If some joker is sneaking knives and guns onto an airplane, I sure as hell DO want to know about it BEFORE I get onto the plane that the terrorist sneaks the gun or knife onto.
If the airport security company is not doing it's job, I want to fucking know about it, and I want to know exactly what they're going to do to fix that prior to me ever setting my ass down in an airplane seat again.
It's about security, which flows from trust, which flows from accountability. Nobody got fired after September 11th. I think that's a big fucking problem. Did anybody at Microsoft get fired after CodeRed? That's also a BIG fucking problem.
Bullworth said it best:
"Let's just keep fucking eachother until we're all the same color!"
Re:GLOBALIZATION ON WHOSE TERMS?
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If you look as corporations as an individual person - then the act of turning to a coporation for "governmental sevices" is pretty much equivalent to paying Vito and his buddies a monthly fee to not 'bust up your place'. It's anarchy.
The first duty of a government, ANY government, is to protect it's people. Whether it's from a gang-operated protection racket, or whether it's from profit-driven exploitive multinational corporations.
The difference between a GOVERNMENT and a GANG, is that the GOVERNMENT (at least in a democratic society) is accountable to it's people. The money this government extorts is supposed to go to provide the goods and services it's people need, and the information about that money is mostly publicly availalbe. Accountability. If you pay Vito $100 per month not to hassle you, (or if you pay SecureCorp $500 a month to provide "security services" to your home, in absence of a governmnet -funded police force) - you have no idea where that money's going. Is Vito's $100 going to pay for a couple of young punks to stand outside your restaurant to make sure nobody from any rival gang comes along? Or is it going into Vito's pocket for his next snort of coke? Is SecureCorp's $500 going to pay for well trained well armed security patrols in your neighborhood? Or is it going to pay for the CEO's teenage daughter's Lexus?
At least when I pay my taxes, I know where most of it gets spent, even if I disagree with some of it, I have a right to VOTE.
In an unrestricted market economy - SecureCorp might even become a monopoly. "Vote with your dollars" doesn't work. Basically, without the government regulation to prevent monopolies or their abuses, what your "free market" is, is anarchy.
That photo is from the compressed gas burst of the launch itself - it pushes the missile out and up into the air. Only when the missile is about 25' away from the launcher does the rocket motor ignite.
In general - solid propellant rockets leave copious smoke trails compared to liquid-fueled rockets. I seriously doubt that the stinger is liquid fueled.
Yes, people do think they know where Sodom/Gomorrah were. There was a TLC special on it. Rather silly, but located closer to the Dead Sea. Nowhere near the Iraqi crater.
Do they really think that this crater was formed 4000 years ago? You'd think that a crater that large and that young would be MUCH easier to spot. Having been a recent visitor to Arizona's Meteor Crater. . .
AMD has taken the silent route for a very good reason... to keep prices low. Anyone who knows anything knows that AMD now produces a superior product when compared directly to Intel's identical line of processors. This, however, hasn't made enough of a difference to consumers, thanks to the Intel marketing machine.
you mean, thanks to STUPID consumers. It never ceases to amaze me the logical hoops people try to jump through to solve the problem that in general, are caused by the fact that most consumers are simply too lazy and stupid to find the best deal and steer the market in the right direction.
Chinese laborers are lured into the labor by the promise of American dollars and a better life, but their 'saviors' charge them usuriously high rates to transport them from their home country. They then get to work off their debt by working in the factories. However, they likely have no place to stay so they live in the company barracks which also charges rent, leaving the workers penniless and unable to improve their lot.
IN FACT. I am an American, and four generations back, my family emigrated from Norway. When they came to America, they suffered the same exact fate. (working for a copper mine in northern Michigan). I am a descendent of this "kind" of slave.
They were actually rescued by an Iowan farmer, who paid off their debts, and gave them jobs, and they eventually earned enough to buy their own farms.
No government help was needed. Just old-fashioned charity and goodwill. These people started out being victims of a "free economic system" - and transitioned to beneficiaries of that "free economic system". Sure, the rules have changed in America to prevent these things from happening again, but the price of land is also exponentially higher than it was back then. That's a fact that no government meddling is going to change.
