Do we? Let us see if outrage such as yours turns into long lines of young people volunteering to join the armed forces. Let us see if there is clamour for higher taxes to pay for the war. Let us see if the U.S. commits ground troups
Yes, we do. I don't know about you, but on the mailing lists I'm on, the topic is coming up. people asking how tech skills can be used by the military. Asking about joining the reserves.
You've seen it here on/., too. The next weeks are definitely going to be interesting (in the chinese curse definition of the word). I really don't doubt that we lack the resolve or manpower to commit to this. The question is more about the target -- what is the goal? That will decide the level of support, not the fear of bloodying ourselves.
Evidence for this figure? I've seen nothing published.
Common sense? Almost half of all known terrorist groups on Earth are dedicated against the United States. Do you think they just saw the most successful attack ever and said to themselves "gosh, we should never want to do that -- it worked too well!"
Yes, I meant the 4-minute mile of course.
You think running a mile in 4 minutes is easy? Try running one in 5 minutes sometime.
No, it's not easy -- I ran the 1800 meter in high school and am well aware of my own physical limits. But that doesn't change the fact that it makes a HUGE difference in success rate once you know that something is possible. Just knowing it gives you the clarity and confidence to succeed.
Zero people! You hearby have permission to say "we'd better hit back." Actually hitting back, of course, takes a lot more thought and preparation. Hit back if you must but drop the sanctimony. It's going to be a miserable business.
yes it will be. It always has been -- who is saying it will not be? One of the things we know for sure is that this is no gulf war to be won by remote control. Americans are going to die in the next few years, the only question is whether we want them to be soldiers fighting back or civilians sitting in their offices.
There is nothing sanctimonious about saying that we are now targets. We have two choices: fighting or not. Either way, we are being attacked and that is not going to stop.
You cannot negotiate with someone who has no demands save your death. Our very existance is contrary to these people's view of God and a righteous universe. We are Evil incarnate -- they do not want land as Hitler did, there can be no appeasement. They don't want representation in the UN, or a homeland for palestinians. They want us to not exist. When all of it was rhetoric that was fine, but now they are trying to make it reality. I don't personally find that acceptable.
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
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that was a really insightful message -- and a good point, I think.
I tend to think america is more idealistic than most nations domestically, but internationally we're pragnmatic 100%.
The interesting cases are like the soviet union where idealism and pragmatism wound up being incompatible -- communism just didn't work in any pragmatic way, so you had this tension that built and built over the century.
But the US, we've been reasonably successful at recognizing that idealism only goes so far outside our borders -- but our desire for "fair play" has always been a limiting factor in our national psyche (note that I think this is a good thing, but a limit nonetheless).
And hitler was a frustrated artist. So whats your point?
Yes, this is how their thinking led them to do what they did. Again, what's your point? We understand why they did what they did -- they hated us enough to die to hurt us. Well, guess what we now hate them enough to die to hurt them. You're right, its not very complex. thats how this happens.
And if we decide to pelt them with flower petals instead of bullets? Will they decide then that we're really swell people after all?
No, the choice is clear now -- we kill them or let them kill us. There is not a middle ground. They're not going to stop now that they know they can successfully attack us. There are a hundred groups planning attacks on US citizens after a success like this.
After the first person ran the mile in under 3 minutes, a dozen people did it within a year. Once they knew it could be done it was easy to reach the goal. They know they can attack us on US soil. How many more will die in attacks before its acceptable for us to say, "shit, we'd better hit back"?
I'm doing it too. Its 4 in the morning, and what the heck am I doing up? I'm reloading CNN, reloading slashdot, reading more comments, reading foreign papers, watching TV in the background, I have NPR on the radio.
I keep expecting to find something new, and every now ad then am rewarded. A new insight, a new discussion, a new way to start a ground war, a new way to keep the peace.
What started it all was when it was happening. Just when you thought you new, another thing happened. A plane hit the tower. When you absorbed that, another plane hit the other tower. When you absorbed that, a plane hit the pentagon. When you absorbed that, F-16s were rushing off to intercept ANOTHER plane heading towards DC. It just kept coming, every 15 minutes there was something new, something big. Another plane crash, another plane missing, the president is in florida -- no, he's in Louisiana, wait he's at the bunker.
Always something new, then we heard about the phone calls, the personal stories. i imagine the people on that last flight making the decision to fight back. I keep waiting for another piece of news -- it was too painful to realize I had missed something if I went to the bathroom that morning. If you stopped listening for a minute, you'd tune in again to hear that another plane was down.
Now I keep expecting to hear about an attack somewhere, like the gulf war, started at night where our superior technology gives us sight while the others are blind.
I don't want to wake up and know that I missed the first 6 hours of what happens next.
