The issue is not that the earth's crust contains certain materials. The issue is that the organisms that fill the earth have evolved to survive in their current environment over the course of hundreds of millions of years. If you radically change that environment by digging those materials out and putting them into different biospheres in concentrated amounts and more soluble forms, it can cause some real damage, as your intellectual capacity demonstrates.
Everything you eat and drink was once pissed or shit out of something else. That's why you can't dump chemicals into the environment without eventually experiencing the consequences.
The further up the food chain you go, the more concentrated the toxins become. I suspect that's one of the reason's we're all dying of cancer.
I'm too lazy to entirely rewrite what I wrote last time someone made this assertion:
1) The Taliban are using missiles we gave them back in the 80s to try and shoot our copters down (officially denied until the leak) 2) Many accounts given by the military to the press were wrong and underreported how many civilians died, according to the original reports 3) It exposed the "killing squads" -- also known as Task Force 373 -- recently in the news for mutilating Afghan bodies and keeping their body parts as trophies 4) It exposed the fact that many of the military operations are now classified and under the direct control of the CIA 5) It documents the rise of Taliban military capability, directly contradicting public statements made by the US military
I'll leave my snarky commentary on the press and you, the credulous American public, intact:
But you guys wrap all that up with "No Big Deal," and feed it to all the media outlets who depend on you for access to government officials? Fucking. Brilliant. They don't even have to pretend to have reported on those things before. They just say, basically, the emperor has clothes, and then Joe Sixpack nods his little beer storage unit up and down and switches back to WWE. I know, and now they're all uppity about this Australian guy possibly getting innocent people killed when we're laying civs out left and right - with secret police and secret budgets! God bless the US of Amnesia.
Right... the real issue is not that we're invading countries left and right, or opening up secret prisons around the world, or legalizing the assassination of US citizens, or ending the protection of civil rights that western society has had since the Magna Carta, or threatening sovereign nations with annihilation on a weekly basis, or treating the UN like it's our play toy, or refusing to submit to an international legal authority, but it's the fact that we can't keep a secret that's really bothering the rest of the world.
The reason the rest of the world doesn't trust us with information is because we often do very stupid things with it, especially when it comes to terrorism.
Maybe we stopped someone worse than Saddam from taking power in the middle east.
We helped put Saddam in power, and certainly helped him stay there. We removed him from the state sponsors of terror list in 1982 so American companies could sell him WMDs. He used them to continue a war with Iran that ended with over one million people dead - coincidentally, Iran had just overthrown our other dictator of choice, the Shah, who had been torturing and killing his own citizens since 1953, when we destroyed their government for better control over their oil resources (Operation AJAX). Also during that decade, we poured billions of dollars to train and equip radical Muslims to overthrow the marxist government that was backed by the Soviet Union.
Unsurprisingly, these three countries have ended up generating and supporting extremely radical militant groups that hate the United States for very real and very rational reasons.
Maybe we stopped the Soviets from entrenching in Afghanistan and expanding into Pakistan or threatening China with nukes from all directions?
The Russian Army was vastly superior to the Chinese Amy at that time, so pretending the additional attack vector of Pakistan -- over the Tibetan plateau, no less -- would be an additional threat to Mao's China is questionable. As we can see from former Soviet satellites in Europe, from the Ukraine to West Germany, countries directly under the control of Moscow are doing far better than the ones we invaded or terrorized to fight communism. The only exception I can think of is South Korea. This is not because totalitarianism is better than democracy, but because a population that has some basic sense of security and stability will always fare better in the long run, even if another system of government is forced on them for a half century.
Of course there would still be terrorist attacks against America. We are the most powerful nation in the world. The best always attract people and organizations that want to take away what they are most jealous of. A thousand years of any country's history will tell you that.
That argument only holds water if ordinary Americans wake up the day after China overtakes our economy and decide that we want to amass an army and invade. Only after China abuses it's military or economic power will we be prepared to start a war.
And last I heard, no Iraqis or Iranians or Afghanis have ever shouted "Death to China."
the people we displaced from power are Islamic Extremists, who deny basic education to women, recruit children into their armies, and are all around bad guys.
That depends on what year it is. From 1979-1988, those were the good guys - the "freedom fighters" as Reagan used to call them. This is part of the hypocrisy that makes it difficult for anyone to take us very seriously when we talk about principles.
The "regular" people of Afghanistan are all too happy to be out from the thumb of the Taliban. Not that our actions have been overtly friendly with civilians as of late, but that's the cost of a guerrilla war.
If the Taliban didn't have the support of the local populace, the war would be over. A few thousand years of their history will show you that the only thing they hate more than competing tribes are foreign invaders.
The real truth is that if we had stayed out of the affairs of these sovereign nations since the end of WWII, there would be no major terrorist attacks against our troops (since they wouldn't be over there) or against our homeland. They would hate America no more or less than they hate New Zealand.
Peer review means it has received documented critical analysis by people in the same field, which makes it much more difficult to pass off simple assertions.
I trust corporations with my need for food all the time
No you don't. The FDA (when properly funded and empowered) is the entity that keeps you from dying of salmonella and ecoli. The libertarian solution is for your child to die and for you to "learn" that you shouldn't buy food from the same vendor again.
