First of all, I love your handle. You're like a jar of peanut butter labeled "A Jar of Peanut Butter."
Second, you fail at understanding the first goal of geopolitics: maintain order. No one is afraid of Pakistan or North Korea getting a nuke to the United States. That's as likely as you running across a clue and knowing what to do with it. What they are afraid of is destabilizing nations that have nuclear weapons. If you greenlighted India to run over Pakistan, what's the likelihood of a hardline Muslim in the Pakistani army getting a couple of nukes across the border? What are the chances that could make it's way to Chechnya? What's the likelihood that China would make a deal with OPEC to buy all of their oil, if OPEC decided to stop selling to any Western allied nation? Would Russia side with China? Would China rush more troops to the border and accidentally provoke India into war? That's a dangerous game no one wants to play. Well, except for people like you; maybe Sarah Palin, or some other vapid soccer moms who dabble in politics.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest, will cost well over two stimulous packages that don't seem to be doing much of what was claimed when they were passes. The economy will not be ruined as war spending doesn't destroy the economy when they don't seem to be using it to stop other spending.
You'll have to translate that into a coherent statement if you expect me to respond.
The only countries we threatened with invasion in the last 40 years have been invaded (with the exception of Libya that was simply bombed into submission) so it's not like we A: threaten them often, or B: have any success in threatening them seeing how we had to go to war each time it's happened.
US CIA and military interventions and deployments since 1970 1970: Vietnam, Cambodia 1973: Afghanistan, Iraq 1976: Argentina 1978: Afghanistan 1980: Iran, El Salvador, Cambodia, Angola, Iraq 1981: Nicaragua 1983: Grenada, Honduras 1986: Phillippines, Libya 1988: Panama 1989: Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Philippines 1990: Iraq 1992: Somalia 1993: Guatemala, Bosnia-Herzegovina 1994: Haiti 1998: Afghanistan, Sudan 1999: Serbia 2001: Afghanistan 2002: Philippines 2003: Iraq, Georgia, Djibouti 2004: Pakistan
I don't have time to go through all of the threats made during that period, but you can look through White House briefings to find most of them. If you don't consider military action as a successful threat, I'm not quite sure how to explain to you what the word "terrorism" means.
And you are severely stupid if you think the US should give up it's sovereignty to the UN and have foreign nations create US law concerning our national interest.
And if you think that all other nations should give up their sovereignty and have the United States determine their national interests, what does that make you?
I saw the spokesman for the Taliban on TV refusing to hand over Bin Ladin. If the Taliban hadn't done that, they would still be the main power in Afghanistan right now.
The Taliban wanted to hand bin Laden over to a third party, most likely Pakistan, but the US refused to negotiate at all, which is the diplomatic equivalent of "go fuck yourself."
I'm not in favor of military spending, but this is either a joke, or you can't do math. Even if you put the cost of the of both wars at $500 billion a year, that is still less than 5% of GDP, certainly manageable for any developed country. The only reason we would go bankrupt is if we try to finance the war AND try to buy all the stuff at home that we want (healthcare, etc). Choices, choices. But you're being dishonest if you say that the war will destroy our economy.
Yes, excuse me. It won't bankrupt the country if we let the elderly and the mentally ill die in hospital parking lots and start sending our kids to work for a dollar an hour at age 12. But don't worry, the Tea Party is working on it.
I love how people always have these simple solutions that involve only Israel. Really? Suppose Israel did accept the 1967 borders, and stopped colonizing Palestinian land. How exactly are you going to stop the Palestinians from launching rockets across the border? That's the key to the entire problem.
Right. The problem isn't that Israel is colonizing Palestine by devouring it over decades with settlements for security to protect settlements that were built for security that were built to protect settlements for security. The problem is that the Palestinians are fighting back.
Why don't we give the Palestinians the same weapons we give the Israelis? I can assure you that they would no longer attack with homemade rockets. Every hardline Palestinian would much rather blow up IDF installations and government buildings with helicopter gunships and fighter jets.
I love how people always have these simple solutions that involve only Israel. Really? Suppose Israel did accept the 1967 borders, and stopped colonizing Palestinian land. How exactly are you going to stop the Palestinians from launching rockets across the border? That's the key to the entire problem.