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
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Handling the Loads
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· Score: 3, Insightful
So you're telling me that you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. I'm asking you about gradients between the extremes. Somehow I don't think that people would be as pissed about helping civilians as they would about the one-sided arming, financial and technical backing of one side of a faction, do you?
So you're suggesting a repeat of Somalia -- where we sent food with troops to protect it, but stayed out of the actual conflict? We simply went to provide support for civilians. The thanks we got was a lot of dead US soldiers. It seems combatants don't like for others to help civilians when THEY want to control the civilians.
So now we're back to the question of helping civilians and having both sides hate us, picking a side and having the other side hate us, or staying out and having the rest of the world hate us for "doing nothing".
Perhaps it is because the United States government makes their nation out to be the end-all, be-all of nations. Capable of anything, impenetrable and wealthy beyond all comparison.
Maybe it goes both ways. We certainly aren't lacking for suitors (to butcher my "prettiest girl at the party" metaphor). Maybe we're just a plain-looking girl but everyone else is desperate? Or wearing beer goggles?:)
But the track record your government shows indicates that they tend to be more interested in serving their own interests than genuinely helping others. That, as a foreign policy, will get you into trouble. Do you not agree?
I'm not sure -- will we be doing people a favor to be driven by 100% benevolent intentions? These nations were all very capable of playing the US off of the USSR, getting money and goods from both while avoiding any real commitments for 50 years. They are no strangers to capitalism or self-interest. Now that only the US is left, they seem shocked that we're not willing to keep sending them money just for being nice people.
We HAVE had mutually beneficial relationships with small nations who are willing to genuinely "grow" -- look at Turkey, for example, which is STILL shunned by the EU but has consistently been a close friend of the US. We have military bases there, but what we have REALLY gained is a stable nation in that part of the world, truly dedicated to democracy and ready to join the first world.
I understand what you're saying, and yes it would be great if we could all be friends, but ultimately I think Washington was right when he warned us to beware of foreign entanglements. We would love to go back to isolationism if it was possible, which of course it isn't.
BTW, sorry for all the cursing earlier -- I've been going through mood swings all week, from angry to despondent and everything in-between. There was actually a shouting match with three people in the office on thursday, over a video tape! Irritability is at an all-time high, that's for sure. Right now I'm at the "why bother?" stage of foreign policy. Its a good thing I'm not president, thats for sure...
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
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However, one can not ignore the horrors we commit
But we haven't committed horrors any more atrocious than those committed by other large nations. We haven't come close to the international atrocities that came out of french colonialism. The british were somewhat better, because at least they brought education and public works where they went, but there is no shortage of 20th century bogeymen, and yet we get singled out.
we get singled out because we're the biggest, the most successful, and ultimately the "representative" of all the western nations. Individual policy decisions are the excuses upon which people can hang their hatred and jealousy.
If afghanistan or the UK or japan or any other nation had our influence they would have an equally long list of individual decisions to complain about because its impossible for us to function without making decisions that affect people.
Frequently we have to choose the lesser of two evils (as with most of our mid-east CIA trainees gone bad). The other option is to stay out of it until it reaches our shores. Well, it's reached our shores and I have a feeling we'll be sticking our fingers in a lot more pies, and people who have a problem with our foreign policy will have even more to hate us for in the future...
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
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But you're still saying we should get MORE involved in other people's conflicts in order to solve the problem of uss being percieved as a "global policeman".
Whether its a "hands-off" or "hands-on" approach as you describe, or leaving people to fight it out amongst themselves, people still turn to US for some reason to solve THEIR problems, and then complain no matter the outcome.
So what should we do in the middle east? Stop selling weapons to Israel (because that's hands-off) but defend them with our troops? Then we'll be even more likely to be attacked by palestinians. Should we attack Israel and force them to give up their country? Should we stand by as Israel gets annihilated by surrounding nations? Then we'll get bombed by jewish extremists.
For all the wisdom everyone in every OTHER country has, why isn't Canada or the UK solving all the problems on earth? Are we stopping the canadian troops from landing in the middle east to solve everything?
Is it easier to sit back on the sidelines and monday morning quarterback? Is it easier to pass resolutions in the UN and then never actually do anything?
I'm not saying we're wholly virtuous, simply that there is no way the US gets even remotely treated fairly. We're expected to step in early, but not TOO early, and strike with force, precision, and strength, but not TOO much force or strength, and we better be 100% precise.
I'm not blinded by patriotism, as was suggested in the first message -- I'm blinded by the growing futility of us doing anything because of the paradox that every other nation has set before us. Inaction is punished, action is punished, delay is punished, immediate response is punished.
Everyone else has a lot to say about what we should do with OUR lives and OUR troops, until they actually show up, at which point everyone says what a blunder we've made and how we should just get out of the middle. everyone else seems to have all the answers, so why do they keep calling us?