The rest of your comment ignores the simple truth that YOU are in control of YOUR government, if you live in a functioning democracy. All of the whining and hand wringing about powerful politicians is pathetic apathy, masquerading as a red herring about imagined injustice.
It is your job to make sure that your politicians are acting in your interests, through your vote and your participation in politics. Once you hand that sort of power over to a private entity which doesn't even have to pretend to have your interests in mind, or be afraid that you have any way to fire his ass, you'll quickly find yourself living in an oligarchy with no rights.
we can no longer adequately explain 1) the rise of the American system before the close of the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) and America's transformation into an empire or 2) why despotisms are generally incapable of improving their countries, even when they are 'legitimately' put in power by the people.
1) I do not see a point to comprehend - are you really trying to compare the offshoot of British imperialism with tribal societies under the thumb of British and European imperialism?
2) There's an entire section of history concerning enlightened despotism. It's the most effective form of government, but far too dangerous to give any one person that much power in the event someone like Stalin or Hitler becomes that person.
Its been shown time and time again that people will donate when they believe they are actually making a difference, and private groups would be able to use decision making to give support to people who actually need it unlike the government.
Pure horseshit. Call my bluff and link to a peer reviewed study.
There's a reason roads aren't private, and power is regulated, and water is a public utility. That reason is because you cannot trust a corporation with needs, unless those needs can be plentifully produced and naturally lend themselves to real competition. That means MP3 players and apples need very little regulation, because it's pretty easy to tell what these things are, what they are made of, and what purpose they serve.
Hell, when the founding fathers were talking about what the government should run, the latest technology at that time - the post and road systems - was something they all wanted folded into the government. The reason is because under government supervision it could be properly accounted for and equitably distributed across America, and not subject to the whims of aristocracy or price gouging by private entities. That cheap, reliable, price-regulated infrastructure is the bedrock of all modern economies. The intelligence and capability of the workforce is a vital part of that infrastructure, and shouldn't be left to chance by some entity who is only concerned with that quarter's profit return instead of the well being of American society for the long haul.
You want a place where money rules and weak government is powerless to regulate commerce? Pick just about any place in Africa and see how you like the income distribution there. You'll quickly learn that it's pretty tough to have a middle class when the majority of your population can't read or write. But hey, the market said they should just dig in the dirt and have all of their natural resources sold out from under them and funneled into the hands of the tiniest sliver of their upper class. And if the market did it, it's got to be right.
Right?
Government programs benefit those who game the system rather than people who actually might need it. Private programs can deny people which makes it a whole lot easier to give help to those who need it.
Your ideas on economics are fatally childish and unrealistic, unless you have no problem with old women dying in hospital parking lots for lack of kidney dialysis, or a vast population of uneducated and unskilled workers roaming the slums, or kids selling their bodies for their daily bread if they happen to be unlucky enough to be an orphan. Those are all realities right now across the undeveloped world. And true, some of it is due to government corruption, but that just shows you how important a strong and legitimate government is to the well-being of a society.
If all of this libertarian horseshit were true, than the weak states across the world would be drowning in money and happiness. They are not.
Instead of "Joe Sixpack" try imagining a mother who just lost her husband with three kids, one of whom suffers from severe learning disabilities. In your fucked up world, not only would she be looked down upon for receiving "government handouts" to make ends meet, but also for wanting to see all of her children get the same opportunities as any other family in her society.
My own sister went to public school and had a multitude of support options that my family could not afford otherwise. Now, instead of pushing the cash machine at a Wal-Mart or McDonalds, she's also doing work helping the developmentally challenged overcome their own obstacles. Hopefully they will also become productive members of society, producing more wealth for the economy at large, instead of languishing in some bare bones charity warehouse for the poor on the outskirts of town, as is common in much of the third world. If you consider that a waste of money, I can only say a prayer for what used to be a human conscience, now an empty space occupied by some classical dogmas that have long been invalidated.
Your version of reality exists entirely inside of an Ayn Rand novel.
Private schools perform better because of selection bias. Parents who care about their child's education will go the extra mile, including spending extra money that doesn't always yield results. Stable families and finances are the determining factor in academic success, not the source of the funding for the school.
As someone who went to a private and a public high school, the only difference was that everyone at the private school never wanted for anything and most never had jobs other than school, while in public school a few miles away, they had night jobs just so they could make ends meet for their family. One major problem is that high schools in the US are treated like minimum security prisons for teenagers. Ending truancy laws once they turn 15 could solve the biggest problem of teachers being forced to control students who won't want to be there in the first place.
But really, your entire argument rests on the belief that anyone born poor or with learning disabilities does not deserve an education. That's a pretty low moral standard to aim for, and one you are strangely proud of.
Because the USA, unlike the rest of the world, is immune to the idea that investing in education and infrastructure yields tangible benefits for society!
At some point in history, there were doctors who were convinced that the four humours were the chief actors in the body, and developed some pretty strange and barbaric rituals to regulate their levels. The finest doctors at that time went to the finest schools and received the best education in the world, as far as they were concerned. The trouble was that everything they believed was absolutely untrue. The foundation of every bit of their knowledge was built upon a lie.