NPT doesn't mean you give up nukes as soon as you sign it. NPT means you agree to allow international inspectors to verify that you have secured your nuclear materials and technology, that you aren't spreading weaponizing technology to other nations, and that you agree to move towards disarmament.
If this training had been happening in Waziristan, would you still support going to war over failure of extradition?
We destroyed Afghanistan to make us feel better about 9/11, plain and simple. Afghanistan was an easy scapegoat for our own intelligence failures and bullshit foreign policy that contributed to 9/11 in the first place. It's a country that hasn't had a strong central government in decades, because every time one forms, a foreign power invades and dismantles it.
That's why Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Pakistan is home to Al Qaeda and the Taliban as well, but so far no American government has been dumb enough to consider invading a nuclear power that borders two other nuclear powers. North Korea's government is batshit insane but we don't invade because they have nukes, as well as their proximity to China. Pakistan's government is enormously corrupt and has close ties with terrorist organizations, but we don't invade because they have a nuke. Now, on two of Iran's borders, America has unilaterally invaded simply because we could without fear of repercussions. If you were an Iranian, what would you rather have? Nukes or a foreign army occupying your homeland?
If American planners are dumb enough to pursue terrorist organizations into third world nations that barely have electricity or running water every time there's a successful terror attack, then the War of the Flea tactic will destroy our economy within two decades. We're already spending one trillion a year on warfare and weapons research. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest, will cost well over two trillion dollars according to the CBO by 2014.
If we're serious about ending the use of terrorism as a military tactic, the first thing we should do is stop using terrorism as a military tactic. Stop threatening sovereign nations with invasion if they don't capitulate to our demands. Use international law to address international issues through peaceful and diplomatic means as outlined in the UN charter we signed. Stop giving money and weapons to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia until they all sit down and settle their diplomatic relations. That will involve denying all aid to Israel until they formally agree to stop colonizing Palestinian land with settlements, and sign a treaty to accept the 1967 borders in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab nations. Then we should push Israel and India and Pakistan to sign the NPT and open themselves up to international inspections.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
Find me the receipts for all of the activity of the CIA, or you lose.
Yes, let's not reform the unconstitutional secret police who roam the earth assassinating people without trials, or torture people in secret prisons. Let's blame the people who talk about the secret police.
Assange is not ratting out FBI informants working in America. He's ratting out American atrocities in foreign lands. There is a huge difference.
But I don't see the entirety of the US government sitting around thinking of how much they hate freedom and democracy and conspiring ways to end it.
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." -Henry Kissinger
CIA intervention for regime change:
1953 Iran 1954 Guatemala 1959 Cuba 1960 Democratic Republic of the Congo 1963 Iraq 1964 Brazil 1966 Republic of Ghana 1968 Iraq 1973 Afghanistan 1973 Iraq 1976 Argentina 1978 Afghanistan 1980 Iran 1980 El Salvador 1980 Cambodia 1980 Angola 1981 Nicaragua 1986 Phillippines 1992 Iraq 1993 Guatemala
That list will grow larger as more documents are declassified.
how the minutiae of doctrine somehow cause the entire perspective to be somehow unworthy of consideration.
It doesn't make it totally unworthy, but picture this (with apologies to Hitchens): you're on a bus. A man sitting next to you, who seems perfectly normal in appearance, starts telling you about how he enjoys talking to God. Now take that person, give him a golden staff, a big white hat, and a white robe. You now have the Pope.
The Catholic Church has been civilized over time by humanism and science, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still causing misery through their idiocy concerning contraception, still protecting child rapists from due process of law, and are even vile and immoral enough to decry government intervention in church affairs when the local authorities try to arrest the pedophiles.
The guy leading that church? Probably has nothing useful to say.
So, no Catholic prays to the Virgin Mary anymore? They don't pray to one of the 10,000 saints? I find that rather difficult to believe.
But go ahead into your dogmatic reasoning on why Jesus is God, so he's not dead, and of course God is God, so that's not communicating with the dead, and since the Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived, even though she is dead, the Pope considers praying to her not to be some sort of witchcraft. And then, with all speed, proceed to explain how praying to one of ten thousand saints is not communicating with the dead.
There is one dogma that all organized religions hold steadfastly and as dear to their heart as any core doctrine: rank hypocrisy.
Among large parts of the Slashdot crowd, the fact that he's not an atheist is enough to disqualify his viewpoint from any kind of respect.