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
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...Or trying to be the police of the world. The U.S. government does flaunt its power; that is what I believe got the United States into this mess in the first place! ...
it should do more peacekeeping and put its own military into action. The "hands off" kind of "support" that the U.S. has done in the near past reminds me of a parent shouting at fighting kids to stop instead of getting their hands dirty and stopping the conflict themselves.
So you want us to stop flaunting our power and being police of the world by "getting our hands dirty" with our military and stopping all the fighting everywhere else on earth.
I hope that it is now crystal clear to you why we cannot make other nations happy.
If even Canada wants us to stop throwing our weight around, while at the same time demanding we step in to enforce world peace, what hope do we have to make friends with the actual combatants?
I've found that Americans understand the world better than others seem to think. we understand that anything less than perfection is unacceptable. I'm sorry, we cannot be everywhere at every moment and stop all conflict while also remining quietly on the sidelines...
Re:Time for some highly unpopular opinion...
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· Score: 4, Informative
The government of the United States of America has been bullying and harassing nations for a very long time, flaunting themselves as a superpower which is untouchable. They've stuck their noses in other nations' business too many times and someone had decided to cut it off.
I barely know where to begin when I read crap like this. The simple truth is that people hate us because we're the biggest kid on the block.
yes, they care about individual policy decisions, but there isn't a nation on earth that doesn't make the exact same decisions every day. WE're criticized for butting our noses into foreign affairs, then criticized for being isolationist if we DON'T get involved in foreign affairs.
We're criticized for supporting side A against B, but if we switch sides, we're criticized for supporting B against A.
There is no policy we could possibly have that would make other nations happy with us. If we withdraw, we're "ignoring our responsibilities" but if we get involved we're "flaunting our power".
Well fuck you all very much, planet earth. We didn't ask to be the only superpower. We're not itching to feed your hungry or shelter your homeless or finance your economic devastations, but we're the ones you call on first when you need those things done.
You complain because american hegemony is destroying your cultures, then you go out and buy coca-cola and watch Friends on TV. You complain about our imperialism while ignoring the fact that Germany and Japan are our biggest competitors exactly BECAUSE we rebuilt them at OUR EXPENSE after we could have conquered them.
We're damned if we do and damned if we don't, so don't give me any shit that we had it coming because of our policies. NO FUCKING POLICY WILL MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY!
We're like the prettiest girl at a party -- all the women want to be her, all the men want to fuck her. There is not a country on earth that wouldn't trade places with us in a second, and on days like today i'd almost be happy to do it.
The egyptian government was never willing to accept it (nor his family) because of the taboo on suicide in islam. But he said something before taking the plane down (can't remember what right now) along the lines of a suicidal goodbye, and he was having a lot of personal issues at home with his family. it was open and closed pretty fast by the NTSB, FBI and everyone else...
signal11 proved that the karma system was easy to abuse (which was more of a social experiment than anything he proved about slashdot itself), and he racked up thousands of karma I believe.
Because of him, they set a karma cap of 50, made the karma hidden from the user page and apparently deleted a lot of signal11's karma from his account.
He was the original karma whore.
(I should note I am still way above the 50 karma limit -- which is interesting because if you're a low UID and posted decent messages it was easy to do. But because you can't go above 50, it never credits for +1 when comments get modded up. But it DOES subtract when you get -1 on a comment!! So you're guaranteed to slowly watch your karma go down until you hit 50, which for me should be another year or two I guess)...
Am I the only one who cannot take this so-called "digital divide" seriously
How do you suggest we feed the people in those poor countries if they cannot develop their economies? Should we just keep sending them food and money, or actually make efforts to get them to be self-sufficient?
These are largely nations that have little agricultural or other natural resources, which is (among other reasons) why they have been left behind during the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Now with the possibility of a digital economy being real, this is the first time that having smart human beings is by itself enough to generate wealth!
It isn't enough to bring these countries into the 18th or 19th centuries -- they have to catch up to the rest of the world, not always remain a step behind. We can't feed everyone on earth, but we can at least try to help them get to the point of feeding themselves.
"It smacks of potentially legislating the digital divide," Levin said.
Bildt took offense at the charge. "There are limits to the amount of rubbish I can take," he said. "Close to half the world has never made a telephone call. I would not tear down the telephone system of the U.S. because of that."
After the meeting, Levin and Izumi Aizu of the Asia Network Research described Bildt's attitude as "paternalistic" and said they were not sure if his committee would take their concerns into account.
Paternalistic, indeed -- nobody is suggesting we "tear down" the internet simply because most people on earth are too poor to afford domain names. They are suggesting that the poor be able to vote or run for office -- hardly a notion I would consider shocking.
Bildt seems to think that instituting a poll tax with only landowners able to vote is the way to increase participation in this democracy? Which version of world history did he study that led him to believe this was at all acceptable in the 21st century?