It is the job of a government to protect its people from slavery, forced labor, etc. and the job of a people to NEVER allow an opressive government to take over their lives. I would die for my freedom, and if these people are really being treated as you describe, I can't for the life of me imagine why they never rose up against the people treating them that way and organized a government that doesn't force its people to work as slave laborers.
I fail entirely to see what you expect the US government or other first world governments to do about this.. . .
Don't even go there - the next thing they'll do is point out to you that our beloved US Govt. (aka. pawn of the multinationals) and CIA put these corrupt governments in power, and therefore the people had no choice but to submit because they haves nuthin but pitchforks and we've got F-16's and cluster bombs.
I seem to remember hearing about a little war about 225 years ago or such, where the founders of the US fought against a global superpower of superior numbers with superior technology, AND covert backing from other European nations, and *gasp* MANY died on both sides, but NOW they're free. What a deal!
I find it amusing that when you boil it down, advertisers are upset because their "product" (an advertisement) can't compete with the allure of a toilet.
why don't they just ship a few thousand AK-47's and ammunition to Microsoft's headquarters.
This is just the sort of thing that Microsoft can use to say: "look, DOJ, look at AOL's anticompetitive practice - they're not supporting XP on purpose to hurt our revenues, and since they have Market Power (TM), they can leverage that against Microsoft, so Microsoft is *not* a Monopoly, and you must drop the case against us!"
Sometimes I wonder if they aren't all secretly in cahoots. This is just terrible news for consumers no matter how you look at it.
If those factory employees want better wage and environmental protection, then they should work to form a government to protect them.
My government protects me from corporate abuses. Why can't their government protect them?
Oh yeah, because their government sucks! That's my point.
And no, I do not wear Nike shoes. Because in my free country, I am not forced to buy products from a given company if I do not like them - either the product's quality or value, or whether I disagree with that company's labor practices. My reason for wearing a different brand of shoes has to do with fit and comfort. Yours may be different, yippie for you. But you're not helping these people by crippling their only source of income. The only way these people can be helped is if their government protects them.
Re:Globalization - We didn't vote for it.
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 2
Hey, let me remind you that Stalin and Pol Pot didn't have "primative religion" as a means to justify their genocides.
I think that people looking to blame religion as the cause of all of humanity's problems really ought to look at humanity itself first.
Re:Globalization - We didn't vote for it.
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 2
I'll support your argument!
Here, in my home town, a town which prides itself to it's unique identity, local stores, culture and flair, we had a restaurant chain come in and put in a Carl's Jr.
Prior to opening, this store was vandalized, most likely by local college students part of some anti-globalization movement.
Then the store opened, and you know what? They went out of business in 6 months, because people simply did not eat there. It wasn't part of the cutlure of this town.
Even though it was the ONLY place downtown where you could pop in, buy lunch for $4, and get back to wherever you were working - all the other restaurants were locally owned, priced higher, slower service models. And they won out. The people's choice won, the market hath spoken.
Carl's Jr. did not hold a gun to anybody's head. Sure, I bet they greased a few palms at City Hall to get a spot there. But they're out now. Tough titties. Find me a global store chain that can cop a local charm and appeal. It won't happen, as long as people are educated and aware of what's really important to them.
Of course, no local organization sent agents to go blow up Carl's Jr.'s corporate headquarters either.
This is bullshit. It's all common knowledge that Saddam Hussein was trained by the CIA. It's common knowledge and reported in the press that we gave weapons to OBL during the Soviet occupation. I'm sick of the bullshit "conspiracy theory" that says that this information is being kept from Americans.
It's not even hard to look up on the internet and find information about proposed Afghan pipelines and Caspian natural gas reserves.
Even during the Kosovo conflict - a fair number of people knew about the $5B Strasi mining complex.
This stuff is covered on The Discovery Channel documentaries for christ's sake. Give it a rest. There is no Zionist Conspiracy. The US are not puppets of Israel, and the big evil corps are not in some plot to profit from the US manufacturing villains and then bombing their third world countries.
When a corporation goes into a third world country with exploitation on their mind - whose fault is it that those people are not protected by labor laws, etc?
THEIR government's fault. What the fuck are we supposed to do about that - overthrow all these third-world governments and force labor-protection laws down their throat?