When you want to have a real philosophical discussion, do you seek out New Age believers who have faith in the power of crystals? People who believe you can communicate with the dead? Conspiracy theorists who think the world is run by a secret cabal of Jew bankers?
Last week, we also hosted a live chat featuring several developers whose apps were picked for our Ars Design Awards for Mac OS X. We asked them what they thought about the future of Mac OS X and Apple's development platform during the chat, and then followed up on their thoughts about languages and APIs. While current Mac developers aren't nearly as concerned as our own John Siracusa about the Objective-C language in particular, they do see new and improved APIs coming down the pike. Developers are seeing iOS influencing Mac OS X instead of the other way around.
The developers on our panel unanimously agreed that Mac OS X will eventually be subsumed by iOS, but that the Mac has plenty of life left. "Mac is the awesome old grandma, whose kids (iPhone & iPad) have left home," Atebits' Loren Brichter said. "Not dead; not really dying. But it's our job to keep her comfortable until she's gone."
Uh, no. I just bought a refurb Lenovo Y560 with a 1GB ATI 5730 for $700. If you'll recall, the cheapest MacBook Pro with a discrete video card is $1700, which is the same price as brand new Alienware gaming laptops.
Bullshit. My average typing speed is 140+ and it's far better than having to depress a tall key for 10-15mm than a flat, larger key about 5mm. The feedback is enough to let you know you pressed a key, and not so much that it delays it any further.
For reference, look at my posting history for the last year here on/.
I have a 68GB library, on an i7 MBP. It loads in twenty to thirty seconds. I have a 750GB hard drive that is 70% filled, and Spotlight simply doesn't work. Type in "Text" and it hangs for about 10 seconds before finally settling on TextEdit in the Applications folder.
Again, for most college kids, it's a fine OS. Ask it to be more than a media player and web browser that also runs Pages, and you're looking for trouble.
The industrial design of Apple computers is simply the best in the world. I don't know of anyone who disputes that -- at least someone who can point to a computer manufacturer who has anything better.
As far as functionality is concerned, their mice are crap, keyboards are great, and their laptops are good for everything except 3d acceleration. Multi-touch trackpads without buttons are the best design out there, along with their island style keyboards which are also without equal. iMacs are the best looking desktop computer, bar none.
Is everything overpriced? Yes. Is their OS better than Windows 7? Depends on what you use it for. But now, iTunes takes as long to load as Photoshop CS5. Spotlight is broken for all practical purposes, even though I rebuild indexes every couple of weeks. Steve will soon release an iMac that runs iOS as well as OS X, and you can see where it's going from here. In order to improve the user experience, Steve is going to prevent his users from running unsigned processes. He'll lose all of the nerds who switched to OS X, but that's such a small number of people, he's not going to care when the reward is 30% of all software sales.
A democracy means there is a vote to either directly approve laws (direct democracy) or to elect representatives to do the same (representative democracy). Republic literally means ruled by the public, not by a monarch or a non-elected supreme rule. America is a representative democracy that limits government power with a constitution, but since that constitution can be changed by democratic action, you cannot say that it isn't a democracy. We could do away with the constitution in another constitutional convention and replace it with another if we so chose.
Just because you read Atlas Shrugged yesterday doesn't mean shit to anyone else. Crawl back over the Drudge Report, where you can eat up the talking points regurgitation with the rest of the libertarian zombies.
North Korea is another result of the Cold War that has yet to be resolved. External influences and pressures created the State, and are unlikely to correct it without causing serious damage.
Facilitating the deterioration of North Korea would likely lead to an extremely dangerous situation involving millions of refugees, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. And frankly, that's the reason Kim Jong Il and the necrocracy there still rules. Being next door to China and Russia, the United States doesn't want to poke around too seriously. China doesn't want to deal with the refugee problem and actively hunts and sends defectors back to North Korea where they are tortured and usually die in detention camps.
South Korea believes that engagement and talks are the way forward. Since it's their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers over there suffering, I think we should let them take the lead instead of using it as a political talking point. The less ego you inject into that situation, the more likely real progress can be achieved.
Yeah. Fuck democracy. It's not like keeping the voting system accessible by the public has any meaning. What's the difference between North Korea and America? Why, just a little cuisine and weather, right?