Re:An opposing view on lawyers
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but it seems most of the lawyers are being hired by "big government and big corporations
It *seems* that way because those are the people with money to spend on advertising. Most lawyers are in small offices, or are self-employed.
You'd also think that most companies are huge multinational corporations, based on the publicity and news generated by them. But of course, the vast majority of companies in the US are small family-owned businesses.
Interesting, If you change references to Spectrum in the comment to Music we have the same essential argument that the RIAA is making about MP3s.
Not really -- the radio spectrum is finite. There are only so many broadcasts that can happen at once.
Music is infinitely reproducable. There is no limit to how many times it can be copied without degrading the original.
No one is claiming intellectual property rights on the airwaves -- we're claiming physical property rights. We own the airwaves, and the government leases them out for fixed periods on our behalf.
While salaries don't really come from anything but grants and Teaching Assistant stipends, the University does provide a lot of important stuff.
All of the administrative overhead is covered by your grants and outside funding as well. Most places (depending on the university) take anywhere from 25-50% of your grant to cover overhead.
Well built for screen, that is. Even though they look very similar, just about any designer will choose Helvetica over Arial
They are well-built and well-designed. But they were designed for screen use, and because of that they aren't necessarily pleasing designs for print. But their construction and technical superiority to even the best Adobe/Bitstream/Monotype Helvetica is undeniable. Design is a separate issue from technical construction, and the MS faces are as well-designed for their use as any print face is for print.
And it's worth noting that EVERY Helvetica is a knock-off of Helvetica:)
You are speaking in generalities, and confusing your limited experience for a universal principle. On your moinitor, maybe, AA fonts look blurry
No, actually YOU are guilty of doing exactly that. The original poster was 100% correct.
Antialiasing does not solve the problem of displaying fonts at small sizes. Only hinting does this.
Antialiasing can HELP, and is easier, and perhaps for you it is an acceptable solution, but it is equally capable of making it even HARDER to read small type because of the inability for the antialiasing to take into consideration the INTENT of the type designer (which of course is the entire purpose of hinting).
It also depends greatly on the typeface you're using -- perhaps a simple face like Helvetica will appear to display just fine at 8 pts anti-aliased, but using an unhinted script face at that size will be a blur.
AA is most definitely *a* solution for Linux on the desktop. In fact it is an essential solution without any substitute. It is not the only display related feature that has needed improvement on the Linux desktop. But at last we are putting lack of AA behind us.
I agree completely -- at this point it isn't possible for a consumer OS to look "professional" without antialiasing ability, since the Mac and Windows have had it for several years now and people have gotten used to the quality of type on those platforms.
Well hinted Type 1 fonts would be far better than Microsoft's scraggly assed truetypes which are only useful for screen display anyway.
Truetype is in every way a superior type technology to Postscript Type 1 (which should be no surprise as it is a decade younger). Miscorost's core collection of TrueType fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, etc) are quite possibly the most well-built fonts in existence.
The only reason we hold Type 1 & Type 3 fonts in such high regard is because such a vast library of high-quality fonts are already in existence that take full advantage of the limited hinting available in PS. Most TT fonts, though, have no manual hinting at all, so they look like crap compared to the PS versions.
Now that OpenType is catching on, we're starting to see really beautiful fonts taking advantage of the extra abilities TT always had but no one took advantage of (but MS).
But it is completely mistaking the nature of the problem to say that "hinting is important and Anti-aliasing is not at all important, and worse, it is a bad thing".
Well, full-time brute-force antialiasing CAN be a bad thing, compared to actually building the font right. It's a great boon for larger type sizes but not the solution for small type at all, and can very much hurt legibility. Both are necessary, and they solve different problems.
Why do you think our TV industry (VHS/NTSC) isn't compatible with the rest of the world
Um, because we invented it and did it first? Same reason we have a different electrical standard? Whe you're the first place to roll something out, you're stuck with the first mistakes,too -- the second guy to do something has a better chance to get it right.
You don't need XP for encryption, it's a basic feature of windows NTFS implementations out of the box. They may have made it more transparent or something in XP, but you can encrypt files/folders/drives in 2k without the additional overhead of XP.
I've got one box I've been running XP on for the past few weeks and can only say I'm pretty unimpressed. Win2k blew me away the first time I used it, and it's a great desktop system, but XP is trying to be WAAAY too many things to WAAAY too many people. If you want a wizard to tell you how to wipe your butt, buy XP, otherwise Win2k is the perfect level of maturity, driver availability, stability, etc...
I'm hesitant to add my support to your mention of easynews.