Receiving a good education does not ensure that you are right or wrong, but it means you are very highly trained in the existing hubris of your culture. So I'm sure this guy worked very hard, and filled out all the right forms and kissed ass at the appropriate times and wrote brilliant regurgitations of his professor's theories to clamor his way to the top of the bourgeois dog pile of the desperately successful. But that doesn't mean his ideas are worth a damn.
And it also doesn't mean that they're not worth a damn. But the guy works for the government, and specifically, the part of the government that exists to protect American (corporate) interests above all else. His job is to make the internet safe for commerce, not to protect the free flow of information. He's got his hammer, and he intends to find some nails.
If near term cost is the only concern, all you do is create more problems. They could build a geodesic dome over the land fill, and burn the methane and turn that smell into energy, but that would require investment.. They could start separating the trash and recycling, while keeping biological waste in compost heaps that reduce the smell, but that would require investment.
America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years.
Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.
If Steve thinks the desktop metaphor is too difficult for most users, he'll take it away from everyone. If he thinks only signed applications should be allowed to run on your computer, he'll make it so. Of course, Microsoft could do the same thing, but Apple is certainly more likely to make those decisions. I can only hope they will keep the "mouse option" for pro creative users, but with Apple randomly removing FireWire, ExpressCard slots, and still failing to provide professional level graphics cards, most people see the writing on the wall: average joe consumers along with iPods and iPads are the future. Steve is a smart guy, but I wouldn't put it past his ego to declare the end of computers as we know them.
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."
Not to discount at all the terrorism inflicted on the South by the North. Most terrorism is committed by the powerful, but that doesn't mean the oppressed population just gives up without a fight.
The book details how elements within the Confederacy, acting officially or otherwise, developed and attempted numerous plans to inflict terror and death on the Union populace and bring down the government. Singer introduces the reader to such shadowy characters as Professor Richard Sears McCulloch, who resigned a faculty chair at Columbia College to assist the Confederacy in making a chemical weapon; Luke Pryor Blackburn, a physician and, later, governor of Kentucky, who allegedly spread smallpox and yellow fever throughout the North.
This is a war against other Christians and fellow countrymen. Imagine if South Carolinians were under the thumb of Muslim or Chinese forces.
It just goes to show how morally bankrupt the Left has become, when they scoff and sneer at some poor illiterate woman who's facing death by stoning, claiming that her case is over-hyped and overblown. That's not the kind of liberalism I was raised to respect - kids these days (sigh).
How about this for a liberal value: LEAVE SOVEREIGN NATIONS ALONE. If we have to invade Iran for stoning women, we've got about twenty other countries with worse human rights records - including some of our biggest allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan - that we'd have to invade. And those other allies I mentioned are far less democratic than Iran.
Hezbollah did not appear out of Iran's magic crystal ball. It appeared directly as a result of Israeli and American forces invading Lebanon in 1982. If you'll remember at the time, Iran was fighting an all out war against the US backed henchman Saddam Hussein, because we didn't like their chosen government back then either. I don't think they had time to form a commando unit and invade Lebanon while they were losing that war. (Gee, and that was around the time that Reagan and some current Fox News personalities were committing treason by selling weapons to sworn enemies, taking the money to Colombia, and playing the other side of the drug war to fund the unconstitutional CIA. Fascinating!)
We like destroying secular Arab nationalism and getting absolutely shocked when it turns into extreme islamic fundamentalism. We destroyed the Iranian government in 1953 and ended up with the Islamic Revolution in 1979. We destroyed the marxist government of Afghanistan and eventually got the Taliban. We destroyed the PLO and got Hamas. We destroyed Lebanese movements and we got Hezbollah. We destroyed Iraq and I'll guaran-fucking-tee you we're going to get some crazy Shia elements there as well. Amazing! It's like if you subject people with war and misery for decades, they come out the other side with some kind of chip on their shoulder.
Can we see a pattern here? Just like if you invaded South Carolina and took out their army, you'd have a bunch of fanatical Christians blowing themselves up trying to take just a piece out of whoever invaded. It's a rational response when you have no options left.
So, seriously, shut the fuck up about Iran. You can get all offended and moral about their religious laws when you stop Catholic priests from using their separate religious rules to rape children and get away with it. Oh, but I guess child-rape is morally sound in your sad, fucked up world, huh? Either that, or you think it's easier to go halfway around the world and start another war in the same spot for the third time this decade to stop some injustice.
If you really think that's the case, I have only one thing to say: go. fuck. yourself.
Sincerely, A "Liberal" Who Has Values, Including Calling A Spade A Spade
Damn straight. Heaven knows naming your UAVs something ominous is a sure sign of evil. Killing a few hundred innocent civilians per month with the lilly-themed "Predator" drones is something entirely different...
All of these anti-war people complaining about the tens of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan don't seem to understand: Iran has leaders who threaten violence, with really mean sounding words. How is it that they only seem to criticize America?
The nation that just invaded two of your neighbors is threatening to invade. But don't try to come up with any sneaky way to defend yourself. Just remain calm while the Freedom Police check you for anything they don't approve of.