1) The vast majority of the public is too stupid to make any kind of sound decision about many issues
Go fuck yourself. Seriously.
2) Most candidates can only get anywhere by money
Martin Luther King? Desmond Tutu? Ghandi? There have been many political leaders, who didn't necessarily enter politics, who were able to force the state to change because the truth was no longer concealable. You cannot govern a population that does not want to be governed by you. Their desire to hold on to their positions of power is both a blessing and a curse. Even in communist China popular will has given way to reforms because the ruling party didn't want to be overthrown. There are some examples of states supported by outside powers, or in power because that state is under threat from other states, but especially in the developed Western world, the citizens of a nation determine their destiny.
3) You can never get rid of or mitigate the influence of money on politics since corporations are what makes the world go round.
Bullshit. People are what make the world go around. Do you really think life would stop tomorrow of AT&T and Exxon didn't exist? Civilization existed for thousands of years before the corporation. They are a human invention, not some magical organization that's any better or worse than any other hierarchy. But keep swallowing that line like an obedient intellectual prostitute.
4) Until their is something of a mass movement/revolt so that the power of corporations are reigned in, voting is irrelevant.
Bullshit. Countries around the world have voted to kick corporations out. Unfortunately, when they do, the United States often assassinates their leader or overthrows their democratic government through coups or terror campaigns. If you are an American citizen, you are one of the most powerful people on earth, because you have a vote that can change the way the world operates. But you've accepted the reality they sold to you, not out of struggle or just giving up because you don't have the strength to continue fighting, but because accepting that belief enables you to act immorally and pretend that it doesn't matter. You're nothing more than a sell out.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -George Bernard Shaw
Sweet... so, if the Republicans retake the House and Senate next month, and haven't solved the deficit by 2012, it will have nothing to do with Pelosi or Obama.
Yes, can we please go back to before Reagan took office, and make sure he doesn't? We could have eliminated the Reagan and Bush years in one brilliant stroke.
Any other brilliant, simple, easy ideas you'd like to share with us morons?
Sure. Don't get involved in land wars in Asia. Also, don't hand Iran the Middle East on a silver platter by destroying the only secular nation with women's rights to settle some old score that has nothing to do with national security.
Also, don't let the tiny threat of terrorism draw you in to every backwater nation with zero infrastructure and drain our treasury in a low-intensity conflict that nets us zero benefits.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I love your handle. You're like a jar of peanut butter labeled "A Jar of Peanut Butter."
Second, you fail at understanding the first goal of geopolitics: maintain order. No one is afraid of Pakistan or North Korea getting a nuke to the United States. That's as likely as you running across a clue and knowing what to do with it. What they are afraid of is destabilizing nations that have nuclear weapons. If you greenlighted India to run over Pakistan, what's the likelihood of a hardline Muslim in the Pakistani army getting a couple of nukes across the border? What are the chances that could make it's way to Chechnya? What's the likelihood that China would make a deal with OPEC to buy all of their oil, if OPEC decided to stop selling to any Western allied nation? Would Russia side with China? Would China rush more troops to the border and accidentally provoke India into war? That's a dangerous game no one wants to play. Well, except for people like you; maybe Sarah Palin, or some other vapid soccer moms who dabble in politics.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest, will cost well over two stimulous packages that don't seem to be doing much of what was claimed when they were passes. The economy will not be ruined as war spending doesn't destroy the economy when they don't seem to be using it to stop other spending.
You'll have to translate that into a coherent statement if you expect me to respond.
The only countries we threatened with invasion in the last 40 years have been invaded (with the exception of Libya that was simply bombed into submission) so it's not like we A: threaten them often, or B: have any success in threatening them seeing how we had to go to war each time it's happened.
US CIA and military interventions and deployments since 1970
1970: Vietnam, Cambodia
1973: Afghanistan, Iraq
1976: Argentina
1978: Afghanistan
1980: Iran, El Salvador, Cambodia, Angola, Iraq
1981: Nicaragua
1983: Grenada, Honduras
1986: Phillippines, Libya
1988: Panama
1989: Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Philippines
1990: Iraq
1992: Somalia
1993: Guatemala, Bosnia-Herzegovina
1994: Haiti
1998: Afghanistan, Sudan
1999: Serbia
2001: Afghanistan
2002: Philippines
2003: Iraq, Georgia, Djibouti
2004: Pakistan
I don't have time to go through all of the threats made during that period, but you can look through White House briefings to find most of them. If you don't consider military action as a successful threat, I'm not quite sure how to explain to you what the word "terrorism" means.