Not because it isn't worth supporting easynews, but I just don't want tons more people signing up to the best usenet provider I've ever had and slowing them down:)
Slashdot Mirror
Do we? Let us see if outrage such as yours turns into long lines of young people volunteering to join the armed forces. Let us see if there is clamour for higher taxes to pay for the war. Let us see if the U.S. commits ground troups
/., too. The next weeks are definitely going to be interesting (in the chinese curse definition of the word). I really don't doubt that we lack the resolve or manpower to commit to this. The question is more about the target -- what is the goal? That will decide the level of support, not the fear of bloodying ourselves.
Yes, we do. I don't know about you, but on the mailing lists I'm on, the topic is coming up. people asking how tech skills can be used by the military. Asking about joining the reserves.
You've seen it here on
Evidence for this figure? I've seen nothing published.
Common sense? Almost half of all known terrorist groups on Earth are dedicated against the United States. Do you think they just saw the most successful attack ever and said to themselves "gosh, we should never want to do that -- it worked too well!"
Yes, I meant the 4-minute mile of course.
You think running a mile in 4 minutes is easy? Try running one in 5 minutes sometime.
No, it's not easy -- I ran the 1800 meter in high school and am well aware of my own physical limits. But that doesn't change the fact that it makes a HUGE difference in success rate once you know that something is possible. Just knowing it gives you the clarity and confidence to succeed.
Zero people! You hearby have permission to say "we'd better hit back." Actually hitting back, of course, takes a lot more thought and preparation. Hit back if you must but drop the sanctimony. It's going to be a miserable business.
yes it will be. It always has been -- who is saying it will not be? One of the things we know for sure is that this is no gulf war to be won by remote control. Americans are going to die in the next few years, the only question is whether we want them to be soldiers fighting back or civilians sitting in their offices.
There is nothing sanctimonious about saying that we are now targets. We have two choices: fighting or not. Either way, we are being attacked and that is not going to stop.
You cannot negotiate with someone who has no demands save your death. Our very existance is contrary to these people's view of God and a righteous universe. We are Evil incarnate -- they do not want land as Hitler did, there can be no appeasement. They don't want representation in the UN, or a homeland for palestinians. They want us to not exist. When all of it was rhetoric that was fine, but now they are trying to make it reality. I don't personally find that acceptable.
that was a really insightful message -- and a good point, I think.
I tend to think america is more idealistic than most nations domestically, but internationally we're pragnmatic 100%.
The interesting cases are like the soviet union where idealism and pragmatism wound up being incompatible -- communism just didn't work in any pragmatic way, so you had this tension that built and built over the century.
But the US, we've been reasonably successful at recognizing that idealism only goes so far outside our borders -- but our desire for "fair play" has always been a limiting factor in our national psyche (note that I think this is a good thing, but a limit nonetheless).
And hitler was a frustrated artist. So whats your point?
Yes, this is how their thinking led them to do what they did. Again, what's your point? We understand why they did what they did -- they hated us enough to die to hurt us. Well, guess what we now hate them enough to die to hurt them. You're right, its not very complex. thats how this happens.
And if we decide to pelt them with flower petals instead of bullets? Will they decide then that we're really swell people after all?
No, the choice is clear now -- we kill them or let them kill us. There is not a middle ground. They're not going to stop now that they know they can successfully attack us. There are a hundred groups planning attacks on US citizens after a success like this.
After the first person ran the mile in under 3 minutes, a dozen people did it within a year. Once they knew it could be done it was easy to reach the goal. They know they can attack us on US soil. How many more will die in attacks before its acceptable for us to say, "shit, we'd better hit back"?
I'm doing it too. Its 4 in the morning, and what the heck am I doing up? I'm reloading CNN, reloading slashdot, reading more comments, reading foreign papers, watching TV in the background, I have NPR on the radio.
I keep expecting to find something new, and every now ad then am rewarded. A new insight, a new discussion, a new way to start a ground war, a new way to keep the peace.
What started it all was when it was happening. Just when you thought you new, another thing happened. A plane hit the tower. When you absorbed that, another plane hit the other tower. When you absorbed that, a plane hit the pentagon. When you absorbed that, F-16s were rushing off to intercept ANOTHER plane heading towards DC. It just kept coming, every 15 minutes there was something new, something big. Another plane crash, another plane missing, the president is in florida -- no, he's in Louisiana, wait he's at the bunker.
Always something new, then we heard about the phone calls, the personal stories. i imagine the people on that last flight making the decision to fight back. I keep waiting for another piece of news -- it was too painful to realize I had missed something if I went to the bathroom that morning. If you stopped listening for a minute, you'd tune in again to hear that another plane was down.
Now I keep expecting to hear about an attack somewhere, like the gulf war, started at night where our superior technology gives us sight while the others are blind.
I don't want to wake up and know that I missed the first 6 hours of what happens next.
So you're telling me that you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. I'm asking you about gradients between the extremes. Somehow I don't think that people would be as pissed about helping civilians as they would about the one-sided arming, financial and technical backing of one side of a faction, do you?
