, and your guns are useless.
The original poster makes the same sort of loony left wing argument that I've heard from the loony right wing. These people are the same. They don't take responsibility for their own lives, they make themselves victims, never apply themselves, and then, to make themselves have some social standing, they go on supposedly researching various conspiracy theories, latch onto the most ridiculous stuff, never think critically and above all, never actually do the work.
And, the thing with the left wing too, is that they are the WORST sources of information, because, really, left wing elites cloister themselves in academia or the media and don't really get out there. The best source of information about what's going on is a redneck conservative salesperson, because, they are out meeting thousands of people. I won't trust the NYT about where the economy is, but I'd trust the lady down the street that runs an Exxon. I guarantee you, too, that no university professor in my area, has ever actually talked to a gas station owner.
I offer as proof of that example, Barrack Obama's campaign ads in PA. He's running ads of all these people at gas stations pissed off over gas prices (and never mind that his policies ultimately will drive up fuel prices), but it's obvious that his people demonize gas stations and their owners, when they never stopped to ask, just how they are doing.
I did. And the answer is, not well at all. These people aren't rich, and never have been. Owning a gas station is a shitty job. Worse, because gas prices are so high, competition at the service station level is particularly intense. Rising credit card fees are eating away at their margins and they actually make less per gallon of gas sold then they did when gas was a lot cheaper.
But of course, none of that matters to the left wing, that prefers to discard people and reality so that they can get to the real "truth", which is, they are a bunch of isolated people that don't talk to anyone, and they just want to play dollhouse with the country.
The Arabs and Chinese are truely getting stiffed by the US.
Are they really? Last time I checked, the tallest buildings in the world are now in Dubai and Shanghai. But I guess that must be something different than money that paid for them.
What if they went further, instead of using the CIA to manipulate foreign countries, why not spend the money on actually keeping good taps on people, without actually manipulating anything, who knows they might actually catch Osama, and we can finish this crappy war on terror already!
Reality bites. Islamic radicals basically hate us, because, well, we are in the way. They can't be bribed, and that's really the whole problem. Just look at Iraq. We tried the Post WWII formula on them in reconstruction and they blew up everything we built, all the big power plants, water stations, everything.... my whole formula for that would be to mass produce these kinds of infrastructural things and fly them in. So, instead of a water treatment plant for a city, you have shipping container sized water treatment center for a village or a block and attach to it a well.
So in other words you are no better than the Chinese. The world is exactly the way you want it to be and anyone who feels differently is obviously a danger and needs to be torn apart (your demonizing of the politically left). I think you need to learn the definition of hypocrisy, and start by looking at yourself
This is utterly ridiculous. Chinese bullets are not nearly the same as American flamewars. The guy started with a flamewar, and I responded. It's a sports like thing. He demonized the right, so I demonized the left. That's all sports, and playing that game, however heated, is a hallmark of how democracy operates.
If anyone is anti-democratic and hypocritical, its you. You argue that people cannot criticise your opinions because your feelings get hurt. That is exactly the same sort of excuse that the Chinese use to execute dissidents - that they cause hurt feelings. Well, guess what.. the truth is, that, people do not agree with you, and just because you and a bunch of your friends all go to the same web site and consume the same political gobbledygook doesn't entitle you to oppress other opinions in the name of solidarity. Other people hang out with other people and they consume other political gobbledygook, and your religious-like revelations are not universal and never will be.
And yes both China and the US practice imperialism (look at Iraq, what would happen if the Iraqi people tried to elect Sadr?) the US is just more insidious about it.
The Iraqi people did elect Sadr's party and he holds quite a number of seats in parliament. Indeed, he is part of the ruling coalition with Maliki in Iraq... so, to a certain extent, Sadr does run Iraq.
I also note that you are posting as a.c. That's really cute, just like a terrorist thug, hiding in the dark and unable to state his or her real name. So typical.
US sells the most arms based on "value". That's absurd. I do not see AR-15s and M-16s being adopted by third world armies everywhere. Everything is AK-47 and those are overwhelmingly made and sold by the former warsaw pact countries. From there, you have pistols made by the Germans, aircraft sold by the French - why is it that third world air forces always fly the Dassault Mirage?