And you are severely stupid if you think the US should give up it's sovereignty to the UN and have foreign nations create US law concerning our national interest.
And if you think that all other nations should give up their sovereignty and have the United States determine their national interests, what does that make you?
The Taliban wanted to hand bin Laden over to a third party, most likely Pakistan, but the US refused to negotiate at all, which is the diplomatic equivalent of "go fuck yourself."
Yes, excuse me. It won't bankrupt the country if we let the elderly and the mentally ill die in hospital parking lots and start sending our kids to work for a dollar an hour at age 12. But don't worry, the Tea Party is working on it.
Right. The problem isn't that Israel is colonizing Palestine by devouring it over decades with settlements for security to protect settlements that were built for security that were built to protect settlements for security. The problem is that the Palestinians are fighting back.
Why don't we give the Palestinians the same weapons we give the Israelis? I can assure you that they would no longer attack with homemade rockets. Every hardline Palestinian would much rather blow up IDF installations and government buildings with helicopter gunships and fighter jets.
NPT doesn't mean you give up nukes as soon as you sign it. NPT means you agree to allow international inspectors to verify that you have secured your nuclear materials and technology, that you aren't spreading weaponizing technology to other nations, and that you agree to move towards disarmament.
If this training had been happening in Waziristan, would you still support going to war over failure of extradition?
We destroyed Afghanistan to make us feel better about 9/11, plain and simple. Afghanistan was an easy scapegoat for our own intelligence failures and bullshit foreign policy that contributed to 9/11 in the first place. It's a country that hasn't had a strong central government in decades, because every time one forms, a foreign power invades and dismantles it.
That's why Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Pakistan is home to Al Qaeda and the Taliban as well, but so far no American government has been dumb enough to consider invading a nuclear power that borders two other nuclear powers. North Korea's government is batshit insane but we don't invade because they have nukes, as well as their proximity to China. Pakistan's government is enormously corrupt and has close ties with terrorist organizations, but we don't invade because they have a nuke. Now, on two of Iran's borders, America has unilaterally invaded simply because we could without fear of repercussions. If you were an Iranian, what would you rather have? Nukes or a foreign army occupying your homeland?
If American planners are dumb enough to pursue terrorist organizations into third world nations that barely have electricity or running water every time there's a successful terror attack, then the War of the Flea tactic will destroy our economy within two decades. We're already spending one trillion a year on warfare and weapons research. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest, will cost well over two trillion dollars according to the CBO by 2014.
If we're serious about ending the use of terrorism as a military tactic, the first thing we should do is stop using terrorism as a military tactic. Stop threatening sovereign nations with invasion if they don't capitulate to our demands. Use international law to address international issues through peaceful and diplomatic means as outlined in the UN charter we signed. Stop giving money and weapons to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia until they all sit down and settle their diplomatic relations. That will involve denying all aid to Israel until they formally agree to stop colonizing Palestinian land with settlements, and sign a treaty to accept the 1967 borders in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab nations. Then we should push Israel and India and Pakistan to sign the NPT and open themselves up to international inspections.
Anything else is just pissing in the wind.
Hopefully one day you will criticize China and get a bullet in the head for it.
You should probably read the Constitution.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
Find me the receipts for all of the activity of the CIA, or you lose.
Yes, let's not reform the unconstitutional secret police who roam the earth assassinating people without trials, or torture people in secret prisons. Let's blame the people who talk about the secret police.
Assange is not ratting out FBI informants working in America. He's ratting out American atrocities in foreign lands. There is a huge difference.
But I don't see the entirety of the US government sitting around thinking of how much they hate freedom and democracy and conspiring ways to end it.
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." -Henry Kissinger
CIA intervention for regime change:
1953 Iran
1954 Guatemala
1959 Cuba
1960 Democratic Republic of the Congo
1963 Iraq
1964 Brazil
1966 Republic of Ghana
1968 Iraq
1973 Afghanistan
1973 Iraq
1976 Argentina
1978 Afghanistan
1980 Iran
1980 El Salvador
1980 Cambodia
1980 Angola
1981 Nicaragua
1986 Phillippines
1992 Iraq
1993 Guatemala
That list will grow larger as more documents are declassified.