:)
So you're suggesting a repeat of Somalia -- where we sent food with troops to protect it, but stayed out of the actual conflict? We simply went to provide support for civilians. The thanks we got was a lot of dead US soldiers. It seems combatants don't like for others to help civilians when THEY want to control the civilians.
So now we're back to the question of helping civilians and having both sides hate us, picking a side and having the other side hate us, or staying out and having the rest of the world hate us for "doing nothing".
Perhaps it is because the United States government makes their nation out to be the end-all, be-all of nations. Capable of anything, impenetrable and wealthy beyond all comparison.
Maybe it goes both ways. We certainly aren't lacking for suitors (to butcher my "prettiest girl at the party" metaphor). Maybe we're just a plain-looking girl but everyone else is desperate? Or wearing beer goggles?
But the track record your government shows indicates that they tend to be more interested in serving their own interests than genuinely helping others. That, as a foreign policy, will get you into trouble. Do you not agree?
I'm not sure -- will we be doing people a favor to be driven by 100% benevolent intentions? These nations were all very capable of playing the US off of the USSR, getting money and goods from both while avoiding any real commitments for 50 years. They are no strangers to capitalism or self-interest. Now that only the US is left, they seem shocked that we're not willing to keep sending them money just for being nice people.
We HAVE had mutually beneficial relationships with small nations who are willing to genuinely "grow" -- look at Turkey, for example, which is STILL shunned by the EU but has consistently been a close friend of the US. We have military bases there, but what we have REALLY gained is a stable nation in that part of the world, truly dedicated to democracy and ready to join the first world.
I understand what you're saying, and yes it would be great if we could all be friends, but ultimately I think Washington was right when he warned us to beware of foreign entanglements. We would love to go back to isolationism if it was possible, which of course it isn't.
BTW, sorry for all the cursing earlier -- I've been going through mood swings all week, from angry to despondent and everything in-between. There was actually a shouting match with three people in the office on thursday, over a video tape! Irritability is at an all-time high, that's for sure. Right now I'm at the "why bother?" stage of foreign policy. Its a good thing I'm not president, thats for sure...
However, one can not ignore the horrors we commit
But we haven't committed horrors any more atrocious than those committed by other large nations. We haven't come close to the international atrocities that came out of french colonialism. The british were somewhat better, because at least they brought education and public works where they went, but there is no shortage of 20th century bogeymen, and yet we get singled out.
we get singled out because we're the biggest, the most successful, and ultimately the "representative" of all the western nations. Individual policy decisions are the excuses upon which people can hang their hatred and jealousy.
If afghanistan or the UK or japan or any other nation had our influence they would have an equally long list of individual decisions to complain about because its impossible for us to function without making decisions that affect people.
Frequently we have to choose the lesser of two evils (as with most of our mid-east CIA trainees gone bad). The other option is to stay out of it until it reaches our shores. Well, it's reached our shores and I have a feeling we'll be sticking our fingers in a lot more pies, and people who have a problem with our foreign policy will have even more to hate us for in the future...
But you're still saying we should get MORE involved in other people's conflicts in order to solve the problem of uss being percieved as a "global policeman".
Whether its a "hands-off" or "hands-on" approach as you describe, or leaving people to fight it out amongst themselves, people still turn to US for some reason to solve THEIR problems, and then complain no matter the outcome.
So what should we do in the middle east? Stop selling weapons to Israel (because that's hands-off) but defend them with our troops? Then we'll be even more likely to be attacked by palestinians. Should we attack Israel and force them to give up their country? Should we stand by as Israel gets annihilated by surrounding nations? Then we'll get bombed by jewish extremists.
For all the wisdom everyone in every OTHER country has, why isn't Canada or the UK solving all the problems on earth? Are we stopping the canadian troops from landing in the middle east to solve everything?
Is it easier to sit back on the sidelines and monday morning quarterback? Is it easier to pass resolutions in the UN and then never actually do anything?
I'm not saying we're wholly virtuous, simply that there is no way the US gets even remotely treated fairly. We're expected to step in early, but not TOO early, and strike with force, precision, and strength, but not TOO much force or strength, and we better be 100% precise.
I'm not blinded by patriotism, as was suggested in the first message -- I'm blinded by the growing futility of us doing anything because of the paradox that every other nation has set before us. Inaction is punished, action is punished, delay is punished, immediate response is punished.
Everyone else has a lot to say about what we should do with OUR lives and OUR troops, until they actually show up, at which point everyone says what a blunder we've made and how we should just get out of the middle. everyone else seems to have all the answers, so why do they keep calling us?
...Or trying to be the police of the world. The U.S. government does flaunt its power; that is what I believe got the United States into this mess in the first place!