Secondly, US has more guns than people and more people die in the US from gun crime and "accidents" than rest of the world aside from war zones.
It's a testament to freedom that the USA has more guns than people. The problem isn't the guns, its a particular class of people living in cities are unable to live responsibly. It is not right to deprive the rights of a peaceful majority because of a savage minority.
On another note, it doesn't even matter one shit if you have guns or not. If you do not have access to real information (like in China and to some extend rest of the world), you cannot make any decisions anyway. Your guns are useless.
We on the right wing have access to plenty of information. All of our values are in one book and while everything else is of course useful, if one bible, shared among a hundred people, is all we have, it is all we need to tell right from wrong and thus whether to rebel or not.
If you still believe guns can rule a country like China or even the US, you are delusional.
Guns cannot rule a country, but they can keep a country from being ruled. Gun ownership makes you a citizen as it implies that you give your consent for your government to do what it does.
imilarly in the US, even if the government screwed your children lives by its actions like it is doing (debt, global warming, environment, etc), you will still defend it.
What a bunch of left wing tripe. If you wanted to cut the debt, then you might want to slow the rise of medicare, like Republicans have been telling you to do since Lyndon Johnson lied and said it would only cost a few billion dollars. The left wing has screwed my child with its lies about socialism, its lies about a fanciful quid-pro-quo with a rock, its false claims about global warming and its total reckless application of so-called science in the name of politics, and yes, my child will know how to shoot, if it comes to that.
You can even swear "you'll use the damn guns to change corrupt gov't", but trust me, you never will.
Sure I would. Your side never would, because you don't defend anything and have no principals. I mean, you can't support asking mothers and fathers to raise their child rather than aborting it, so, if parenthood is too big of a commitment for you, then what isn't?
I do not think that most Europeans think that it is sad that we do not have a constitutional right to bear arms
I would agree, otherwise, you would have different laws. That is yet another difference between the West and China. Sadly is my commentary, as an American..:-)
I'm not even sure Americans have that right.
They do. The idea was that "militia" meant -everyone-. America's founding fathers had the vision of a sort of a citizen / gentry class that was all armed, and would come together to form the backbone of an army. Even some liberal scholars (who are anti-gun), have concluded that the 2nd amendment means, everyone is allowed to have guns, and in fact, sorta required to. Now with that said, the flipside of the coin would be that one could well argue that the current standing Army of the USA is unconstitutional. Having a permanent giant military is not something America has done for much of its history. Typically we disarm after a conflict, and go back to drinking beer and shooting animals, cars, and each other.
I'd like to see that too. I'm pretty sure TOTAL is very able to get oil on its own in Africa (hint: it already does).
TOTAL had some great contracts in Iraq too, but look what those are worth...:-)
Excellent. That makes you really superior to these Chinese suckers.
I apologize. Good point. As much as we tend to highlight our transatlantic differences, we're really arguing over whether the room should be painted or wallpapered while the chinese would argue whether we should even have a room at all.
IAAWC (I am a wine connoisseur) and while this is just my personal taste, I've found that (liter for liter) Italian wine is far superior to anything that comes out of France. Italy doesn't seem to get any credit for it though -- even within Europe.
I would have to say that I enjoy Italian wine as well. I had an immensely good Italian wine my parents brought back from Rome and it was wonderful. But I had the French last night, and so I raved about it.
In much the same way, there are some really good American wines that are every bit as good as anything that comes out of France...... our wines compete quite well on the global stage.
Oh could you be so kind as to make me a recommendation for a good New York wine? I would rather trust your experienced opinion when it comes to wine rather than try and be something that I'm not.
In the very least, if Obama does win the election and I spend the next four years cursing his administration, I can at least say, before I get too bent out of shape, at least one his supporters tuned me into a great wine.
Correct, our -Western- countries! (Did you even read the post that I replied to?)
Actually I did. And, by the way, my original post still stands as largely accurate. Even though Europeans have strict gun laws and do not have, sadly, a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, you can, in fact, legally own a gun of some kind in many Europe countries. You can own a hunting or sporting rifle, even though it is very heavily regulated, you can still do it. In China, there is NO private ownership of firearms, period.
You are clearly confused!
