Interestingly, if you're interesting in forwarding "Islam" (or at least the terrorist perversion of same) then Edgeware road is probably the last place you want to do it
Okay then, how 'bout this theory?
Not Jihadists, but neocon operatives planted the bomb.
To give Bush cover in the press to appoint a radical Supreme Court Justice, and to divert attention away from the Valerie Plame case.
Of course, if you buy THAT theory, then you're pretty much buying the notion that Al Qaeda are neocon operatives, that an inner-circle of them works FOR the neocon agenda, or an overlapping of the neocon agenda with the jihadist agenda (global religious war, overall elimination of Liberalism and Atheism, or Secular Humanism, in the US, and everywhere), but it does explain a lot of the wacky conspiracy-theory stuff I've heard about 9/11 (planes didn't bring down the WTC towers, planned explosive demolition did - the purpose was to destroy evidence the DOJ had stored on massive financial fraud cases that make Enron look like a kid who drank the lemonade at his lemonade stand).
There's a lot of things in our "official stories" that don't make one damn bit of sense. The goofy conspiracy theories seem to make MORE sense. Which do I choose to believe? I believe I'll have another beer.
Conversely, at my current employer, not only is it policy, but we are all required to attend yearly ethics training to back this up: if you do not report a lying salesman to the ethics board, you can be held partly responsible for the ethical breech that the lying represents.
As opposed to my old job, where I basically got fired for correcting a lying salesman in front of the customer.
Simple fact is that after attacking Afghanistan after 9/11 and going after terrorists aggressively for a change, the number of terrorist attacks has not risen from normal even during the "jihad against all involved" claims.
You can't sweet talk terrorists into being nice people.
I don't have a link, but in Saudi Arabia, they had a program where when a jihadi was captured, they were given the opportunity to debate with a muslim cleric, on the justification in Isalam for external jihad (Jihad waged as a physical war of violence against infidels, as opposed to the more accepted definition of an internal war within the believer to defeat a non-believing self). The conditions of the debate were; if the jihadi wins, he goes free. If the cleric wins, the jihadi goes to prison, and when released, must join in the effort to convince other jihadis that violence is wrong, and not an acceptible part of Islam. Each and every jihadi that went through this program (in 2002, when I read about it) was converted from radicalism. So yes, you CAN "sweet-talk" terrorists into being nice people, if you can accept the notion that not all muslims are radical. On the other hand, if you prefer to paint all muslims with the same broad brush, then perhaps you require some sweet-talking yourself.
I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.
Don't be ignorant.
Throughout history, war has ALWAYS targeted civillians. Economic competition always preceeds open conflict, and as such, you and I, daily going to our jobs and working, are combatants in the economic phase of a larger war. Even more so, in a Democracy, when civilians command the military to action - we make ourselves justified targets.
We may prefer to believe the lie that we're not involved, that we don't make ourselves legitimate targets, that war can be "clean" or "moral" or "just" - but the horrible fact is, human beings see the truths that they want to see. Define "War" however you want. Reality defines it otherwise.
I agree, that it's more "civilized" to attempt to fight a war in such a way that non-combatants are excluded from physical violence. I'd like to see a day dawn where all wars are fought in this manner - but a better goal would be no more wars period.
It's simply fulfilling a psychological need for security. When you let the entertainment giants force-feed you their garbage, what they want, when they want, you feel as if you're being controlled by a faceless, uncaring master, and it causes insecurity and anxiety.
When you download your own movies, and pirate them in this way, you feel as if you've taken your own destiny into your own hands. You have a choice, and nobody else can stop you. And the fact that it's digital data makes it even better, because you're not really hurting anybody, you're not depriving anyone else of property (no matter what the IP moralists tell you).
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's wrong. But in our hearts, we all have a fierce need for security, either to trust an authority for that security, or to be empowered to provide it for ourselves.
the problem here is, at least with Theater Distribution, the bottlneck is a very restrictive cartel. Only certain theaters get certain movies. This is why ticket prices are one of the few consumer items that are subject to as much inflation as medical costs.
I doubt these powerful and influential distribution chains are going to like this.