I know if the Russians and Iran invaded Mexico and Canada, we'd just sit quietly and hope for the best. Right?
Like the smartphone? If you're going to be rewriting everything anyway, you can choose a new platform. The reason LotD never took off is because of many things, but mostly because of the lack of backwards compatible application support. If Microsoft Office had ever come out for Linux, and all of the Linux vendors had stopped smoking hash and developed a unified target for desktop development, I think things would be very different indeed.
Android is still open source, but is spearheaded by companies who are invested in it's development. In my opinion, it's going to be the most popular operating system by far in about five years. With HTML5 and browser speed improvements, very few people will bother with native development.
According to new data from Nielsen, smartphones running Google’s Android operating system outsold those running Apple’s iOS in the first half of 2010 by a margin of 27% to 23% of the US market. The news builds on data from NPD that showed the same result in the first quarter, when Android claimed 28% of smartphone sales to iPhone’s 21%.
It should be noted that iPhone 4 only went on sale in the last week of the second quarter... [but] the longer-term trend remains intact – as more and more Android devices launch across manufacturers and carriers, it continues to gain marketshare in the US and around the world (another study out today shows Android shipments up 886% year-over-year worldwide).
If you punch a bully before he hits first, you risk losing the fight. You've also lost your integrity, but hey, maybe you're just a dick anyway.
If you abandon your principals out of fear as a nation, there ceases to be a reason to fight for it. The only thing separating you from your enemy are some minor qualms about when to trade your integrity for your desires.
And I work in disability support, so we are getting iPads for specialists while blind, deaf and Autistics are getting iPads by the truck load.
But keep thinking it's all about status.
They'll hold that crown for another 6 months, until being obliterated by cheaper, more open, and probably more durable options from many more vendors. All Apple proved is that you need to redesign the OS and the applications for touch usage.
But keep paying extra for the logo. No reason to invest in more open and more affordable options, and bring the benefits of touch computing to more people, when you can just pour all of the money into AAPL's pockets, right?
The iPad will do well for the same reason that $3 bottles of water and TAG watches do well. People buy status, not functionality, and Apple products are also reasonably functional.
They figured that if you artificially raise the price of a product, it's price is also an indicator of value to customers. Apple customers want to overpay, because that's part of the brand experience. Since all of the other electronics manufacturers are competing on price, performance, and features, Apple "wins" by not offering any of those three, but making sure that the few features they do offer work well and consistently.
As far as raw sales go, Android tablets are going to eclipse iPad tablets without a doubt. But even when the Android tablets are offering front and rear facing cameras, compasses, USB3, HDMI, DisplayPort, printing, etc etc, it won't matter to Apple users, because they are the wrong brand. Their $500 tablet must match the trim on their $3500 tower desktop which must match the trim on their $700 phone which must match the trim on their $2300 laptop. It's a lifestyle brand for well-to-do yuppies.
Is OS X better than Windows XP and Vista? Hands down, yes. Is it better than Windows 7? Probably. But being better than windows isn't some heroic feat. And sorry to say, OS X Server is an abomination compared to any Microsoft enterprise products. Apple knows not to venture into real enterprise territory, because companies have budgets and people who know how to manage computers.
Anyway, I'm glad Apple is in the market. Sooner or later the Chinese will figure out that putting an extra $50 in the case will be worth the money, and we'll stop getting ugly plastic chassis. Apple has also proven that a non-windows OS can create a market for itself in the 21st Century. And let's be honest, their hardware is amazingly refined. Their software platform is reasonably open. (I used to be a hardliner against this point, but it's true.) I don't think they will do very well in the future, if only because they collect a lot of money from software sales. They have a huge incentive to invest in DRM. If iOS heads to the desktop, they're finished. I don't think Steve is that stupid, but his shareholders might be.
You're not going to be able to catch the CIA on this. Part of the deal when they pay you is that if you get caught, they will deny knowing you. As everyone discovered with the Valerie Plame case, being a government asset doesn't mean they give a shit about you. You exist, in reputation or in biological function, as long as you are useful to the State. I honestly have no idea why anyone would sign up given the history of The Agency.
The CIA is unconstitutional. It operates under a secret budget and outside the rule of Law. It has led to nothing but abuse, misery, and hasn't done anything but provide people from around the world with a good reason to hate the United States.
Intelligence services don't mean you train commandos to rape and torture and kill portions of the civilian populace in order to enforce your political will on a sovereign country. It doesn't mean you buy politicians off and then give them a bunch of weapons and training to do your dirty work for you in exchange for resource access. It means you have feelers around the world so you are always in the loop, so if some dictator does go batshit insane, then you prepare a response and let him know that you've got about ten million tons of reasonably accurate weaponry that you're going to drop if and only if he does carry out an attack.
Yes, it leaves you open to the possibility of terrorism committed by a few sociopaths, but that's the price you pay to live in a free and open society. The alternatives are far worse.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue is not that the earth's crust contains certain materials. The issue is that the organisms that fill the earth have evolved to survive in their current environment over the course of hundreds of millions of years. If you radically change that environment by digging those materials out and putting them into different biospheres in concentrated amounts and more soluble forms, it can cause some real damage, as your intellectual capacity demonstrates.