No, I was just being a jackass. Europeans have this whole pacifist thing going and yet, they have the -worst- reputation world wide for selling arms to just about anyone. Seriously... if you are going to be arms dealer, the place to go is Europe. The European arms industry is just huge... and honestly, you guys have had quite a long time to clean that up and you just haven't. So I think people take the decision to take the money because its more important.
Europe : "We're against all wars, but, if you must have them, we happen to make great weapons!"
European countries tend to have much tighter gun laws than the United States.
That's true, but, you still have some people owning guns.
In fact all agreed that guns do not belong in the hands of civilians with the possible exception of hunting rifles. So be careful when you say "we", you Americans do not automatically speak for all Westerners.
You only believe that in -your- countries. European gun makers have absolutely no problem selling their guns in the USA and around the world, to anyone that is willing to buy them. If Europeans so genuinely believe that civilians should not have guns, and that Americans are crazy for wanting to buy them, then, why on earth are Europeans doing something that they so clearly believe is wrong?
I love French food and champagne though. I just tire of French egos and their completely misguided view of their place in the world.
Well, let's cut to the chase. We Americans love the French as much as we hate them, because, well, their' egos are as big as ours. I can't stand Chirac and the whole notion of the country that gave us Napoleon and Napoleon the III as a center of liberty in the world is just nuts. The French were very cool in the 1920s and early 1930s as a center of the arts - but the invasion ruined them and since then they've been trying to get their pride back and its annoying.
So yeah, France sucks sometimes,
but, you know, I just can't get past the rather excellent wine they make. I know the USA makes some good stuff but I had a bottle of French wine that was just out of this world. I am by no means a wine connoisseur, but to me, the difference between this bottle of French wine I had and a number of American wines was like night and day. A good French wine is a beautiful, wonderful, thing, and I'm not giving that up, for sure.
The notion that these people were concerned about EU politics is just silly.
Popular EU politics is quite different from the EU political leadership. Yes, Chirac exploited popular anti-American sentiment in the run up of the war, but he did it in such a way as to try and drive the EU a leg up on the USA.
Of course, all worldwide pro-EU good will is being undone because now the EU, with its insistence on global warming, is getting tagged for the blame of current rice crisis. Biofuels do not make for a happy third world.
A pretty significant number of people both in Europe and the Middle East would thank you if you did
This makes me feel good actually. Don't you think the world would be better off if the USA had business office overseas, rather than troops. I keep asking myself, what country in their right mind really likes having foreign troops on its soil. I mean, I wouldn't really care for it too much if a German division was stationed in Delaware, and I can't imagine the Germans feel any differently. Now with the USA and UK, its a different animal and for some reason I could see the British being in the USA just because my grandfather and my wife's grandfather fought in the Pacific during World War II and to this day I am grateful that the British sent the largest fleet they ever produced (18 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships, and more), to have Seafires flying CAP over American landing forces at Okinawa. And, the British are with us in Iraq...
I keep thinking that the perception of America military hegemony with troops all across the globe is bad for public relations. The Cold War is over... if someone invades Europe, America will be there to defend you, but right now, I honestly think the best thing for the USA is to be a trading empire, not a military one.
I do not want the USA to make the Athenien mistake.
The idea that the "West" is hypocritical hinges on the notion of a unified "West"; i
When China says "West", China means NATO. It is NATO that allows Europe and the USA to turn the Atlantic into our lake, and from there, we project power across the globe. China may be a billion people, but there are a billion people in NATO as well these days, and NATO is a much more powerful bloc. China may have a GDP of a few trillion dollars, but I think the EU+USA combined is around 30 trillion, give or take. So, even if the USA sags and Europe surges, or vice versa, NATO is still a pretty powerful bloc.
China and Russia's strategy really, is to keep driving wedges into NATO by catering up to stupid suckers like Chirac, and thus far, it hasn't really worked, although, if EU does bail, I'm all for the USA bailing too and just buying a mountain of nukes.
Well because they were against us going to war. They "claimed" the war in Iraq was unjustified and that there was no evidence of WMDs. But we showed them! Ha Ha! Take that you Frenchies! Gonna eat me some more freedom fries.