I truly believe that if we left Iraq tomorrow, the insurgency would collapse in a short time because they'd have no real reason to exist. The true terrorists would have no freedom fighter status in which to cloak themselves, and the nationalist insurgents would likely turn against the terrorists.
I'd like to believe that too.
But look at History. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US funnelled money to groups like Al Qaeda, and elements of Pakistan's ISI, to aid them in fighting the Soviets. When the Soviets pulled out, there was a 10-year civil war that killed tens of thousands of civilians. Kabul was reduced to rubble. Guess who owned the country after that?
If the US pulled out of Iraq now, Iraq would become little more than a client state of Iran. Which would make countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria nervous as hell. Invading Iraq was a mistake of such huge proportion, given it's oil reserves, and the reserves of most of the nations neighboring Iraq, the end result will be effective control of a dangerously large proportion of world reserves by a single entity, should we pull out now. In other words, a major fucking disaster.
Personally, I think that the only workable option, right now, is partition. Give the Kurds a huge chunk of the north, and it's oil. Give the Shiites a chunk, and the Sunnis a chunk, including the fields borderinng with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but above all, leave the Shiites a little short on the deal, because they're going to rely on Iranian assistance anyway. The other thing the US should do, is tap into the moderate Shiites - so far largely ignored in favor of the radical shiite politicians we put into power (the Chalabi gang). That would probably give us a better outcome.
Frankly, I think that the best outcome for the war-profiteers will be to continue occupation for a couple more years, and then pull out, leaving the region in a state of constant warfare for the next 100 years until the last drop of oil is sucked out of the ground. The war-profiteers will make the most money that way, which, of course, was the whole point of this excercise in the first place.
The multiple-coordinated bomb attacks certainly is one of the hallmakrs of Al Qaeda (see Madrid, and African embassy attacks in the 1990's, and even 9/11 had that characteristic).
But, as you said, yesterday would have been a more effective economic attack on London. (frankly, I was expecting the next AQ attack to be on 6/11. You know; 9/11 US - 3/11 Spain. . . etc.).
The other thing is - I would have expected AQ to do the old "airplane into big-ben" thing. ..
I do agree that this is not a group like IRA or ETA - both of those groups tended to focus more on economic attacks, and they tried hard to avoid los of life.
My Guess? Poseurs. Wannabe jihadists who don't have anything to do with AQ, but wish they did. London, of all european countries, has a LOT of muslim churches full of radicals. Back in the 90's, when I worked for a company with an office in Bristol, I had a couple of muslim co-workers, and these kids were a tad on the nutty side. Firm believers in "collapse of the great US Empire" and that the moon landing was a hoax, etc. Other than that, they were nice guys though. They'd go to the pub with the rest of us, laugh, sing, drink decaf tea, etc.
So you're saying that the majority of Americans want to raise taxes enough to keep the Social Security system the way it is, and want us to pull out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan? The majority?
On Social Security, yes, polling indicates that the public is overwhelmingly against the president's private-accounts SCAM. (borrow 3 trillion dollars which essentially just covers the increase in management costs for private accounts, does NOTHING to fix the solvency issue - tax increase was part of the plan for the 1983 agreement).
On the war, no - I think no significant portion of the public wants a pullout. Most people realize that we're irrevokably committed now. But polling indicates that most americans feel that the war was a mistake, and that Bush deliberately misled. This isn't about a blowjob, it's about 1800 dead GI's, and $300 billion wasted, and our national image and credibility tarnished.. We realize it's now our responsibility to stay the course - but it was a dumb idea to get started, and it may cause some congressmen their jobs in 06.
I'm not a poli sci prof. I just read the news. This is recent polling data.
Frankly, comparing the Finder to Explorer is kind of like comparing dysentry with cholera. They're both sorry excuses for the most common piece of software a typical user uses on a daily basis.
One thing I'll say for Finder - yes, you can force-quit it. And usually, when you have to, 90% of the time, you're back in business. Not so with Explorer. Once you kill Explorer, sometimes it starts back up, sometimes it doesn't. When it does, you're still often in an unstable situtation. Worst thing about Explorer is it's lack of apartment-threading, (seems to be fixed in XP though) where you can't do multiple copy-jobs to one explorer window; once a copy is in-progress, you're stuck until it's done.