Fuck you. It is NOT my fault that Nike chooses to take advantage of and exploit people who refuse to join with the rest of humanity and live in the 21st century.
You say that we can kill all the terrorists, but the only thing we'll accomplish by doing that is pissing off another whole generation of people - not just the relatives of the terrorists, but the relatives of the people who were not terrorists who were killed "accidentally" (no, it does not matter if it was an accident, a bomb missed it's target, or if the Taliban actually slaughtered them in the middle of the night and put US bomb fragments in the rubble - it's our word against theirs, and believe it or not - we're LOSING this propaganda war!)
In my opinion, this is going to cause many more muslim countries around the world to start hating the US and fostering extremist groups. And many non-muslim countries will likely get back on the fence until it's just the US and UK, and possibly Russia.
Eventually, we'll probably have to play the nuclear card, JUST to get the oil we need.
Eventually - the US will be victorious, and we'll kill all the terrorists. But hundreds of millions, possibly billions will die in the process.
I'm not one of those whining anti-globalist "blame america first" club members. But I think we're going about this all wrong.
Re: Actually...
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 3, Troll
. . . however, I *HATE* the fact that I'm classified as a "pacifist" for wanting the Afghan bombing to stop.
I think that this is completely the wrong way to do this - because the Afghan propaganda seems to be much more effective on 1 billion muslims than the US propaganda they've been hearing for the past 20 years. I think that every bomb that drops on Afghanistan is going to be characterized as an attack on islam, a genocide of arabs and persians, and proof of how Evil the US is. Every day, clearly, the US's standing in the coalition is getting worse and worse.
What we must do, is:
Pull out of the UN. Create a new world-organization that does not include nations who support terrorism. All member-states have to have a minimum standard of identifying citizens who want to cross borders, and serious laws against money laundering that are strictly enforced. Security is what people want. Security is the best way to ensure peace, and prosperity. Pull out of Saudi Arabia. Pull out of Israel (since the Israeli government clearly is not interested in peace). Develop alternative energy sources to power the Western economies of the 21st century. Stop all foreign aid and erect trade interdiction to all non-member states.
Let the Arabs starve. Let them know that it's their extremists and their pandering to the extremists that got them into this position, the only way to ensure their own survival and prosperity is to become democratic nations, and join the coalition, and find and eliminate their extremists, and stop sponsoring their propaganda in their schools.
If they want to farm dust, and play in their oil, and lead mideval lives, they're free to do so. But we should completely cease all contact with those societies, and prevent those people from entering Western society so they can no longer terrorize us.
And Israel's problems should be Israel's alone. I, for one, am sick of taking it in the nuts for them. If they want peace, then they have to get rid of their own extremists. Note that all this recent Palestinian violence started when Ariel Sharon came to power. He and his extremist regime are just as nasty as the Jerry Falwells and the Mulluh Omars of the world.
If OBL wants to create a "pure islamist state" and use oil as a weapon to topple the West, I say, let him try, and let him fail on his own.
The muslims of the world will soon find out that 90% of them don't want a pure islamist state, and when the west finds alternative energy sources, then they'll be crying like the oil industry did in the 80's - remember? OPEC cut back on supply, and demand dropped, and they went hungry.
In the end, what we'll have is a bunch of counter-revolutions in the middle east, Arabs who will overthrow these religious regimes, and they'll be much more strongly committed to democracy, because they had to fight to get it, instead of having "the man" impose it on them "against allah's will".
And the world will be a better place, not only because of the better political climate in the mideast, but because the western economies will be using less oil, and the environment may actually allow human life to exist on this planet.
if that's the case, what's with the glaring inconsistencies? Like, how HP's scar, as described in the book, is located in the center of his forehead, but in the movie, it's over on the side - and how, in the book, his hair is described as messy, unkempt, sheer anarchy, but in the movie, it's neat and tidy, all done up by a hollywood makeup artist?
Mr. AC - I've been on the other side of the fence, and beyond. I do that for a living. I support EXTERNAL customers - who generally install whatever the hell they want on their machines, and I'm expected to support and fix it - even if it's explicitly stated that I don't have to support interaction with Application X - there's ALWAYS an exception. Usually a large, loud customer with deep pockets and a big mouth, and the ear of someone highly placed within my company.