Everything you eat and drink was once pissed or shit out of something else. That's why you can't dump chemicals into the environment without eventually experiencing the consequences.
The further up the food chain you go, the more concentrated the toxins become. I suspect that's one of the reason's we're all dying of cancer.
I know cognitive dissonance is difficult to take.
I'd bet dollars to donuts you know better than anyone.
I'm too lazy to entirely rewrite what I wrote last time someone made this assertion:
1) The Taliban are using missiles we gave them back in the 80s to try and shoot our copters down (officially denied until the leak)
2) Many accounts given by the military to the press were wrong and underreported how many civilians died, according to the original reports
3) It exposed the "killing squads" -- also known as Task Force 373 -- recently in the news for mutilating Afghan bodies and keeping their body parts as trophies
4) It exposed the fact that many of the military operations are now classified and under the direct control of the CIA
5) It documents the rise of Taliban military capability, directly contradicting public statements made by the US military
I'll leave my snarky commentary on the press and you, the credulous American public, intact:
But you guys wrap all that up with "No Big Deal," and feed it to all the media outlets who depend on you for access to government officials? Fucking. Brilliant. They don't even have to pretend to have reported on those things before. They just say, basically, the emperor has clothes, and then Joe Sixpack nods his little beer storage unit up and down and switches back to WWE. I know, and now they're all uppity about this Australian guy possibly getting innocent people killed when we're laying civs out left and right - with secret police and secret budgets! God bless the US of Amnesia.
Right... the real issue is not that we're invading countries left and right, or opening up secret prisons around the world, or legalizing the assassination of US citizens, or ending the protection of civil rights that western society has had since the Magna Carta, or threatening sovereign nations with annihilation on a weekly basis, or treating the UN like it's our play toy, or refusing to submit to an international legal authority, but it's the fact that we can't keep a secret that's really bothering the rest of the world.
The reason the rest of the world doesn't trust us with information is because we often do very stupid things with it, especially when it comes to terrorism.
Maybe we stopped someone worse than Saddam from taking power in the middle east.
We helped put Saddam in power, and certainly helped him stay there. We removed him from the state sponsors of terror list in 1982 so American companies could sell him WMDs. He used them to continue a war with Iran that ended with over one million people dead - coincidentally, Iran had just overthrown our other dictator of choice, the Shah, who had been torturing and killing his own citizens since 1953, when we destroyed their government for better control over their oil resources (Operation AJAX). Also during that decade, we poured billions of dollars to train and equip radical Muslims to overthrow the marxist government that was backed by the Soviet Union.
Unsurprisingly, these three countries have ended up generating and supporting extremely radical militant groups that hate the United States for very real and very rational reasons.
Maybe we stopped the Soviets from entrenching in Afghanistan and expanding into Pakistan or threatening China with nukes from all directions?
The Russian Army was vastly superior to the Chinese Amy at that time, so pretending the additional attack vector of Pakistan -- over the Tibetan plateau, no less -- would be an additional threat to Mao's China is questionable. As we can see from former Soviet satellites in Europe, from the Ukraine to West Germany, countries directly under the control of Moscow are doing far better than the ones we invaded or terrorized to fight communism. The only exception I can think of is South Korea. This is not because totalitarianism is better than democracy, but because a population that has some basic sense of security and stability will always fare better in the long run, even if another system of government is forced on them for a half century.
Of course there would still be terrorist attacks against America. We are the most powerful nation in the world. The best always attract people and organizations that want to take away what they are most jealous of. A thousand years of any country's history will tell you that.
That argument only holds water if ordinary Americans wake up the day after China overtakes our economy and decide that we want to amass an army and invade. Only after China abuses it's military or economic power will we be prepared to start a war.
And last I heard, no Iraqis or Iranians or Afghanis have ever shouted "Death to China."
the people we displaced from power are Islamic Extremists, who deny basic education to women, recruit children into their armies, and are all around bad guys.
That depends on what year it is. From 1979-1988, those were the good guys - the "freedom fighters" as Reagan used to call them. This is part of the hypocrisy that makes it difficult for anyone to take us very seriously when we talk about principles.
The "regular" people of Afghanistan are all too happy to be out from the thumb of the Taliban. Not that our actions have been overtly friendly with civilians as of late, but that's the cost of a guerrilla war.
If the Taliban didn't have the support of the local populace, the war would be over. A few thousand years of their history will show you that the only thing they hate more than competing tribes are foreign invaders.
The real truth is that if we had stayed out of the affairs of these sovereign nations since the end of WWII, there would be no major terrorist attacks against our troops (since they wouldn't be over there) or against our homeland. They would hate America no more or less than they hate New Zealand.
Peer-review does not make something correct
Peer review means it has received documented critical analysis by people in the same field, which makes it much more difficult to pass off simple assertions.
I trust corporations with my need for food all the time
No you don't. The FDA (when properly funded and empowered) is the entity that keeps you from dying of salmonella and ecoli. The libertarian solution is for your child to die and for you to "learn" that you shouldn't buy food from the same vendor again.