That wasn't it at all. It was that Chirac was running around the world saying that France was being in charge of a new EU and a new world that would displace the USA, all the while hopping over to trash the USA in those freedom loving places like China.
I still would like to see the USA withdraw all troops from Europe and the middle east, and let those people get their own oil, for the things Chirac said.
F--- those people. But, hell, I do like French wine.
They're calling us hypocrites, and as a citizen of "the West" I can say they're exactly right.
No they aren't. There's no censorship in the west to the extent there is China. There's no individual right to keep and bear arms in China like there is in the west. The differences are staggering and people that proclaim dictatorship whenever politics don't go their way do more to undermine the very definition of what a dictatorship really is.
Luckily, you don't need to be a good CEO to be paid a lot. Heck, if you're bad enough, you might even get paid just for leaving !
Are you surprised that a super salesman might actually be able to sell the notion of getting paid for getting fired?
And to, the CEO could perhaps make the argument that had the board approved this or that investment, then, or if the shareholders would have agreed to the sale of this nonperforming assett, then the company would have been better off. And, even more, the CEO could have argued that he actually met all of the goals on his plan that he and the board agreed to, but unfortunately circumstances were not what the board felt and a competitor is calling....
It really goes on and on.
God, I wish I could sell. being a CEO would be great.
Give 'em minimum wage and commissions on their "sales"
CEOs often get huge amounts of stock, which, in essence, is their commission. The golden parachutes of which so many rail is often CEOs either cashing in the stock they already have earned, or, are getting paid to not work for a competitor.
And besides, as a practical matter, if one company is giving a commission plus mininum wage, and another company is throwing in a plane and millions, and you have a track record of billions of dollars in sales, which company are YOU going to work for.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, just the F117 Night Hawk is a bomber as far as I know
The F- designation was actually deliberate. The USAF didn't want enemies to know that this was a bomber, not a fighter, so they named it differently.
Had Derby and MySQL and the like not been available,
Somebody would have written a free-ish SQL had not the likes of MySQL been available. FOSS developers aren't really good innovators(*) but they are darned good engineers and implementors and somewhere out there, somebody will be making what starts as a free clone of some sort of a popular RDBMS, and then evolves its own philosophy.
(*) By that, I mean, FOSS people aren't going to come up with some literary vision of computing, but, once they have a spec, they can write you a good one.
where the government acts in your interests,
LOL.
A government that acknowledges that most people have some genetic complaint that will appear later in life, and puts the appropriate resources in would be able to give people the support they need, with preventative treatment, lifestyle advice, etc.
I would be more willing to bet that the government is the last place you would want to have accumulating genetic data.
n summary, knowledge can be used for good or bad, and the constant fear that it will be used for ill is simply the dim view we hold of humanity.
Some knowledge is worse than others. What does the knowledge of making an atomic bomb do that is positive?
Personally, I'm hoping that, if we get the knowledge and technology that used to be considered 'future society', we'll get the appropriate changes in attitudes to go with it.
It can't happen, because, at the end of the day, people with bad genes aren't as good, and never will be. That's the thing. Once people learn something or someone isn't as good, that's just it, the floodgates open and they move on.
Last time I checked, most liberal secularists openly accept differences.
No they don't. They are just as fanatical about their ideals as people on the opposite side of the idealogical divide. Besides, the thing is, the people most likely to commit genocide are those who think they are incapable of wrong.
Let's say we find out that africans, asians, and europeans have differences in genes that we didn't notice before.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying, what if we find that people with some gene, call it, for example, T-1742 ABC, are 10% more likely to be murderers. If you did the math, and the social cost of murder, you might be able to make the economic case that you should ethnically cleanse your society of them (of course, through deportations... but if no one wanted them... then, well, there's other solutions).
Of course, it doesn't even have to be that evil. I mean, we could make the serious argument that why should people without cancer genes pay for cancer treatments in people who have them?
I'm not talking about racism along existing racial lines... I'm talking about a new kind of racism, based on genetic analysis. Or, it could even be a national health care plan allocating less resources to those with weaker genes. It could be men or women administering genetic tests to partners and screening each other or unborn children for genetic problems. Really, the sky is the limit.