I seem to manage.
Who is blamed when things don't work? We don't point fingers and blame. We analyze the problem, and find the cause. If it's not our problem, (as is often the case) we can sometimes code a workaround in our product. This is acutally very common, as many bugs in a given vendor's product are actually a result of something broken in the OS - that you end up having to code around.
When there's a known problem or conflict that can't be worked around, we document it and move on. Customers can look up the known issues on the web, and are informed not to run that specific configuration.
Do you see the difference here? We tell customers what specific configurations we know won't work. IT people tend to tell their "customers" only to run ONE specific configuration that IS known to work (in their lab - or most of the time).
The whole point of having a computer is so that you have a multi-function tool that can run in a variety of configurations to deal with a variety of tasks. When you start limiting that, you limit the usefulness of the tool - and the productivity of your workers.
One other point - which is really an observation. In my 10 years of doing this - the WORST customers to work for are ones that have strict lockdown policies on their network. It takes forever to gain access to the servers that cause problems, it takes forever to get troubleshooting data from these people, and more often than not, they tend to flat out refuse to install any patch or update until it's gone through months of their own internal testing. Then they bitch and moan when it takes our Tech Support too long to fix their problem.
I've had calls from customers who are expected to resolve problems with our products that don't have administrator access to the boxes they're supposed to be working on. How the hell are you supposed to try configuration changes? If an updated 3rd party driver is required, how the hell are you supposed to install that? These people don't think about how these lockdown precautions negatively impact workflow and productivity. Isn't productivity the whole goddamn reason for the supposed computer revolution in the first place?
I can see wanting to exert a little top-down control when 90% of your corporate network's bandwidth is being consumed by desktop MP3 servers. But a lot of this other stuff is just complete bullshit.
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how is the capitalist marketplace NOT anarchy?
Sitting back and waiting is not what improves technology. Europe did a lot of sitting back and waiting for a few hundred years during the dark ages.
Technology improves when you invest in it and use it.
Personally, I'd rather we strip mine the fuck out of Mars and the Moon than our one and only home. Terraforming or no.
If some joker is sneaking knives and guns onto an airplane, I sure as hell DO want to know about it BEFORE I get onto the plane that the terrorist sneaks the gun or knife onto.
If the airport security company is not doing it's job, I want to fucking know about it, and I want to know exactly what they're going to do to fix that prior to me ever setting my ass down in an airplane seat again.
It's about security, which flows from trust, which flows from accountability. Nobody got fired after September 11th. I think that's a big fucking problem. Did anybody at Microsoft get fired after CodeRed? That's also a BIG fucking problem.
Bullworth said it best:
"Let's just keep fucking eachother until we're all the same color!"
If you look as corporations as an individual person - then the act of turning to a coporation for "governmental sevices" is pretty much equivalent to paying Vito and his buddies a monthly fee to not 'bust up your place'. It's anarchy.
The first duty of a government, ANY government, is to protect it's people. Whether it's from a gang-operated protection racket, or whether it's from profit-driven exploitive multinational corporations.
The difference between a GOVERNMENT and a GANG, is that the GOVERNMENT (at least in a democratic society) is accountable to it's people. The money this government extorts is supposed to go to provide the goods and services it's people need, and the information about that money is mostly publicly availalbe. Accountability. If you pay Vito $100 per month not to hassle you, (or if you pay SecureCorp $500 a month to provide "security services" to your home, in absence of a governmnet -funded police force) - you have no idea where that money's going. Is Vito's $100 going to pay for a couple of young punks to stand outside your restaurant to make sure nobody from any rival gang comes along? Or is it going into Vito's pocket for his next snort of coke? Is SecureCorp's $500 going to pay for well trained well armed security patrols in your neighborhood? Or is it going to pay for the CEO's teenage daughter's Lexus?
At least when I pay my taxes, I know where most of it gets spent, even if I disagree with some of it, I have a right to VOTE.
In an unrestricted market economy - SecureCorp might even become a monopoly. "Vote with your dollars" doesn't work. Basically, without the government regulation to prevent monopolies or their abuses, what your "free market" is, is anarchy.