The rest of your comment ignores the simple truth that YOU are in control of YOUR government, if you live in a functioning democracy. All of the whining and hand wringing about powerful politicians is pathetic apathy, masquerading as a red herring about imagined injustice.
It is your job to make sure that your politicians are acting in your interests, through your vote and your participation in politics. Once you hand that sort of power over to a private entity which doesn't even have to pretend to have your interests in mind, or be afraid that you have any way to fire his ass, you'll quickly find yourself living in an oligarchy with no rights.
we can no longer adequately explain 1) the rise of the American system before the close of the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) and America's transformation into an empire or 2) why despotisms are generally incapable of improving their countries, even when they are 'legitimately' put in power by the people.
1) I do not see a point to comprehend - are you really trying to compare the offshoot of British imperialism with tribal societies under the thumb of British and European imperialism?
2) There's an entire section of history concerning enlightened despotism. It's the most effective form of government, but far too dangerous to give any one person that much power in the event someone like Stalin or Hitler becomes that person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_absolutism
Its been shown time and time again that people will donate when they believe they are actually making a difference, and private groups would be able to use decision making to give support to people who actually need it unlike the government.
Pure horseshit. Call my bluff and link to a peer reviewed study.
There's a reason roads aren't private, and power is regulated, and water is a public utility. That reason is because you cannot trust a corporation with needs, unless those needs can be plentifully produced and naturally lend themselves to real competition. That means MP3 players and apples need very little regulation, because it's pretty easy to tell what these things are, what they are made of, and what purpose they serve.
Hell, when the founding fathers were talking about what the government should run, the latest technology at that time - the post and road systems - was something they all wanted folded into the government. The reason is because under government supervision it could be properly accounted for and equitably distributed across America, and not subject to the whims of aristocracy or price gouging by private entities. That cheap, reliable, price-regulated infrastructure is the bedrock of all modern economies. The intelligence and capability of the workforce is a vital part of that infrastructure, and shouldn't be left to chance by some entity who is only concerned with that quarter's profit return instead of the well being of American society for the long haul.
You want a place where money rules and weak government is powerless to regulate commerce? Pick just about any place in Africa and see how you like the income distribution there. You'll quickly learn that it's pretty tough to have a middle class when the majority of your population can't read or write. But hey, the market said they should just dig in the dirt and have all of their natural resources sold out from under them and funneled into the hands of the tiniest sliver of their upper class. And if the market did it, it's got to be right.
Right?
Government programs benefit those who game the system rather than people who actually might need it. Private programs can deny people which makes it a whole lot easier to give help to those who need it.
Your ideas on economics are fatally childish and unrealistic, unless you have no problem with old women dying in hospital parking lots for lack of kidney dialysis, or a vast population of uneducated and unskilled workers roaming the slums, or kids selling their bodies for their daily bread if they happen to be unlucky enough to be an orphan. Those are all realities right now across the undeveloped world. And true, some of it is due to government corruption, but that just shows you how important a strong and legitimate government is to the well-being of a society.
If all of this libertarian horseshit were true, than the weak states across the world would be drowning in money and happiness. They are not.
Instead of "Joe Sixpack" try imagining a mother who just lost her husband with three kids, one of whom suffers from severe learning disabilities. In your fucked up world, not only would she be looked down upon for receiving "government handouts" to make ends meet, but also for wanting to see all of her children get the same opportunities as any other family in her society.
My own sister went to public school and had a multitude of support options that my family could not afford otherwise. Now, instead of pushing the cash machine at a Wal-Mart or McDonalds, she's also doing work helping the developmentally challenged overcome their own obstacles. Hopefully they will also become productive members of society, producing more wealth for the economy at large, instead of languishing in some bare bones charity warehouse for the poor on the outskirts of town, as is common in much of the third world. If you consider that a waste of money, I can only say a prayer for what used to be a human conscience, now an empty space occupied by some classical dogmas that have long been invalidated.
Your version of reality exists entirely inside of an Ayn Rand novel.
Private schools perform better because of selection bias. Parents who care about their child's education will go the extra mile, including spending extra money that doesn't always yield results. Stable families and finances are the determining factor in academic success, not the source of the funding for the school.
As someone who went to a private and a public high school, the only difference was that everyone at the private school never wanted for anything and most never had jobs other than school, while in public school a few miles away, they had night jobs just so they could make ends meet for their family. One major problem is that high schools in the US are treated like minimum security prisons for teenagers. Ending truancy laws once they turn 15 could solve the biggest problem of teachers being forced to control students who won't want to be there in the first place.
But really, your entire argument rests on the belief that anyone born poor or with learning disabilities does not deserve an education. That's a pretty low moral standard to aim for, and one you are strangely proud of.
Because the USA, unlike the rest of the world, is immune to the idea that investing in education and infrastructure yields tangible benefits for society!
At some point in history, there were doctors who were convinced that the four humours were the chief actors in the body, and developed some pretty strange and barbaric rituals to regulate their levels. The finest doctors at that time went to the finest schools and received the best education in the world, as far as they were concerned. The trouble was that everything they believed was absolutely untrue. The foundation of every bit of their knowledge was built upon a lie.
