Sorry, I just can't get worked up over this so-called threat. I grew up in the cold war and back then we had the soviets. After that, all this "terrorism" and "rogue state" shit is just yawn.
It might help to keep in mind that while the Russians were more organized and had more power, they were sane. We're not facing mutually assured destruction, but North Korea would be more likely to nuke SOMEONE than the USSR.
And since we already blew our wad in Iraq there is probably not much we can do about now.
Thank you Mr. Bush.
More directly, he included them as part of the idiotic "Axis of evil." A few words which really helped cement an adversarial relationship with north korea, and helped convince them they needed nukes to keep us from invading.
Wait, I must be thinking of Iran. What's that you say? Iran AND North Korea. Man, good thing we elected him twice.
How was iraq a threat to global security in the gulf war?
You could argue that in gulf war 1, invading Kuwait was a sign of a cancerous government in a region that we really needed to be stable so we could keep getting oil. Not a reason to invade that would have convinced many people, and had that been the express reason, the american public may have been more demanding that we rid our dependence on oil. So that one, maybe.
Gulf war 2? I personally blame extremely short-sighted neocons who got very lucky for getting us started on that again, and national arrogance for running full steam in the direction they pointed. That one, no way was that an actual threat to anything.
The second one at the very least I consider to be a crime against humanity, the first one I don't know, it's debatable and I don't know enough about it.
* - hint: out of the three, the one country that stopped developing nuclear weapons got invaded. Two others proceed with nuclear tests and remained safe.
When you cherrypick your examples like that, sure, it does sound crazy not to develop nukes. Of course, why on earth would we have invaded Pakistan, let alone India?!? For that matter, why not throw France on there? Their nukes are probably the reason we haven't invaded them recently.
Meanwhile, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia... why haven't we invaded them exactly? Is it that they have nukes or they don't have any oil so it's not worth it?
I for one cannot believe that the great powers, China in particular, continue to let this little pissant live.
It's all about perspective. Keep in mind that some of our foreign policy opponents say the same thing about the US and Israel. The two aren't similar in many ways, but they both do provoke in ways that serve some of the interests of the us/china.
In the case of North Korea, China gets a lot of leverage over Japan and the rest of the world. If you piss China off enough, they won't act like they're going to help your ongoing efforts to prevent North Korea from nuking japan. At least that's what I've heard from a few japanese scholars, take that with a grain of salt, but it does make some sense. Naturally, it's stupid if China is doing that, since China would be in a world of hurt if North Korea actually did start trouble.
I've also heard (although this sounds much more dubious to me) that south korea isn't really doing all they can to stop north korea from getting nukes, since both countries express an interest in eventually reuniting, there's some sense of "If they get nukes, when we reunite, we'll have nukes." Again, that sounds like complete conspiracy theory crap to me, but what do I know?
Banned by who? The countries which already have them?
The governments of the US and europe let me down more than they should, but they have a long way to go before they scare me as much as north Korea's government. I mean, I'd trust both Iran and Cuba with nukes before North Korea. Iran and Cuba seem to understand that building an atomic bomb is something you do so that you don't have to use it. North Korea on the other hand seems more likely to use it than not use it.
Whatever it's about environment, peoples rights, weapons or whatever the same rules apply: Clean up in your own backyard or shut the fuck up!
Rational thinking like that has very little use in real-world international politics, and none in dealings with north korea.
It seems like you're suggesting that it's unfair that we have nukes and they don't. I suggest you go downtown, give an angry crazy homeless man one loaded gun and you keep another. By your theory, everyone is equal and everything should work out great over multiple tests. You can tell me how it went on monday.
Agreed. TMI is actually an example of safety success! Everything failed.. but the containment vessel kept us safe.
Er... seems like there would have only had to have been one more failure for it to actually be quite a big deal. I have no understanding of containment vessels, but I'm unwilling to believe that they are fail proof. Only one more failure after several things that weren't supposed to fail failed doesn't seem so unlikely.
From my admittedly quite uninformed opinion, this sounds kind of like someone saying "The cuban missile crisis is a clear example of why mutually assured destruction during the cold war was a great idea: we DIDN'T nuke each other to kingdom come!"