Flight 191. DC-10 out of Chicago, crashed back in the early 80's. Engine fell off. Defective bolt.
Yeah, the most dangerous part of an air trip is the drive to the airport, because that's when a plane will fall on your head!
That photo is from the compressed gas burst of the launch itself - it pushes the missile out and up into the air. Only when the missile is about 25' away from the launcher does the rocket motor ignite.
In general - solid propellant rockets leave copious smoke trails compared to liquid-fueled rockets. I seriously doubt that the stinger is liquid fueled.
Yes, people do think they know where Sodom/Gomorrah were. There was a TLC special on it. Rather silly, but located closer to the Dead Sea. Nowhere near the Iraqi crater.
Do they really think that this crater was formed 4000 years ago? You'd think that a crater that large and that young would be MUCH easier to spot. Having been a recent visitor to Arizona's Meteor Crater. . .
AMD has taken the silent route for a very good reason... to keep prices low. Anyone who knows anything knows that AMD now produces a superior product when compared directly to Intel's identical line of processors. This, however, hasn't made enough of a difference to consumers, thanks to the Intel marketing machine.
you mean, thanks to STUPID consumers. It never ceases to amaze me the logical hoops people try to jump through to solve the problem that in general, are caused by the fact that most consumers are simply too lazy and stupid to find the best deal and steer the market in the right direction.
Chinese laborers are lured into the labor by the promise of American dollars and a better life, but their 'saviors' charge them usuriously high rates to transport them from their home country. They then get to work off their debt by working in the factories. However, they likely have no place to stay so they live in the company barracks which also charges rent, leaving the workers penniless and unable to improve their lot.
IN FACT. I am an American, and four generations back, my family emigrated from Norway. When they came to America, they suffered the same exact fate. (working for a copper mine in northern Michigan). I am a descendent of this "kind" of slave.
They were actually rescued by an Iowan farmer, who paid off their debts, and gave them jobs, and they eventually earned enough to buy their own farms.
No government help was needed. Just old-fashioned charity and goodwill. These people started out being victims of a "free economic system" - and transitioned to beneficiaries of that "free economic system". Sure, the rules have changed in America to prevent these things from happening again, but the price of land is also exponentially higher than it was back then. That's a fact that no government meddling is going to change.
It is the job of a government to protect its people from slavery, forced labor, etc. and the job of a people to NEVER allow an opressive government to take over their lives. I would die for my freedom, and if these people are really being treated as you describe, I can't for the life of me imagine why they never rose up against the people treating them that way and organized a government that doesn't force its people to work as slave laborers.
I fail entirely to see what you expect the US government or other first world governments to do about this.. . .
Don't even go there - the next thing they'll do is point out to you that our beloved US Govt. (aka. pawn of the multinationals) and CIA put these corrupt governments in power, and therefore the people had no choice but to submit because they haves nuthin but pitchforks and we've got F-16's and cluster bombs.
I seem to remember hearing about a little war about 225 years ago or such, where the founders of the US fought against a global superpower of superior numbers with superior technology, AND covert backing from other European nations, and *gasp* MANY died on both sides, but NOW they're free. What a deal!
I find it amusing that when you boil it down, advertisers are upset because their "product" (an advertisement) can't compete with the allure of a toilet.
I think that the events of September 11 prove that these people are hardly incapable of harming the US or it's interests.
why don't they just ship a few thousand AK-47's and ammunition to Microsoft's headquarters.
This is just the sort of thing that Microsoft can use to say: "look, DOJ, look at AOL's anticompetitive practice - they're not supporting XP on purpose to hurt our revenues, and since they have Market Power (TM), they can leverage that against Microsoft, so Microsoft is *not* a Monopoly, and you must drop the case against us!"
Sometimes I wonder if they aren't all secretly in cahoots. This is just terrible news for consumers no matter how you look at it.
nope.
Only if I'm on their board of directors.
If those factory employees want better wage and environmental protection, then they should work to form a government to protect them.
My government protects me from corporate abuses. Why can't their government protect them?
Oh yeah, because their government sucks! That's my point.