Of course, if such things happened to take place along fault lines that coincided with today's racial labels, that's one thing. And we haven't even gotten to the parts about using cloned human skin to make human skin coats...
Well, the dark side of secularism looms its ugly head. Pretty much all physical evidence proves that people are not equal, and, every day we investigate our genes only proves it more and more.
Equality is a religious belief, born of the idea that people great and small are luminous beings, each possessing a soul that beyond our means to measure and categorize.
Evolutionary biologists can say that animals are all "equal" in some abstract way, but, science has already told us that fish live better underwater than humans, that birds can fly and fish cannot, and now, we will find out that we humans too, have different genes that render us better or worse at fighting diseases, giving us a better or worse propensity to engage in certain kinds of athletics or certain types of thought. Even the idea of free will is under academic assault, as scientists unravel the very structure of our minds.
With this knowledge will come new kinds of racism, a racism based on genetics and statistics and all other facts that are provably true. To oppose social engineering based on genetics and population statistics might well be as quaint in academic circles as someone opposed to vaccines is today. We may find it loathsome that the Nazis exterminated the Jews in Europe to achieve their peaceful society, but, will find it loathsome in the future when we decide whether or not breed out or exterminate a class of people with a particular gene that we might calculate to be disruptive or costly?
Congratulations people! You've crushed the Church and disproved God, only to find that made genetic Nazism not only the most logical course of social action, but also the most inevitable.
You have made the very liberalism to which you supposedly ascribe obsolete. Nicely done.
Wrong. You also need to know what's going on around you
You do. That's what churches are for, and you under estimate them.
Look, you can't even begin to make the argument that religion is not a surviving strategy when Christianity has survived for 2000 years and Islam has survived and prospered for 1500, regardless of the types of governments that they have confronted.
Wrong. You also need to know what's going on around you
You will get that information in a tightly nit religious community. Everyone will know everyone. Just walk into a Virginia Baptist church and you can see that. Most likely, the serial killer will be the weird guy, you'll know that if the serial killer say he's being robbed, he's probably lying, so that, if you see somone shooting the serial killer, you'll say, "about time".
So the grandparent poster is right: without a reliable source of information - news, in this context - you can't make informed decisions, and your guns are useless.
The original poster makes the same sort of loony left wing argument that I've heard from the loony right wing. These people are the same. They don't take responsibility for their own lives, they make themselves victims, never apply themselves, and then, to make themselves have some social standing, they go on supposedly researching various conspiracy theories, latch onto the most ridiculous stuff, never think critically and above all, never actually do the work.
And, the thing with the left wing too, is that they are the WORST sources of information, because, really, left wing elites cloister themselves in academia or the media and don't really get out there. The best source of information about what's going on is a redneck conservative salesperson, because, they are out meeting thousands of people. I won't trust the NYT about where the economy is, but I'd trust the lady down the street that runs an Exxon. I guarantee you, too, that no university professor in my area, has ever actually talked to a gas station owner.
I offer as proof of that example, Barrack Obama's campaign ads in PA. He's running ads of all these people at gas stations pissed off over gas prices (and never mind that his policies ultimately will drive up fuel prices), but it's obvious that his people demonize gas stations and their owners, when they never stopped to ask, just how they are doing.
I did. And the answer is, not well at all. These people aren't rich, and never have been. Owning a gas station is a shitty job. Worse, because gas prices are so high, competition at the service station level is particularly intense. Rising credit card fees are eating away at their margins and they actually make less per gallon of gas sold then they did when gas was a lot cheaper.
But of course, none of that matters to the left wing, that prefers to discard people and reality so that they can get to the real "truth", which is, they are a bunch of isolated people that don't talk to anyone, and they just want to play dollhouse with the country.
The Arabs and Chinese are truely getting stiffed by the US.
Are they really? Last time I checked, the tallest buildings in the world are now in Dubai and Shanghai. But I guess that must be something different than money that paid for them.
why not spend the money on actually keeping good taps on people
The other thing too, is that the USA spends $250 billion a year on the middle east through its oil purchases, and that hasn't bought us anything.
What if they went further, instead of using the CIA to manipulate foreign countries, why not spend the money on actually keeping good taps on people, without actually manipulating anything, who knows they might actually catch Osama, and we can finish this crappy war on terror already!