...
it should do more peacekeeping and put its own military into action. The "hands off" kind of "support" that the U.S. has done in the near past reminds me of a parent shouting at fighting kids to stop instead of getting their hands dirty and stopping the conflict themselves.
So you want us to stop flaunting our power and being police of the world by "getting our hands dirty" with our military and stopping all the fighting everywhere else on earth.
I hope that it is now crystal clear to you why we cannot make other nations happy.
If even Canada wants us to stop throwing our weight around, while at the same time demanding we step in to enforce world peace, what hope do we have to make friends with the actual combatants?
I've found that Americans understand the world better than others seem to think. we understand that anything less than perfection is unacceptable. I'm sorry, we cannot be everywhere at every moment and stop all conflict while also remining quietly on the sidelines...
The government of the United States of America has been bullying and harassing nations for a very long time, flaunting themselves as a superpower which is untouchable. They've stuck their noses in other nations' business too many times and someone had decided to cut it off.
I barely know where to begin when I read crap like this. The simple truth is that people hate us because we're the biggest kid on the block.
yes, they care about individual policy decisions, but there isn't a nation on earth that doesn't make the exact same decisions every day. WE're criticized for butting our noses into foreign affairs, then criticized for being isolationist if we DON'T get involved in foreign affairs.
We're criticized for supporting side A against B, but if we switch sides, we're criticized for supporting B against A.
There is no policy we could possibly have that would make other nations happy with us. If we withdraw, we're "ignoring our responsibilities" but if we get involved we're "flaunting our power".
Well fuck you all very much, planet earth. We didn't ask to be the only superpower. We're not itching to feed your hungry or shelter your homeless or finance your economic devastations, but we're the ones you call on first when you need those things done.
You complain because american hegemony is destroying your cultures, then you go out and buy coca-cola and watch Friends on TV. You complain about our imperialism while ignoring the fact that Germany and Japan are our biggest competitors exactly BECAUSE we rebuilt them at OUR EXPENSE after we could have conquered them.
We're damned if we do and damned if we don't, so don't give me any shit that we had it coming because of our policies. NO FUCKING POLICY WILL MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY!
We're like the prettiest girl at a party -- all the women want to be her, all the men want to fuck her. There is not a country on earth that wouldn't trade places with us in a second, and on days like today i'd almost be happy to do it.
The egyptian government was never willing to accept it (nor his family) because of the taboo on suicide in islam. But he said something before taking the plane down (can't remember what right now) along the lines of a suicidal goodbye, and he was having a lot of personal issues at home with his family. it was open and closed pretty fast by the NTSB, FBI and everyone else...
Tell that to the people who died on the Air Egypt flight (in which the pilot committed suicide and took a few hundred people with him)
I played checkers with Jesus once on the MS Gaming Zone. I mean, talk about a stacked deck!
signal11 proved that the karma system was easy to abuse (which was more of a social experiment than anything he proved about slashdot itself), and he racked up thousands of karma I believe.
Because of him, they set a karma cap of 50, made the karma hidden from the user page and apparently deleted a lot of signal11's karma from his account.
He was the original karma whore.
(I should note I am still way above the 50 karma limit -- which is interesting because if you're a low UID and posted decent messages it was easy to do. But because you can't go above 50, it never credits for +1 when comments get modded up. But it DOES subtract when you get -1 on a comment!! So you're guaranteed to slowly watch your karma go down until you hit 50, which for me should be another year or two I guess)...
Am I the only one who cannot take this so-called "digital divide" seriously
How do you suggest we feed the people in those poor countries if they cannot develop their economies? Should we just keep sending them food and money, or actually make efforts to get them to be self-sufficient?
These are largely nations that have little agricultural or other natural resources, which is (among other reasons) why they have been left behind during the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Now with the possibility of a digital economy being real, this is the first time that having smart human beings is by itself enough to generate wealth!
It isn't enough to bring these countries into the 18th or 19th centuries -- they have to catch up to the rest of the world, not always remain a step behind. We can't feed everyone on earth, but we can at least try to help them get to the point of feeding themselves.
"It smacks of potentially legislating the digital divide," Levin said.
Bildt took offense at the charge. "There are limits to the amount of rubbish I can take," he said. "Close to half the world has never made a telephone call. I would not tear down the telephone system of the U.S. because of that."
After the meeting, Levin and Izumi Aizu of the Asia Network Research described Bildt's attitude as "paternalistic" and said they were not sure if his committee would take their concerns into account.
Paternalistic, indeed -- nobody is suggesting we "tear down" the internet simply because most people on earth are too poor to afford domain names. They are suggesting that the poor be able to vote or run for office -- hardly a notion I would consider shocking.
Bildt seems to think that instituting a poll tax with only landowners able to vote is the way to increase participation in this democracy? Which version of world history did he study that led him to believe this was at all acceptable in the 21st century?
but it seems most of the lawyers are being hired by "big government and big corporations
It *seems* that way because those are the people with money to spend on advertising. Most lawyers are in small offices, or are self-employed.