And no, I do not wear Nike shoes. Because in my free country, I am not forced to buy products from a given company if I do not like them - either the product's quality or value, or whether I disagree with that company's labor practices. My reason for wearing a different brand of shoes has to do with fit and comfort. Yours may be different, yippie for you. But you're not helping these people by crippling their only source of income. The only way these people can be helped is if their government protects them.
Hey, let me remind you that Stalin and Pol Pot didn't have "primative religion" as a means to justify their genocides.
I think that people looking to blame religion as the cause of all of humanity's problems really ought to look at humanity itself first.
I'll support your argument!
Here, in my home town, a town which prides itself to it's unique identity, local stores, culture and flair, we had a restaurant chain come in and put in a Carl's Jr.
Prior to opening, this store was vandalized, most likely by local college students part of some anti-globalization movement.
Then the store opened, and you know what? They went out of business in 6 months, because people simply did not eat there. It wasn't part of the cutlure of this town.
Even though it was the ONLY place downtown where you could pop in, buy lunch for $4, and get back to wherever you were working - all the other restaurants were locally owned, priced higher, slower service models. And they won out. The people's choice won, the market hath spoken.
Carl's Jr. did not hold a gun to anybody's head. Sure, I bet they greased a few palms at City Hall to get a spot there. But they're out now. Tough titties. Find me a global store chain that can cop a local charm and appeal. It won't happen, as long as people are educated and aware of what's really important to them.
Of course, no local organization sent agents to go blow up Carl's Jr.'s corporate headquarters either.
The question is, how big of a piece of pie does anyone need to be happy?
Give them a piece of pie, and they'll want two.
This is bullshit. It's all common knowledge that Saddam Hussein was trained by the CIA. It's common knowledge and reported in the press that we gave weapons to OBL during the Soviet occupation. I'm sick of the bullshit "conspiracy theory" that says that this information is being kept from Americans.
It's not even hard to look up on the internet and find information about proposed Afghan pipelines and Caspian natural gas reserves.
Even during the Kosovo conflict - a fair number of people knew about the $5B Strasi mining complex.
This stuff is covered on The Discovery Channel documentaries for christ's sake. Give it a rest. There is no Zionist Conspiracy. The US are not puppets of Israel, and the big evil corps are not in some plot to profit from the US manufacturing villains and then bombing their third world countries.
When a corporation goes into a third world country with exploitation on their mind - whose fault is it that those people are not protected by labor laws, etc?
THEIR government's fault. What the fuck are we supposed to do about that - overthrow all these third-world governments and force labor-protection laws down their throat?
Fuck you. It is NOT my fault that Nike chooses to take advantage of and exploit people who refuse to join with the rest of humanity and live in the 21st century.
You say that we can kill all the terrorists, but the only thing we'll accomplish by doing that is pissing off another whole generation of people - not just the relatives of the terrorists, but the relatives of the people who were not terrorists who were killed "accidentally" (no, it does not matter if it was an accident, a bomb missed it's target, or if the Taliban actually slaughtered them in the middle of the night and put US bomb fragments in the rubble - it's our word against theirs, and believe it or not - we're LOSING this propaganda war!)
In my opinion, this is going to cause many more muslim countries around the world to start hating the US and fostering extremist groups. And many non-muslim countries will likely get back on the fence until it's just the US and UK, and possibly Russia.
Eventually, we'll probably have to play the nuclear card, JUST to get the oil we need.
Eventually - the US will be victorious, and we'll kill all the terrorists. But hundreds of millions, possibly billions will die in the process.
I'm not one of those whining anti-globalist "blame america first" club members. But I think we're going about this all wrong.
. . . however, I *HATE* the fact that I'm classified as a "pacifist" for wanting the Afghan bombing to stop.
I think that this is completely the wrong way to do this - because the Afghan propaganda seems to be much more effective on 1 billion muslims than the US propaganda they've been hearing for the past 20 years. I think that every bomb that drops on Afghanistan is going to be characterized as an attack on islam, a genocide of arabs and persians, and proof of how Evil the US is. Every day, clearly, the US's standing in the coalition is getting worse and worse.