Oh, I've got a lot to complain about with Finder, (like how it barfs when you select a corrupt mpeg - hey, I'm just selecting the damn thing, maybe I want to delete it?) as well, but at least Apple has steadily (if slowly) improved it along the way. The same isn't true for Explorer - but with XP, at least it's semi usable now.
Sorry. The main "problem" that the registry was designed to "solve" is cross-platform compatability.
While a program that runs on Mac or Unix would write it's configuration info out to a text file (.conf, or.ini, now.plist, etc.) the PC version would have to write stuff out using windows' registry API.
Some of the basic, and simplist calls in C (or pretty much any language) are opening text files, reading text files, and writing to text files. Using a registry, while not "difficult" . . . is harder. And is another layer of complexity added when writing cross-platform software.
Of course, why would Microsoft want vendors to be writing software for other platforms. They're 90% of the market, and they intend to stay that way. Registry is one small means of preserving this.
Of course, there's all kinds of other issues with regard to system backup and recovery, etc. where the Registry becomes an absolute pain in the kiester. Ever make a change to your system, and wish you knew how to undo that change? Sometimes, on windows, it's just plain not possible. One-way changes are not a great way to a stable system. . .
And, amazingly to you, that little greedy process called capitalis was able to generate the most powerful country and economy the planet has ever seen in the shortest amount of time (from scratch in 230 years!).
Mexico has had Capitalism. So why aren't they a powerful country and economy? According to your 'theory' they should be totally kicking ass, because they're far less socialistic than the US is.
I wasn't specifically referring to those issues. I'm specifically referring to the Amendment 9 and 10, and 14 issues, which Republicans repeatedly salivate about.
Remember, it was Clinton who appointed a Surgeon General Shalala, who was hounded out of office by Congressional Republicans after saying that "this nation needs to take a hard look at marijuana prohibition, and the use of medical marijuana".
If being "KILLED" means re-electing a hard line ideologue of your party plank as President and retaining (and expanding) your control of both houses of Congress, I'm sure the Republicans are going to do everything they can to make sure these issues keep KILLING them.
By "KILLING" I'm talking about the recent phenomenon, over the past two months or so, (particularly since the downing street memo hit the scene), of Bush's waning national popularity, and how Congressional Republicans are starting to keep their distance from him, for instance, on issues like Social Security phase-out, and Bolton's nomination, Bush has had to fight tooth and nail, and his support has become more and more diminished. I admit, things looked really bad for Democrats, around 11/04, but with the exception of the SCOTUS appointment(s), it's looking like the remainder of his term is going to look like a duck on crutches. Because the American People don't support Social Security phase-out, and the majority no longer supports the war.
Why shouldn't he appoint someone who both sides agree upon, instead of trying to comletely silence fully half of the country?
Because he doesn't have to. Bush didn't run on promises to compromise with the Democrats. I doubt he's going to do so. The Republicans have a majority right now. Reid is talking out his ass.
I would rather he select someone who agrees with a modern interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, instead of trying to roll US Law back to 1859.
Bitching about foreign law, and yet your side wants to incorporate the 10 commandments; law originating from a 5000 year old Hebrew culture of sheep farmers, as appropriate for Modern America.
Slashdot Mirror
Better tracker:r ricanetracker.html
http://html.wesh.com/sh/idi/weather/hurricanes/hu
(no projection though. . . )
Interestingly, if you're interesting in forwarding "Islam" (or at least the terrorist perversion of same) then Edgeware road is probably the last place you want to do it
Okay then, how 'bout this theory?
Not Jihadists, but neocon operatives planted the bomb.
To give Bush cover in the press to appoint a radical Supreme Court Justice, and to divert attention away from the Valerie Plame case.