You're just trying to attack someone you suspect, obviously without a shred of proof or even thought, in narcissistic grandiosity, of being "out to get you".
Uh... no, I'm saying that the FBI has a long history of dramatically overstepping their bounds and being irrational. I've never personally been affected by the FBI or law enforcement unfairly. It is in their mentality though.
Do the Americans now live in a police state that is controlled by the RIAA.
Nah, the FBI has never been too concerned about pesky rights. I don' think you can lay this one entirely at the *AA's feet, this seems like standard law enforcement "they're all guilty of something" SOP.
The synthesis takes place at and below room temperature...
Specifically, they manipulated the genes in a laboratory strain of a common virus, making the microbes collect exotic materials -- cobalt oxide and gold...
Indeed, I hope they are careful with these viruses, because if they got infected, and happened to be suffering from hypothermia, the viruses could use up their bodily gold and cobalt oxide, and then they could get shocked! Assuming they had AIDS too that is.
Oh well, I guess we'll just have to keep living in a world where people fear what isn't going to happen.
Said with the cockiness of the engineers who designed the Titanic...
Kidding, just kidding, I'm sure our engineers have learned all their mistakes and will never make new ones, and same thing with government regulatory bodies which will be responsible and the companies that run them.
Sorry, that sounded sarcastic. I just tend to distrust people who say there are no chances of unforseen complications and that all the problems have been worked out, especially when I have no time to become well versed in the subject (nuclear physics here) to determine for myself how logical those claims are. But I'm sure several slashdotters can't be wrong.
This is a pretty weak argument when you consider that we have the Coast Guard, the largest Navy in the world, and the most advanced monitoring of our coasts.
Am I the only one who finds huge dystopian futuristic windmills a neat addition to the landscape? I think they look much better than your average skyscraper.
Isn't macular degeneration just a normal part of the aging process?
The wiki page seems to indicate that there's a genetic component, so I don't think it is "normal" meaning everyone will get it.
And just to be clear, you're not implying that if everyone is going to be getting it eventually, that's somehow a reason not to try to cure it, are you? I don't care how "normal" it is, I wouldn't want to go blind, just as I don't want to get "normal" osteoporosis, hair loss, and loss of mental accuity etc.
My... er... -friend-, who was using a poorly configured, outdated browser from a USB drive on a poorly configured computer, tried to load the webpage (http://www.evosmartconsole.com/). What loaded was a black background with one thing on it: a banner ad for walmart.
While that's a reflection more of my *cough* friend's laziness and unwillingness to spend 5 minutes fixing it, my friend did find it quite funny and resolved to buy the console from walmart.
(PS. Keep in mind this is not me, this is my friend and he admitted he's lazy, and the website would look nominally better if he spent as long as he had on this post configuring his system, so let's not get hung up on that or flay him alive.)
You mean reserve. Not sure why we accepted the newspeak gamestop was pushing, it's exactly the same old annoying process by which you give someone money and they promise to give you something at some point in the future.
If there is a difference, it's that game retailers (again gamestop) try to punish those who don't "doubleplusadvanceorder."
But I guess it's harder to disallow a specific product via the same method.
No texas government agency shall install an operating system that has a name starting with a "V" and ends in "ista," from a company that rhymes with "schmicrosoft."
Clicked on the link, page unavaliable. A reload did work.
Should be in the summary: If the page doesn't load at all, that doesn't mean you're infected, that means "Poor Internet connection?" If the page loads but some of the images don't, THAT is a positive.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I just can't get worked up over this so-called threat. I grew up in the cold war and back then we had the soviets. After that, all this "terrorism" and "rogue state" shit is just yawn.
It might help to keep in mind that while the Russians were more organized and had more power, they were sane. We're not facing mutually assured destruction, but North Korea would be more likely to nuke SOMEONE than the USSR.
And since we already blew our wad in Iraq there is probably not much we can do about now.
Thank you Mr. Bush.
More directly, he included them as part of the idiotic "Axis of evil." A few words which really helped cement an adversarial relationship with north korea, and helped convince them they needed nukes to keep us from invading.