Receiving a good education does not ensure that you are right or wrong, but it means you are very highly trained in the existing hubris of your culture. So I'm sure this guy worked very hard, and filled out all the right forms and kissed ass at the appropriate times and wrote brilliant regurgitations of his professor's theories to clamor his way to the top of the bourgeois dog pile of the desperately successful. But that doesn't mean his ideas are worth a damn.
And it also doesn't mean that they're not worth a damn. But the guy works for the government, and specifically, the part of the government that exists to protect American (corporate) interests above all else. His job is to make the internet safe for commerce, not to protect the free flow of information. He's got his hammer, and he intends to find some nails.
If near term cost is the only concern, all you do is create more problems. They could build a geodesic dome over the land fill, and burn the methane and turn that smell into energy, but that would require investment.. They could start separating the trash and recycling, while keeping biological waste in compost heaps that reduce the smell, but that would require investment.
America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years.
Steve said...
Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.
If Steve thinks the desktop metaphor is too difficult for most users, he'll take it away from everyone. If he thinks only signed applications should be allowed to run on your computer, he'll make it so. Of course, Microsoft could do the same thing, but Apple is certainly more likely to make those decisions. I can only hope they will keep the "mouse option" for pro creative users, but with Apple randomly removing FireWire, ExpressCard slots, and still failing to provide professional level graphics cards, most people see the writing on the wall: average joe consumers along with iPods and iPads are the future. Steve is a smart guy, but I wouldn't put it past his ego to declare the end of computers as we know them.
OS X developers think the same thing.
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."
Not to discount at all the terrorism inflicted on the South by the North. Most terrorism is committed by the powerful, but that doesn't mean the oppressed population just gives up without a fight.
Someone wrote a book about it: The Confederate Dirty War
A short review.
The book details how elements within the Confederacy, acting officially or otherwise, developed and attempted numerous plans to inflict terror and death on the Union populace and bring down the government. Singer introduces the reader to such shadowy characters as Professor Richard Sears McCulloch, who resigned a faculty chair at Columbia College to assist the Confederacy in making a chemical weapon; Luke Pryor Blackburn, a physician and, later, governor of Kentucky, who allegedly spread smallpox and yellow fever throughout the North.
This is a war against other Christians and fellow countrymen. Imagine if South Carolinians were under the thumb of Muslim or Chinese forces.
It just goes to show how morally bankrupt the Left has become, when they scoff and sneer at some poor illiterate woman who's facing death by stoning, claiming that her case is over-hyped and overblown. That's not the kind of liberalism I was raised to respect - kids these days (sigh).
How about this for a liberal value: LEAVE SOVEREIGN NATIONS ALONE. If we have to invade Iran for stoning women, we've got about twenty other countries with worse human rights records - including some of our biggest allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan - that we'd have to invade. And those other allies I mentioned are far less democratic than Iran.
Hezbollah did not appear out of Iran's magic crystal ball. It appeared directly as a result of Israeli and American forces invading Lebanon in 1982. If you'll remember at the time, Iran was fighting an all out war against the US backed henchman Saddam Hussein, because we didn't like their chosen government back then either. I don't think they had time to form a commando unit and invade Lebanon while they were losing that war. (Gee, and that was around the time that Reagan and some current Fox News personalities were committing treason by selling weapons to sworn enemies, taking the money to Colombia, and playing the other side of the drug war to fund the unconstitutional CIA. Fascinating!)
We like destroying secular Arab nationalism and getting absolutely shocked when it turns into extreme islamic fundamentalism. We destroyed the Iranian government in 1953 and ended up with the Islamic Revolution in 1979. We destroyed the marxist government of Afghanistan and eventually got the Taliban. We destroyed the PLO and got Hamas. We destroyed Lebanese movements and we got Hezbollah. We destroyed Iraq and I'll guaran-fucking-tee you we're going to get some crazy Shia elements there as well. Amazing! It's like if you subject people with war and misery for decades, they come out the other side with some kind of chip on their shoulder.
Can we see a pattern here? Just like if you invaded South Carolina and took out their army, you'd have a bunch of fanatical Christians blowing themselves up trying to take just a piece out of whoever invaded. It's a rational response when you have no options left.
So, seriously, shut the fuck up about Iran. You can get all offended and moral about their religious laws when you stop Catholic priests from using their separate religious rules to rape children and get away with it. Oh, but I guess child-rape is morally sound in your sad, fucked up world, huh? Either that, or you think it's easier to go halfway around the world and start another war in the same spot for the third time this decade to stop some injustice.
If you really think that's the case, I have only one thing to say: go. fuck. yourself.
Sincerely,
A "Liberal" Who Has Values,
Including Calling A Spade A Spade
Damn straight. Heaven knows naming your UAVs something ominous is a sure sign of evil. Killing a few hundred innocent civilians per month with the lilly-themed "Predator" drones is something entirely different...
All of these anti-war people complaining about the tens of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan don't seem to understand: Iran has leaders who threaten violence, with really mean sounding words. How is it that they only seem to criticize America?