What we must do, is:
Pull out of the UN. Create a new world-organization that does not include nations who support terrorism. All member-states have to have a minimum standard of identifying citizens who want to cross borders, and serious laws against money laundering that are strictly enforced. Security is what people want. Security is the best way to ensure peace, and prosperity. Pull out of Saudi Arabia. Pull out of Israel (since the Israeli government clearly is not interested in peace). Develop alternative energy sources to power the Western economies of the 21st century. Stop all foreign aid and erect trade interdiction to all non-member states.
Let the Arabs starve. Let them know that it's their extremists and their pandering to the extremists that got them into this position, the only way to ensure their own survival and prosperity is to become democratic nations, and join the coalition, and find and eliminate their extremists, and stop sponsoring their propaganda in their schools.
If they want to farm dust, and play in their oil, and lead mideval lives, they're free to do so. But we should completely cease all contact with those societies, and prevent those people from entering Western society so they can no longer terrorize us.
And Israel's problems should be Israel's alone. I, for one, am sick of taking it in the nuts for them. If they want peace, then they have to get rid of their own extremists. Note that all this recent Palestinian violence started when Ariel Sharon came to power. He and his extremist regime are just as nasty as the Jerry Falwells and the Mulluh Omars of the world.
If OBL wants to create a "pure islamist state" and use oil as a weapon to topple the West, I say, let him try, and let him fail on his own.
The muslims of the world will soon find out that 90% of them don't want a pure islamist state, and when the west finds alternative energy sources, then they'll be crying like the oil industry did in the 80's - remember? OPEC cut back on supply, and demand dropped, and they went hungry.
In the end, what we'll have is a bunch of counter-revolutions in the middle east, Arabs who will overthrow these religious regimes, and they'll be much more strongly committed to democracy, because they had to fight to get it, instead of having "the man" impose it on them "against allah's will".
And the world will be a better place, not only because of the better political climate in the mideast, but because the western economies will be using less oil, and the environment may actually allow human life to exist on this planet.
if that's the case, what's with the glaring inconsistencies? Like, how HP's scar, as described in the book, is located in the center of his forehead, but in the movie, it's over on the side - and how, in the book, his hair is described as messy, unkempt, sheer anarchy, but in the movie, it's neat and tidy, all done up by a hollywood makeup artist?
Mr. AC - I've been on the other side of the fence, and beyond. I do that for a living. I support EXTERNAL customers - who generally install whatever the hell they want on their machines, and I'm expected to support and fix it - even if it's explicitly stated that I don't have to support interaction with Application X - there's ALWAYS an exception. Usually a large, loud customer with deep pockets and a big mouth, and the ear of someone highly placed within my company.
I seem to manage.
Who is blamed when things don't work? We don't point fingers and blame. We analyze the problem, and find the cause. If it's not our problem, (as is often the case) we can sometimes code a workaround in our product. This is acutally very common, as many bugs in a given vendor's product are actually a result of something broken in the OS - that you end up having to code around.
When there's a known problem or conflict that can't be worked around, we document it and move on. Customers can look up the known issues on the web, and are informed not to run that specific configuration.
Do you see the difference here? We tell customers what specific configurations we know won't work. IT people tend to tell their "customers" only to run ONE specific configuration that IS known to work (in their lab - or most of the time).
The whole point of having a computer is so that you have a multi-function tool that can run in a variety of configurations to deal with a variety of tasks. When you start limiting that, you limit the usefulness of the tool - and the productivity of your workers.
One other point - which is really an observation. In my 10 years of doing this - the WORST customers to work for are ones that have strict lockdown policies on their network. It takes forever to gain access to the servers that cause problems, it takes forever to get troubleshooting data from these people, and more often than not, they tend to flat out refuse to install any patch or update until it's gone through months of their own internal testing. Then they bitch and moan when it takes our Tech Support too long to fix their problem.
I've had calls from customers who are expected to resolve problems with our products that don't have administrator access to the boxes they're supposed to be working on. How the hell are you supposed to try configuration changes? If an updated 3rd party driver is required, how the hell are you supposed to install that? These people don't think about how these lockdown precautions negatively impact workflow and productivity. Isn't productivity the whole goddamn reason for the supposed computer revolution in the first place?
I can see wanting to exert a little top-down control when 90% of your corporate network's bandwidth is being consumed by desktop MP3 servers. But a lot of this other stuff is just complete bullshit.