You'd also think that most companies are huge multinational corporations, based on the publicity and news generated by them. But of course, the vast majority of companies in the US are small family-owned businesses.
Interesting, If you change references to Spectrum in the comment to Music we have the same essential argument that the RIAA is making about MP3s.
Not really -- the radio spectrum is finite. There are only so many broadcasts that can happen at once.
Music is infinitely reproducable. There is no limit to how many times it can be copied without degrading the original.
No one is claiming intellectual property rights on the airwaves -- we're claiming physical property rights. We own the airwaves, and the government leases them out for fixed periods on our behalf.
While salaries don't really come from anything but grants and Teaching Assistant stipends, the University does provide a lot of important stuff.
All of the administrative overhead is covered by your grants and outside funding as well. Most places (depending on the university) take anywhere from 25-50% of your grant to cover overhead.
Well built for screen, that is. Even though they look very similar, just about any designer will choose Helvetica over Arial
:)
They are well-built and well-designed. But they were designed for screen use, and because of that they aren't necessarily pleasing designs for print. But their construction and technical superiority to even the best Adobe/Bitstream/Monotype Helvetica is undeniable. Design is a separate issue from technical construction, and the MS faces are as well-designed for their use as any print face is for print.
And it's worth noting that EVERY Helvetica is a knock-off of Helvetica
You are speaking in generalities, and confusing your limited experience for a universal principle. On your moinitor, maybe, AA fonts look blurry
No, actually YOU are guilty of doing exactly that. The original poster was 100% correct.
Antialiasing does not solve the problem of displaying fonts at small sizes. Only hinting does this.
Antialiasing can HELP, and is easier, and perhaps for you it is an acceptable solution, but it is equally capable of making it even HARDER to read small type because of the inability for the antialiasing to take into consideration the INTENT of the type designer (which of course is the entire purpose of hinting).
It also depends greatly on the typeface you're using -- perhaps a simple face like Helvetica will appear to display just fine at 8 pts anti-aliased, but using an unhinted script face at that size will be a blur.
AA is most definitely *a* solution for Linux on the desktop. In fact it is an essential solution without any substitute. It is not the only display related feature that has needed improvement on the Linux desktop. But at last we are putting lack of AA behind us.
I agree completely -- at this point it isn't possible for a consumer OS to look "professional" without antialiasing ability, since the Mac and Windows have had it for several years now and people have gotten used to the quality of type on those platforms.
Well hinted Type 1 fonts would be far better than Microsoft's scraggly assed truetypes which are only useful for screen display anyway.
Truetype is in every way a superior type technology to Postscript Type 1 (which should be no surprise as it is a decade younger). Miscorost's core collection of TrueType fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, etc) are quite possibly the most well-built fonts in existence.
The only reason we hold Type 1 & Type 3 fonts in such high regard is because such a vast library of high-quality fonts are already in existence that take full advantage of the limited hinting available in PS. Most TT fonts, though, have no manual hinting at all, so they look like crap compared to the PS versions.
Now that OpenType is catching on, we're starting to see really beautiful fonts taking advantage of the extra abilities TT always had but no one took advantage of (but MS).
But it is completely mistaking the nature of the problem to say that "hinting is important and Anti-aliasing is not at all important, and worse, it is a bad thing".
Well, full-time brute-force antialiasing CAN be a bad thing, compared to actually building the font right. It's a great boon for larger type sizes but not the solution for small type at all, and can very much hurt legibility. Both are necessary, and they solve different problems.
Why do you think our TV industry (VHS/NTSC) isn't compatible with the rest of the world
Um, because we invented it and did it first? Same reason we have a different electrical standard? Whe you're the first place to roll something out, you're stuck with the first mistakes,too -- the second guy to do something has a better chance to get it right.
How do you drink that stuff over there?
We serve it cold!
(rimshot)
You don't need XP for encryption, it's a basic feature of windows NTFS implementations out of the box. They may have made it more transparent or something in XP, but you can encrypt files/folders/drives in 2k without the additional overhead of XP.
I've got one box I've been running XP on for the past few weeks and can only say I'm pretty unimpressed. Win2k blew me away the first time I used it, and it's a great desktop system, but XP is trying to be WAAAY too many things to WAAAY too many people. If you want a wizard to tell you how to wipe your butt, buy XP, otherwise Win2k is the perfect level of maturity, driver availability, stability, etc...
I know, that's why i DID second his comment. I hope they rake in tons of money to buy big drives and pipes...
I'm hesitant to add my support to your mention of easynews.
:)
Not because it isn't worth supporting easynews, but I just don't want tons more people signing up to the best usenet provider I've ever had and slowing them down