Reality bites. Islamic radicals basically hate us, because, well, we are in the way. They can't be bribed, and that's really the whole problem. Just look at Iraq. We tried the Post WWII formula on them in reconstruction and they blew up everything we built, all the big power plants, water stations, everything.... my whole formula for that would be to mass produce these kinds of infrastructural things and fly them in. So, instead of a water treatment plant for a city, you have shipping container sized water treatment center for a village or a block and attach to it a well.
So in other words you are no better than the Chinese. The world is exactly the way you want it to be and anyone who feels differently is obviously a danger and needs to be torn apart (your demonizing of the politically left). I think you need to learn the definition of hypocrisy, and start by looking at yourself
This is utterly ridiculous. Chinese bullets are not nearly the same as American flamewars. The guy started with a flamewar, and I responded. It's a sports like thing. He demonized the right, so I demonized the left. That's all sports, and playing that game, however heated, is a hallmark of how democracy operates.
If anyone is anti-democratic and hypocritical, its you. You argue that people cannot criticise your opinions because your feelings get hurt. That is exactly the same sort of excuse that the Chinese use to execute dissidents - that they cause hurt feelings. Well, guess what.. the truth is, that, people do not agree with you, and just because you and a bunch of your friends all go to the same web site and consume the same political gobbledygook doesn't entitle you to oppress other opinions in the name of solidarity. Other people hang out with other people and they consume other political gobbledygook, and your religious-like revelations are not universal and never will be.
And yes both China and the US practice imperialism (look at Iraq, what would happen if the Iraqi people tried to elect Sadr?) the US is just more insidious about it.
The Iraqi people did elect Sadr's party and he holds quite a number of seats in parliament. Indeed, he is part of the ruling coalition with Maliki in Iraq... so, to a certain extent, Sadr does run Iraq.
I also note that you are posting as a.c. That's really cute, just like a terrorist thug, hiding in the dark and unable to state his or her real name. So typical.
US sells the most arms based on "value".
That's absurd. I do not see AR-15s and M-16s being adopted by third world armies everywhere. Everything is AK-47 and those are overwhelmingly made and sold by the former warsaw pact countries. From there, you have pistols made by the Germans, aircraft sold by the French - why is it that third world air forces always fly the Dassault Mirage?
Secondly, US has more guns than people and more people die in the US from gun crime and "accidents" than rest of the world aside from war zones.
It's a testament to freedom that the USA has more guns than people. The problem isn't the guns, its a particular class of people living in cities are unable to live responsibly. It is not right to deprive the rights of a peaceful majority because of a savage minority.
On another note, it doesn't even matter one shit if you have guns or not. If you do not have access to real information (like in China and to some extend rest of the world), you cannot make any decisions anyway. Your guns are useless.
We on the right wing have access to plenty of information. All of our values are in one book and while everything else is of course useful, if one bible, shared among a hundred people, is all we have, it is all we need to tell right from wrong and thus whether to rebel or not.
If you still believe guns can rule a country like China or even the US, you are delusional.
Guns cannot rule a country, but they can keep a country from being ruled. Gun ownership makes you a citizen as it implies that you give your consent for your government to do what it does.
imilarly in the US, even if the government screwed your children lives by its actions like it is doing (debt, global warming, environment, etc), you will still defend it.
What a bunch of left wing tripe. If you wanted to cut the debt, then you might want to slow the rise of medicare, like Republicans have been telling you to do since Lyndon Johnson lied and said it would only cost a few billion dollars. The left wing has screwed my child with its lies about socialism, its lies about a fanciful quid-pro-quo with a rock, its false claims about global warming and its total reckless application of so-called science in the name of politics, and yes, my child will know how to shoot, if it comes to that.
You can even swear "you'll use the damn guns to change corrupt gov't", but trust me, you never will.
Sure I would. Your side never would, because you don't defend anything and have no principals. I mean, you can't support asking mothers and fathers to raise their child rather than aborting it, so, if parenthood is too big of a commitment for you, then what isn't?
Lame.
I do not think that most Europeans think that it is sad that we do not have a constitutional right to bear arms
:-)
I would agree, otherwise, you would have different laws. That is yet another difference between the West and China. Sadly is my commentary, as an American..