Of course, if you buy THAT theory, then you're pretty much buying the notion that Al Qaeda are neocon operatives, that an inner-circle of them works FOR the neocon agenda, or an overlapping of the neocon agenda with the jihadist agenda (global religious war, overall elimination of Liberalism and Atheism, or Secular Humanism, in the US, and everywhere), but it does explain a lot of the wacky conspiracy-theory stuff I've heard about 9/11 (planes didn't bring down the WTC towers, planned explosive demolition did - the purpose was to destroy evidence the DOJ had stored on massive financial fraud cases that make Enron look like a kid who drank the lemonade at his lemonade stand).
There's a lot of things in our "official stories" that don't make one damn bit of sense. The goofy conspiracy theories seem to make MORE sense. Which do I choose to believe? I believe I'll have another beer.
Conversely, at my current employer, not only is it policy, but we are all required to attend yearly ethics training to back this up: if you do not report a lying salesman to the ethics board, you can be held partly responsible for the ethical breech that the lying represents.
As opposed to my old job, where I basically got fired for correcting a lying salesman in front of the customer.
Simple fact is that after attacking Afghanistan after 9/11 and going after terrorists aggressively for a change, the number of terrorist attacks has not risen from normal even during the "jihad against all involved" claims.
Simple fact is - no, terrorist attacks have not been on the decline.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005946.php
They tripled in 2004 alone.
You can't sweet talk terrorists into being nice people.
I don't have a link, but in Saudi Arabia, they had a program where when a jihadi was captured, they were given the opportunity to debate with a muslim cleric, on the justification in Isalam for external jihad (Jihad waged as a physical war of violence against infidels, as opposed to the more accepted definition of an internal war within the believer to defeat a non-believing self). The conditions of the debate were; if the jihadi wins, he goes free. If the cleric wins, the jihadi goes to prison, and when released, must join in the effort to convince other jihadis that violence is wrong, and not an acceptible part of Islam. Each and every jihadi that went through this program (in 2002, when I read about it) was converted from radicalism. So yes, you CAN "sweet-talk" terrorists into being nice people, if you can accept the notion that not all muslims are radical. On the other hand, if you prefer to paint all muslims with the same broad brush, then perhaps you require some sweet-talking yourself.
I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.
Don't be ignorant.
Throughout history, war has ALWAYS targeted civillians. Economic competition always preceeds open conflict, and as such, you and I, daily going to our jobs and working, are combatants in the economic phase of a larger war. Even more so, in a Democracy, when civilians command the military to action - we make ourselves justified targets.
We may prefer to believe the lie that we're not involved, that we don't make ourselves legitimate targets, that war can be "clean" or "moral" or "just" - but the horrible fact is, human beings see the truths that they want to see. Define "War" however you want. Reality defines it otherwise.
I agree, that it's more "civilized" to attempt to fight a war in such a way that non-combatants are excluded from physical violence. I'd like to see a day dawn where all wars are fought in this manner - but a better goal would be no more wars period.
It's not needed and hopefully we won't whore this like September 11th was.
.
The fact that you blokes re-elected Blair doesn't give me warm fuzzies on this.
But don't feel bad - we were retarded enough to re-elect Bush. .
My guess? in response to 7/7, Britain will attack. . . Belgium.
40,000 children die of starvation every day.
It's hard not to see everything else as a joke, in comparison.
It's simply fulfilling a psychological need for security. When you let the entertainment giants force-feed you their garbage, what they want, when they want, you feel as if you're being controlled by a faceless, uncaring master, and it causes insecurity and anxiety.
When you download your own movies, and pirate them in this way, you feel as if you've taken your own destiny into your own hands. You have a choice, and nobody else can stop you. And the fact that it's digital data makes it even better, because you're not really hurting anybody, you're not depriving anyone else of property (no matter what the IP moralists tell you).
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's wrong. But in our hearts, we all have a fierce need for security, either to trust an authority for that security, or to be empowered to provide it for ourselves.
the problem here is, at least with Theater Distribution, the bottlneck is a very restrictive cartel. Only certain theaters get certain movies. This is why ticket prices are one of the few consumer items that are subject to as much inflation as medical costs.
I doubt these powerful and influential distribution chains are going to like this.
This is going to make my Mornington Crescent game a whole lot more difficult.