At this point, is US government hatred of freedom and democracy even news?
It doesn't make it totally unworthy, but picture this (with apologies to Hitchens): you're on a bus. A man sitting next to you, who seems perfectly normal in appearance, starts telling you about how he enjoys talking to God. Now take that person, give him a golden staff, a big white hat, and a white robe. You now have the Pope.
The Catholic Church has been civilized over time by humanism and science, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still causing misery through their idiocy concerning contraception, still protecting child rapists from due process of law, and are even vile and immoral enough to decry government intervention in church affairs when the local authorities try to arrest the pedophiles.
The guy leading that church? Probably has nothing useful to say.
So, no Catholic prays to the Virgin Mary anymore? They don't pray to one of the 10,000 saints? I find that rather difficult to believe.
But go ahead into your dogmatic reasoning on why Jesus is God, so he's not dead, and of course God is God, so that's not communicating with the dead, and since the Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived, even though she is dead, the Pope considers praying to her not to be some sort of witchcraft. And then, with all speed, proceed to explain how praying to one of ten thousand saints is not communicating with the dead.
There is one dogma that all organized religions hold steadfastly and as dear to their heart as any core doctrine: rank hypocrisy.
When you want to have a real philosophical discussion, do you seek out New Age believers who have faith in the power of crystals? People who believe you can communicate with the dead? Conspiracy theorists who think the world is run by a secret cabal of Jew bankers?
The Pope is the middle one.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1764528&cid=33355652
Last week, we also hosted a live chat featuring several developers whose apps were picked for our Ars Design Awards for Mac OS X. We asked them what they thought about the future of Mac OS X and Apple's development platform during the chat, and then followed up on their thoughts about languages and APIs. While current Mac developers aren't nearly as concerned as our own John Siracusa about the Objective-C language in particular, they do see new and improved APIs coming down the pike. Developers are seeing iOS influencing Mac OS X instead of the other way around.
The developers on our panel unanimously agreed that Mac OS X will eventually be subsumed by iOS, but that the Mac has plenty of life left. "Mac is the awesome old grandma, whose kids (iPhone & iPad) have left home," Atebits' Loren Brichter said. "Not dead; not really dying. But it's our job to keep her comfortable until she's gone."
Uh, no. I just bought a refurb Lenovo Y560 with a 1GB ATI 5730 for $700. If you'll recall, the cheapest MacBook Pro with a discrete video card is $1700, which is the same price as brand new Alienware gaming laptops.
Bullshit. My average typing speed is 140+ and it's far better than having to depress a tall key for 10-15mm than a flat, larger key about 5mm. The feedback is enough to let you know you pressed a key, and not so much that it delays it any further.
For reference, look at my posting history for the last year here on /.
I have a 68GB library, on an i7 MBP. It loads in twenty to thirty seconds. I have a 750GB hard drive that is 70% filled, and Spotlight simply doesn't work. Type in "Text" and it hangs for about 10 seconds before finally settling on TextEdit in the Applications folder.
Again, for most college kids, it's a fine OS. Ask it to be more than a media player and web browser that also runs Pages, and you're looking for trouble.
What exactly makes Mac hardware nice?
The industrial design of Apple computers is simply the best in the world. I don't know of anyone who disputes that -- at least someone who can point to a computer manufacturer who has anything better.
As far as functionality is concerned, their mice are crap, keyboards are great, and their laptops are good for everything except 3d acceleration. Multi-touch trackpads without buttons are the best design out there, along with their island style keyboards which are also without equal. iMacs are the best looking desktop computer, bar none.
Is everything overpriced? Yes. Is their OS better than Windows 7? Depends on what you use it for. But now, iTunes takes as long to load as Photoshop CS5. Spotlight is broken for all practical purposes, even though I rebuild indexes every couple of weeks. Steve will soon release an iMac that runs iOS as well as OS X, and you can see where it's going from here. In order to improve the user experience, Steve is going to prevent his users from running unsigned processes. He'll lose all of the nerds who switched to OS X, but that's such a small number of people, he's not going to care when the reward is 30% of all software sales.
Yeah. Mac hardware is nice. Their software, however, is turning into bloatware.
There is a social network inside of iTunes.