I'm not even sure Americans have that right.
They do. The idea was that "militia" meant -everyone-. America's founding fathers had the vision of a sort of a citizen / gentry class that was all armed, and would come together to form the backbone of an army. Even some liberal scholars (who are anti-gun), have concluded that the 2nd amendment means, everyone is allowed to have guns, and in fact, sorta required to. Now with that said, the flipside of the coin would be that one could well argue that the current standing Army of the USA is unconstitutional. Having a permanent giant military is not something America has done for much of its history. Typically we disarm after a conflict, and go back to drinking beer and shooting animals, cars, and each other.
I'd like to see that too. I'm pretty sure TOTAL is very able to get oil on its own in Africa (hint: it already does).
:-)
TOTAL had some great contracts in Iraq too, but look what those are worth...
Excellent. That makes you really superior to these Chinese suckers.
I apologize. Good point. As much as we tend to highlight our transatlantic differences, we're really arguing over whether the room should be painted or wallpapered while the chinese would argue whether we should even have a room at all.
IAAWC (I am a wine connoisseur) and while this is just my personal taste, I've found that (liter for liter) Italian wine is far superior to anything that comes out of France. Italy doesn't seem to get any credit for it though -- even within Europe.
..... our wines compete quite well on the global stage.
I would have to say that I enjoy Italian wine as well. I had an immensely good Italian wine my parents brought back from Rome and it was wonderful. But I had the French last night, and so I raved about it.
In much the same way, there are some really good American wines that are every bit as good as anything that comes out of France.
Oh could you be so kind as to make me a recommendation for a good New York wine? I would rather trust your experienced opinion when it comes to wine rather than try and be something that I'm not.
In the very least, if Obama does win the election and I spend the next four years cursing his administration, I can at least say, before I get too bent out of shape, at least one his supporters tuned me into a great wine.
Correct, our -Western- countries! (Did you even read the post that I replied to?)
Actually I did. And, by the way, my original post still stands as largely accurate. Even though Europeans have strict gun laws and do not have, sadly, a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, you can, in fact, legally own a gun of some kind in many Europe countries. You can own a hunting or sporting rifle, even though it is very heavily regulated, you can still do it. In China, there is NO private ownership of firearms, period.
You are clearly confused!
No, I was just being a jackass. Europeans have this whole pacifist thing going and yet, they have the -worst- reputation world wide for selling arms to just about anyone. Seriously... if you are going to be arms dealer, the place to go is Europe. The European arms industry is just huge... and honestly, you guys have had quite a long time to clean that up and you just haven't. So I think people take the decision to take the money because its more important.
Europe : "We're against all wars, but, if you must have them, we happen to make great weapons!"
With all due respect, there's more to the "West" than the USA.
Yeah, I realized that... but I think you can still have a bolt action rifle in most European countries and you can't even have -that- in China.
European countries tend to have much tighter gun laws than the United States.
That's true, but, you still have some people owning guns.
In fact all agreed that guns do not belong in the hands of civilians with the possible exception of hunting rifles. So be careful when you say "we", you Americans do not automatically speak for all Westerners.
You only believe that in -your- countries. European gun makers have absolutely no problem selling their guns in the USA and around the world, to anyone that is willing to buy them. If Europeans so genuinely believe that civilians should not have guns, and that Americans are crazy for wanting to buy them, then, why on earth are Europeans doing something that they so clearly believe is wrong?
I don't get it.
I love French food and champagne though. I just tire of French egos and their completely misguided view of their place in the world.
Well, let's cut to the chase. We Americans love the French as much as we hate them, because, well, their' egos are as big as ours. I can't stand Chirac and the whole notion of the country that gave us Napoleon and Napoleon the III as a center of liberty in the world is just nuts. The French were very cool in the 1920s and early 1930s as a center of the arts - but the invasion ruined them and since then they've been trying to get their pride back and its annoying.
So yeah, France sucks sometimes,
but, you know, I just can't get past the rather excellent wine they make. I know the USA makes some good stuff but I had a bottle of French wine that was just out of this world. I am by no means a wine connoisseur, but to me, the difference between this bottle of French wine I had and a number of American wines was like night and day. A good French wine is a beautiful, wonderful, thing, and I'm not giving that up, for sure.