I truly believe that if we left Iraq tomorrow, the insurgency would collapse in a short time because they'd have no real reason to exist. The true terrorists would have no freedom fighter status in which to cloak themselves, and the nationalist insurgents would likely turn against the terrorists.
I'd like to believe that too.
But look at History. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US funnelled money to groups like Al Qaeda, and elements of Pakistan's ISI, to aid them in fighting the Soviets. When the Soviets pulled out, there was a 10-year civil war that killed tens of thousands of civilians. Kabul was reduced to rubble. Guess who owned the country after that?
If the US pulled out of Iraq now, Iraq would become little more than a client state of Iran. Which would make countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria nervous as hell. Invading Iraq was a mistake of such huge proportion, given it's oil reserves, and the reserves of most of the nations neighboring Iraq, the end result will be effective control of a dangerously large proportion of world reserves by a single entity, should we pull out now. In other words, a major fucking disaster.
Personally, I think that the only workable option, right now, is partition. Give the Kurds a huge chunk of the north, and it's oil. Give the Shiites a chunk, and the Sunnis a chunk, including the fields borderinng with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but above all, leave the Shiites a little short on the deal, because they're going to rely on Iranian assistance anyway. The other thing the US should do, is tap into the moderate Shiites - so far largely ignored in favor of the radical shiite politicians we put into power (the Chalabi gang). That would probably give us a better outcome.
Frankly, I think that the best outcome for the war-profiteers will be to continue occupation for a couple more years, and then pull out, leaving the region in a state of constant warfare for the next 100 years until the last drop of oil is sucked out of the ground. The war-profiteers will make the most money that way, which, of course, was the whole point of this excercise in the first place.
The multiple-coordinated bomb attacks certainly is one of the hallmakrs of Al Qaeda (see Madrid, and African embassy attacks in the 1990's, and even 9/11 had that characteristic).
.
But, as you said, yesterday would have been a more effective economic attack on London. (frankly, I was expecting the next AQ attack to be on 6/11. You know; 9/11 US - 3/11 Spain. . . etc.).
The other thing is - I would have expected AQ to do the old "airplane into big-ben" thing. .
I do agree that this is not a group like IRA or ETA - both of those groups tended to focus more on economic attacks, and they tried hard to avoid los of life.
My Guess?
Poseurs. Wannabe jihadists who don't have anything to do with AQ, but wish they did. London, of all european countries, has a LOT of muslim churches full of radicals. Back in the 90's, when I worked for a company with an office in Bristol, I had a couple of muslim co-workers, and these kids were a tad on the nutty side. Firm believers in "collapse of the great US Empire" and that the moon landing was a hoax, etc. Other than that, they were nice guys though. They'd go to the pub with the rest of us, laugh, sing, drink decaf tea, etc.
Microsoft says to Claria: ."
"gee, that's some nice spyware you got there. It'd be a real shame if something were to, you know, happen to it. .
Claria pays the protection money.
MS Antispyware leaves it alone.
How conveeeeeenient.
Somebody ought to let my buddy RICO hear about this. .
ah - bastards modded me down as a troll anyway. That'll teach me. Not. ;)
So you're saying that the majority of Americans want to raise taxes enough to keep the Social Security system the way it is, and want us to pull out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan? The majority?
On Social Security, yes, polling indicates that the public is overwhelmingly against the president's private-accounts SCAM. (borrow 3 trillion dollars which essentially just covers the increase in management costs for private accounts, does NOTHING to fix the solvency issue - tax increase was part of the plan for the 1983 agreement).
On the war, no - I think no significant portion of the public wants a pullout. Most people realize that we're irrevokably committed now. But polling indicates that most americans feel that the war was a mistake, and that Bush deliberately misled. This isn't about a blowjob, it's about 1800 dead GI's, and $300 billion wasted, and our national image and credibility tarnished.. We realize it's now our responsibility to stay the course - but it was a dumb idea to get started, and it may cause some congressmen their jobs in 06.
I'm not a poli sci prof. I just read the news. This is recent polling data.