Wait, I must be thinking of Iran. What's that you say? Iran AND North Korea. Man, good thing we elected him twice.
Funny considering you're the only country who has actually used them in a war.
Yes, but if you look at it another way, we've had nukes for 64 years since then without using them, that's longer than any other country!!!
I really think if Dr. Strangelove were remade today, that line should be in it.
Any latest news about what is happening would be appreciated.
Currently, the place where you are has NOT yet been nuked by north korea.
How was iraq a threat to global security in the gulf war?
You could argue that in gulf war 1, invading Kuwait was a sign of a cancerous government in a region that we really needed to be stable so we could keep getting oil. Not a reason to invade that would have convinced many people, and had that been the express reason, the american public may have been more demanding that we rid our dependence on oil. So that one, maybe.
Gulf war 2? I personally blame extremely short-sighted neocons who got very lucky for getting us started on that again, and national arrogance for running full steam in the direction they pointed. That one, no way was that an actual threat to anything.
The second one at the very least I consider to be a crime against humanity, the first one I don't know, it's debatable and I don't know enough about it.
* - hint: out of the three, the one country that stopped developing nuclear weapons got invaded. Two others proceed with nuclear tests and remained safe.
When you cherrypick your examples like that, sure, it does sound crazy not to develop nukes. Of course, why on earth would we have invaded Pakistan, let alone India?!? For that matter, why not throw France on there? Their nukes are probably the reason we haven't invaded them recently.
Meanwhile, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia... why haven't we invaded them exactly? Is it that they have nukes or they don't have any oil so it's not worth it?
I for one cannot believe that the great powers, China in particular, continue to let this little pissant live.
It's all about perspective. Keep in mind that some of our foreign policy opponents say the same thing about the US and Israel. The two aren't similar in many ways, but they both do provoke in ways that serve some of the interests of the us/china.
In the case of North Korea, China gets a lot of leverage over Japan and the rest of the world. If you piss China off enough, they won't act like they're going to help your ongoing efforts to prevent North Korea from nuking japan. At least that's what I've heard from a few japanese scholars, take that with a grain of salt, but it does make some sense. Naturally, it's stupid if China is doing that, since China would be in a world of hurt if North Korea actually did start trouble.
I've also heard (although this sounds much more dubious to me) that south korea isn't really doing all they can to stop north korea from getting nukes, since both countries express an interest in eventually reuniting, there's some sense of "If they get nukes, when we reunite, we'll have nukes." Again, that sounds like complete conspiracy theory crap to me, but what do I know?
Banned by who? The countries which already have them?
The governments of the US and europe let me down more than they should, but they have a long way to go before they scare me as much as north Korea's government. I mean, I'd trust both Iran and Cuba with nukes before North Korea. Iran and Cuba seem to understand that building an atomic bomb is something you do so that you don't have to use it. North Korea on the other hand seems more likely to use it than not use it.
Whatever it's about environment, peoples rights, weapons or whatever the same rules apply: Clean up in your own backyard or shut the fuck up!
Rational thinking like that has very little use in real-world international politics, and none in dealings with north korea.
It seems like you're suggesting that it's unfair that we have nukes and they don't. I suggest you go downtown, give an angry crazy homeless man one loaded gun and you keep another. By your theory, everyone is equal and everything should work out great over multiple tests. You can tell me how it went on monday.
Agreed. TMI is actually an example of safety success! Everything failed.. but the containment vessel kept us safe.
Er... seems like there would have only had to have been one more failure for it to actually be quite a big deal. I have no understanding of containment vessels, but I'm unwilling to believe that they are fail proof. Only one more failure after several things that weren't supposed to fail failed doesn't seem so unlikely.
From my admittedly quite uninformed opinion, this sounds kind of like someone saying "The cuban missile crisis is a clear example of why mutually assured destruction during the cold war was a great idea: we DIDN'T nuke each other to kingdom come!"
You're just trying to attack someone you suspect, obviously without a shred of proof or even thought, in narcissistic grandiosity, of being "out to get you".