The notion that these people were concerned about EU politics is just silly.
Popular EU politics is quite different from the EU political leadership. Yes, Chirac exploited popular anti-American sentiment in the run up of the war, but he did it in such a way as to try and drive the EU a leg up on the USA.
Of course, all worldwide pro-EU good will is being undone because now the EU, with its insistence on global warming, is getting tagged for the blame of current rice crisis. Biofuels do not make for a happy third world.
A pretty significant number of people both in Europe and the Middle East would thank you if you did
This makes me feel good actually. Don't you think the world would be better off if the USA had business office overseas, rather than troops. I keep asking myself, what country in their right mind really likes having foreign troops on its soil. I mean, I wouldn't really care for it too much if a German division was stationed in Delaware, and I can't imagine the Germans feel any differently. Now with the USA and UK, its a different animal and for some reason I could see the British being in the USA just because my grandfather and my wife's grandfather fought in the Pacific during World War II and to this day I am grateful that the British sent the largest fleet they ever produced (18 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships, and more), to have Seafires flying CAP over American landing forces at Okinawa. And, the British are with us in Iraq...
I keep thinking that the perception of America military hegemony with troops all across the globe is bad for public relations. The Cold War is over... if someone invades Europe, America will be there to defend you, but right now, I honestly think the best thing for the USA is to be a trading empire, not a military one.
I do not want the USA to make the Athenien mistake.
The idea that the "West" is hypocritical hinges on the notion of a unified "West"; i
When China says "West", China means NATO. It is NATO that allows Europe and the USA to turn the Atlantic into our lake, and from there, we project power across the globe. China may be a billion people, but there are a billion people in NATO as well these days, and NATO is a much more powerful bloc. China may have a GDP of a few trillion dollars, but I think the EU+USA combined is around 30 trillion, give or take. So, even if the USA sags and Europe surges, or vice versa, NATO is still a pretty powerful bloc.
China and Russia's strategy really, is to keep driving wedges into NATO by catering up to stupid suckers like Chirac, and thus far, it hasn't really worked, although, if EU does bail, I'm all for the USA bailing too and just buying a mountain of nukes.
Well because they were against us going to war. They "claimed" the war in Iraq was unjustified and that there was no evidence of WMDs. But we showed them! Ha Ha! Take that you Frenchies! Gonna eat me some more freedom fries.
That wasn't it at all. It was that Chirac was running around the world saying that France was being in charge of a new EU and a new world that would displace the USA, all the while hopping over to trash the USA in those freedom loving places like China.
I still would like to see the USA withdraw all troops from Europe and the middle east, and let those people get their own oil, for the things Chirac said.
F--- those people. But, hell, I do like French wine.
They're calling us hypocrites, and as a citizen of "the West" I can say they're exactly right.
No they aren't. There's no censorship in the west to the extent there is China. There's no individual right to keep and bear arms in China like there is in the west. The differences are staggering and people that proclaim dictatorship whenever politics don't go their way do more to undermine the very definition of what a dictatorship really is.
Luckily, you don't need to be a good CEO to be paid a lot. Heck, if you're bad enough, you might even get paid just for leaving !
Are you surprised that a super salesman might actually be able to sell the notion of getting paid for getting fired?
And to, the CEO could perhaps make the argument that had the board approved this or that investment, then, or if the shareholders would have agreed to the sale of this nonperforming assett, then the company would have been better off. And, even more, the CEO could have argued that he actually met all of the goals on his plan that he and the board agreed to, but unfortunately circumstances were not what the board felt and a competitor is calling....
It really goes on and on.
God, I wish I could sell. being a CEO would be great.
Give 'em minimum wage and commissions on their "sales"
CEOs often get huge amounts of stock, which, in essence, is their commission. The golden parachutes of which so many rail is often CEOs either cashing in the stock they already have earned, or, are getting paid to not work for a competitor.
And besides, as a practical matter, if one company is giving a commission plus mininum wage, and another company is throwing in a plane and millions, and you have a track record of billions of dollars in sales, which company are YOU going to work for.