I put my mom in front of an iMac with iPhoto and iMovie and she's never been happier,
Correction, you've never seen her happier. And you've never seen her servicing my manly needs, either, which makes her quite happy.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
I couldn't resist.
Hey, YOU brought up your mother.
Not me.
Frankly, comparing the Finder to Explorer is kind of like comparing dysentry with cholera. They're both sorry excuses for the most common piece of software a typical user uses on a daily basis.
One thing I'll say for Finder - yes, you can force-quit it. And usually, when you have to, 90% of the time, you're back in business. Not so with Explorer. Once you kill Explorer, sometimes it starts back up, sometimes it doesn't. When it does, you're still often in an unstable situtation. Worst thing about Explorer is it's lack of apartment-threading, (seems to be fixed in XP though) where you can't do multiple copy-jobs to one explorer window; once a copy is in-progress, you're stuck until it's done.
Oh, I've got a lot to complain about with Finder, (like how it barfs when you select a corrupt mpeg - hey, I'm just selecting the damn thing, maybe I want to delete it?) as well, but at least Apple has steadily (if slowly) improved it along the way. The same isn't true for Explorer - but with XP, at least it's semi usable now.
Sorry. The main "problem" that the registry was designed to "solve" is cross-platform compatability.
.ini, now .plist, etc.) the PC version would have to write stuff out using windows' registry API.
While a program that runs on Mac or Unix would write it's configuration info out to a text file (.conf, or
Some of the basic, and simplist calls in C (or pretty much any language) are opening text files, reading text files, and writing to text files. Using a registry, while not "difficult" . . . is harder. And is another layer of complexity added when writing cross-platform software.
Of course, why would Microsoft want vendors to be writing software for other platforms. They're 90% of the market, and they intend to stay that way. Registry is one small means of preserving this.
Of course, there's all kinds of other issues with regard to system backup and recovery, etc. where the Registry becomes an absolute pain in the kiester. Ever make a change to your system, and wish you knew how to undo that change? Sometimes, on windows, it's just plain not possible. One-way changes are not a great way to a stable system. . .
And, amazingly to you, that little greedy process called capitalis was able to generate the most powerful country and economy the planet has ever seen in the shortest amount of time (from scratch in 230 years!).
Mexico has had Capitalism. So why aren't they a powerful country and economy? According to your 'theory' they should be totally kicking ass, because they're far less socialistic than the US is.
I wasn't specifically referring to those issues. I'm specifically referring to the Amendment 9 and 10, and 14 issues, which Republicans repeatedly salivate about.
Remember, it was Clinton who appointed a Surgeon General Shalala, who was hounded out of office by Congressional Republicans after saying that "this nation needs to take a hard look at marijuana prohibition, and the use of medical marijuana".
If being "KILLED" means re-electing a hard line ideologue of your party plank as President and retaining (and expanding) your control of both houses of Congress, I'm sure the Republicans are going to do everything they can to make sure these issues keep KILLING them.
By "KILLING" I'm talking about the recent phenomenon, over the past two months or so, (particularly since the downing street memo hit the scene), of Bush's waning national popularity, and how Congressional Republicans are starting to keep their distance from him, for instance, on issues like Social Security phase-out, and Bolton's nomination, Bush has had to fight tooth and nail, and his support has become more and more diminished. I admit, things looked really bad for Democrats, around 11/04, but with the exception of the SCOTUS appointment(s), it's looking like the remainder of his term is going to look like a duck on crutches. Because the American People don't support Social Security phase-out, and the majority no longer supports the war.
It's the Republicans in the Senate that are being undemocratic by putting limits on fair and open debate.
Why shouldn't he appoint someone who both sides agree upon, instead of trying to comletely silence fully half of the country?
Because he doesn't have to. Bush didn't run on promises to compromise with the Democrats. I doubt he's going to do so. The Republicans have a majority right now. Reid is talking out his ass.
I would rather he select someone who agrees with a modern interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, instead of trying to roll US Law back to 1859.
Bitching about foreign law, and yet your side wants to incorporate the 10 commandments; law originating from a 5000 year old Hebrew culture of sheep farmers, as appropriate for Modern America.