Uh... no, I'm saying that the FBI has a long history of dramatically overstepping their bounds and being irrational. I've never personally been affected by the FBI or law enforcement unfairly. It is in their mentality though.
Do the Americans now live in a police state that is controlled by the RIAA.
Nah, the FBI has never been too concerned about pesky rights. I don' think you can lay this one entirely at the *AA's feet, this seems like standard law enforcement "they're all guilty of something" SOP.
The synthesis takes place at and below room temperature...
Specifically, they manipulated the genes in a laboratory strain of a common virus, making the microbes collect exotic materials -- cobalt oxide and gold...
Indeed, I hope they are careful with these viruses, because if they got infected, and happened to be suffering from hypothermia, the viruses could use up their bodily gold and cobalt oxide, and then they could get shocked! Assuming they had AIDS too that is.
Oh well, I guess we'll just have to keep living in a world where people fear what isn't going to happen.
Said with the cockiness of the engineers who designed the Titanic...
Kidding, just kidding, I'm sure our engineers have learned all their mistakes and will never make new ones, and same thing with government regulatory bodies which will be responsible and the companies that run them.
Sorry, that sounded sarcastic. I just tend to distrust people who say there are no chances of unforseen complications and that all the problems have been worked out, especially when I have no time to become well versed in the subject (nuclear physics here) to determine for myself how logical those claims are. But I'm sure several slashdotters can't be wrong.
Or wind turbines which ... go round and round.
Until they fall apart in which they become hundred foot long steel blades of death!
Okay, so that's unlikely as well, and I suppose they might actually be made out of aluminum or something, but everything can go wrong.
You're right though, wind plant failure =/= nuclear plant failure
This is a pretty weak argument when you consider that we have the Coast Guard, the largest Navy in the world, and the most advanced monitoring of our coasts.
And terrorists can't swim well.
Am I the only one who finds huge dystopian futuristic windmills a neat addition to the landscape? I think they look much better than your average skyscraper.
Isn't macular degeneration just a normal part of the aging process?
The wiki page seems to indicate that there's a genetic component, so I don't think it is "normal" meaning everyone will get it.
And just to be clear, you're not implying that if everyone is going to be getting it eventually, that's somehow a reason not to try to cure it, are you? I don't care how "normal" it is, I wouldn't want to go blind, just as I don't want to get "normal" osteoporosis, hair loss, and loss of mental accuity etc.
My... er... -friend-, who was using a poorly configured, outdated browser from a USB drive on a poorly configured computer, tried to load the webpage (http://www.evosmartconsole.com/). What loaded was a black background with one thing on it: a banner ad for walmart.
While that's a reflection more of my *cough* friend's laziness and unwillingness to spend 5 minutes fixing it, my friend did find it quite funny and resolved to buy the console from walmart.
(PS. Keep in mind this is not me, this is my friend and he admitted he's lazy, and the website would look nominally better if he spent as long as he had on this post configuring his system, so let's not get hung up on that or flay him alive.)
You mean reserve. Not sure why we accepted the newspeak gamestop was pushing, it's exactly the same old annoying process by which you give someone money and they promise to give you something at some point in the future.
If there is a difference, it's that game retailers (again gamestop) try to punish those who don't "doubleplusadvanceorder."
Heisenberg eh?
thought that was Schroedinger....
(/liberalartsmajor)
Yes, and he didn't actually study dead cats.
(liberalartsmajor)
Is this going to be on the final? Man am I hung over!
Or is it *both* Impossible and not Impossible?
Man, even I, a liberal arts major, know that Heisenberg studied dead cats, not space travel!
But I guess it's harder to disallow a specific product via the same method.
No texas government agency shall install an operating system that has a name starting with a "V" and ends in "ista," from a company that rhymes with "schmicrosoft."
I would have assumed you would see a completely black grid on a completely black background.
Funny, I see a penguin, a blowfish, the devil, and some boring corporate logos. No dogs. You must have Confiker R variant (Rorschach variant)
Clicked on the link, page unavaliable. A reload did work.
Should be in the summary: If the page doesn't load at all, that doesn't mean you're infected, that means "Poor Internet connection?" If the page loads but some of the images don't, THAT is a positive.