The nation that just invaded two of your neighbors is threatening to invade. But don't try to come up with any sneaky way to defend yourself. Just remain calm while the Freedom Police check you for anything they don't approve of.
I know if the Russians and Iran invaded Mexico and Canada, we'd just sit quietly and hope for the best. Right?
Like the smartphone? If you're going to be rewriting everything anyway, you can choose a new platform. The reason LotD never took off is because of many things, but mostly because of the lack of backwards compatible application support. If Microsoft Office had ever come out for Linux, and all of the Linux vendors had stopped smoking hash and developed a unified target for desktop development, I think things would be very different indeed.
Android is still open source, but is spearheaded by companies who are invested in it's development. In my opinion, it's going to be the most popular operating system by far in about five years. With HTML5 and browser speed improvements, very few people will bother with native development.
http://mashable.com/2010/08/02/android-outselling-iphone-2/
According to new data from Nielsen, smartphones running Google’s Android operating system outsold those running Apple’s iOS in the first half of 2010 by a margin of 27% to 23% of the US market. The news builds on data from NPD that showed the same result in the first quarter, when Android claimed 28% of smartphone sales to iPhone’s 21%.
It should be noted that iPhone 4 only went on sale in the last week of the second quarter... [but] the longer-term trend remains intact – as more and more Android devices launch across manufacturers and carriers, it continues to gain marketshare in the US and around the world (another study out today shows Android shipments up 886% year-over-year worldwide).
I don't see why it is necessary to wait.
If you punch a bully before he hits first, you risk losing the fight. You've also lost your integrity, but hey, maybe you're just a dick anyway.
If you abandon your principals out of fear as a nation, there ceases to be a reason to fight for it. The only thing separating you from your enemy are some minor qualms about when to trade your integrity for your desires.
And I work in disability support, so we are getting iPads for specialists while blind, deaf and Autistics are getting iPads by the truck load.
But keep thinking it's all about status.
They'll hold that crown for another 6 months, until being obliterated by cheaper, more open, and probably more durable options from many more vendors. All Apple proved is that you need to redesign the OS and the applications for touch usage.
But keep paying extra for the logo. No reason to invest in more open and more affordable options, and bring the benefits of touch computing to more people, when you can just pour all of the money into AAPL's pockets, right?
The iPad will do well for the same reason that $3 bottles of water and TAG watches do well. People buy status, not functionality, and Apple products are also reasonably functional.
They figured that if you artificially raise the price of a product, it's price is also an indicator of value to customers. Apple customers want to overpay, because that's part of the brand experience. Since all of the other electronics manufacturers are competing on price, performance, and features, Apple "wins" by not offering any of those three, but making sure that the few features they do offer work well and consistently.
As far as raw sales go, Android tablets are going to eclipse iPad tablets without a doubt. But even when the Android tablets are offering front and rear facing cameras, compasses, USB3, HDMI, DisplayPort, printing, etc etc, it won't matter to Apple users, because they are the wrong brand. Their $500 tablet must match the trim on their $3500 tower desktop which must match the trim on their $700 phone which must match the trim on their $2300 laptop. It's a lifestyle brand for well-to-do yuppies.
Is OS X better than Windows XP and Vista? Hands down, yes. Is it better than Windows 7? Probably. But being better than windows isn't some heroic feat. And sorry to say, OS X Server is an abomination compared to any Microsoft enterprise products. Apple knows not to venture into real enterprise territory, because companies have budgets and people who know how to manage computers.
Anyway, I'm glad Apple is in the market. Sooner or later the Chinese will figure out that putting an extra $50 in the case will be worth the money, and we'll stop getting ugly plastic chassis. Apple has also proven that a non-windows OS can create a market for itself in the 21st Century. And let's be honest, their hardware is amazingly refined. Their software platform is reasonably open. (I used to be a hardliner against this point, but it's true.) I don't think they will do very well in the future, if only because they collect a lot of money from software sales. They have a huge incentive to invest in DRM. If iOS heads to the desktop, they're finished. I don't think Steve is that stupid, but his shareholders might be.
You're not going to be able to catch the CIA on this. Part of the deal when they pay you is that if you get caught, they will deny knowing you. As everyone discovered with the Valerie Plame case, being a government asset doesn't mean they give a shit about you. You exist, in reputation or in biological function, as long as you are useful to the State. I honestly have no idea why anyone would sign up given the history of The Agency.
The CIA is unconstitutional. It operates under a secret budget and outside the rule of Law. It has led to nothing but abuse, misery, and hasn't done anything but provide people from around the world with a good reason to hate the United States.
Intelligence services don't mean you train commandos to rape and torture and kill portions of the civilian populace in order to enforce your political will on a sovereign country. It doesn't mean you buy politicians off and then give them a bunch of weapons and training to do your dirty work for you in exchange for resource access. It means you have feelers around the world so you are always in the loop, so if some dictator does go batshit insane, then you prepare a response and let him know that you've got about ten million tons of reasonably accurate weaponry that you're going to drop if and only if he does carry out an attack.
Yes, it leaves you open to the possibility of terrorism committed by a few sociopaths, but that's the price you pay to live in a free and open society. The alternatives are far worse.