There is a social network inside of iTunes.
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
A democracy means there is a vote to either directly approve laws (direct democracy) or to elect representatives to do the same (representative democracy). Republic literally means ruled by the public, not by a monarch or a non-elected supreme rule. America is a representative democracy that limits government power with a constitution, but since that constitution can be changed by democratic action, you cannot say that it isn't a democracy. We could do away with the constitution in another constitutional convention and replace it with another if we so chose.
Just because you read Atlas Shrugged yesterday doesn't mean shit to anyone else. Crawl back over the Drudge Report, where you can eat up the talking points regurgitation with the rest of the libertarian zombies.
Note to our Euro friends: subsidizing fuel costs and road systems is democracy. Subsidizing railways and mass transit is communism.
It all makes sense if you don't think about it.
North Korea is another result of the Cold War that has yet to be resolved. External influences and pressures created the State, and are unlikely to correct it without causing serious damage.
Facilitating the deterioration of North Korea would likely lead to an extremely dangerous situation involving millions of refugees, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. And frankly, that's the reason Kim Jong Il and the necrocracy there still rules. Being next door to China and Russia, the United States doesn't want to poke around too seriously. China doesn't want to deal with the refugee problem and actively hunts and sends defectors back to North Korea where they are tortured and usually die in detention camps.
South Korea believes that engagement and talks are the way forward. Since it's their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers over there suffering, I think we should let them take the lead instead of using it as a political talking point. The less ego you inject into that situation, the more likely real progress can be achieved.
Yeah. Fuck democracy. It's not like keeping the voting system accessible by the public has any meaning. What's the difference between North Korea and America? Why, just a little cuisine and weather, right?
1) The vast majority of the public is too stupid to make any kind of sound decision about many issues
Go fuck yourself. Seriously.
2) Most candidates can only get anywhere by money
Martin Luther King? Desmond Tutu? Ghandi? There have been many political leaders, who didn't necessarily enter politics, who were able to force the state to change because the truth was no longer concealable. You cannot govern a population that does not want to be governed by you. Their desire to hold on to their positions of power is both a blessing and a curse. Even in communist China popular will has given way to reforms because the ruling party didn't want to be overthrown. There are some examples of states supported by outside powers, or in power because that state is under threat from other states, but especially in the developed Western world, the citizens of a nation determine their destiny.
3) You can never get rid of or mitigate the influence of money on politics since corporations are what makes the world go round.
Bullshit. People are what make the world go around. Do you really think life would stop tomorrow of AT&T and Exxon didn't exist? Civilization existed for thousands of years before the corporation. They are a human invention, not some magical organization that's any better or worse than any other hierarchy. But keep swallowing that line like an obedient intellectual prostitute.
4) Until their is something of a mass movement/revolt so that the power of corporations are reigned in, voting is irrelevant.
Bullshit. Countries around the world have voted to kick corporations out. Unfortunately, when they do, the United States often assassinates their leader or overthrows their democratic government through coups or terror campaigns. If you are an American citizen, you are one of the most powerful people on earth, because you have a vote that can change the way the world operates. But you've accepted the reality they sold to you, not out of struggle or just giving up because you don't have the strength to continue fighting, but because accepting that belief enables you to act immorally and pretend that it doesn't matter. You're nothing more than a sell out.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -George Bernard Shaw
Sweet... so, if the Republicans retake the House and Senate next month, and haven't solved the deficit by 2012, it will have nothing to do with Pelosi or Obama.
Be sure to tell your friends.
National Debt % of GDP
1972: 34.5%
1976: 34.0%
1980: 32.5%
1984: 40.0%
1988: 51.0%
1992: 64.9%
1996: 66.6%
2000: 57.0%
2004: 62.2%
2008: 69.2%
Yes, can we please go back to before Reagan took office, and make sure he doesn't? We could have eliminated the Reagan and Bush years in one brilliant stroke.
Any other brilliant, simple, easy ideas you'd like to share with us morons?
Sure. Don't get involved in land wars in Asia. Also, don't hand Iran the Middle East on a silver platter by destroying the only secular nation with women's rights to settle some old score that has nothing to do with national security.
Also, don't let the tiny threat of terrorism draw you in to every backwater nation with zero infrastructure and drain our treasury in a low-intensity conflict that nets us zero benefits.
You fucking morons.