(extremely off-topic reply follows) Governments aren't under pressure to reduce spending. Governments are under presure to increase spending to things like invading other countries, giving money and food to people who don't work, figuring out new and different ways to screw citizens out of natural resources, "saving the environment", and studies to make sure that we're all aware that drinking beer is bad for us. So they have to simultaneously tax the crap out of anybody that makes money and cut a lot of things that are really worthwhile, like pure research and rocket science.
Private enterprise really is the best way to get to space. I just hope when they colonize mars they remember exactly why a government that that could get to the moon can't even reliably send people into orbit and bring them back anymore, and set up their government with the additional checks and balances to keep from repeating those mistakes.
I'm not bitter or anything though. Just because it's right after the end of a quarter and all.
Sorry, this isn't nearly the flame it sounds like.
How, exactly, is forcing all spam to have a subject line that starts "ADV:" abridging freedom of speech? The spammers are just as welcome to spam away, as long as they put those 4 little characters at the beginning of their subject line. That's it. It doesn't legislate what is contained in the body or even the rest of the subject of the email.
I'm not completely disagreeing with you: government regulation is generally a bad thing. However, in the past we've had industries (the movie industry, the music industry, and the videogame industry to name three) that have desired, not out of any sense of civic responsibility but through simple desire to maintain control of their industries, to voluntarily rate the content they produce, to prominently label it, if you will. If they had not made that decision, the government was on the verge of regulating and forcing what would probably be significantly more draconian regulation upon them (remember what Tipper Gore was famous for before she almost became first lady?). The industries involved have done an excellent PR job making it look like they were taking care of the problem of kids watching "bad things" at the theatre, but in reality it was the immediate threat of government intervention that drove the labeling of content in all three of those industries.
The BCE industry doesn't have that kind of centralized authority. So they'll never self regulate, leaving only one option: Regulation being forced upon them. They could have voluntarily said "we'll put a note in the SMTP header" or "we'll only use specific domain names" or even "we won't forge headers". As a result of continuing bad conduct by the bulk commercial emailers, they get regulated. This has been coming for a couple of years now, enough time for the industry to band together and set some standards (and muscle out the little guys, consolidate their industry into a few big powerhouse BCE's, maybe pay people to accept and read spam). However, that didn't happen because it would cut into their profit margins too much. So this state government is being a bit more heavy-handed than they probably need to be, but the window of opportunity for a more subtle approach is over.
Government regulation is bad. But it generally takes a really long time, so smart industries can self regulate just enough to avoid mandated regulations being jammed down their throats. What we have with BCE is a really dumb industry. (Not to say that they don't have money, but they're dumb, they've been shitting where they sleep.)
The Clay County club is doing field day near Liberty. Great location, lots of fun.
Field day is a hoot. If you've got any interest at all in radio, find a local club. You may find a few other linux geeks there also. It's a fun technical hobby. Just ask, maybe GW4PTS sometime.
Re:Very Impressive
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Yeah. Because, you know, Apple never puts out service packs. Let's see....I'm running OS X version 10.2.6. That'd be 6--count 'em--6 major upgrade points since release, plus security updates periodically. That averages out to one every couple of months. Windows 2000, on the other hand, is up to a whopping service pack 4 and it's been out for nearly 3 years. And it's probably needed more service packs than that. Last time I did an install of Win2k I spent more time downloading patches than I spent installing the OS. If they'd roll them into SP's more often it would take me less time to get boxes up and running.
I'm more concerned on my MS boxes that MS only puts out one paid upgrade every 3-5 years. What's wrong with their R&D that it takes 3 to 5 years to put out an upgrade of any significance. I remember in the NT 3.5/3.51 days that MS said they'd be on an annual OS update schedule. That sure didn't last long.
I'm not really seeing much conflict here. The RIAA asks, and Congress gives. For this to be a conflict of interest, Congress would need to actually represent something other than the large corporations.
And typically the company asking for the injunction has to put up a bond in the event that they lose the case. It'll be interesting to see SCO, a company with little cash reserves that's been operating in the red come up with that kind of cash.
I don't want to block all flash content. Just specific flash content, in this case content from specific servers. If I didn't want flash at all, I could just remove it, but some flash content is OK, some of it is annoying as hell.
Given the level of help I've typically gotten from Microsoft, I'd prefer to use real insurance: backups. Lots of backups. If your only recourse in the event of a database going down is to call the vendor, you'd best just start working on the resume now.
And I can back up a MySQL database and offsite/onsite copy the tapes as necessary, just like SQL Server or Oracle. Generally I can start a server rebuild/restore in less than the time it takes to give some level one tech support asshat my phone number for the tenth time anyway. I've got verified documentation for setting up the server, and a good stream of verified backups. If you don't have that level of documentation and tape, you're just hosed anyway.
Yeah, I propose a new rule for slashdot discussions, similar to the Nazi rule on Usenet: The first party to mention the MPAA or RIAA in a discussion not about copyright loses by default.
Al Qaeda isn't a country. At least not on the map I've got. They aren't even qualified as a government-in-exile, which has some precedent for declaring war and such. Nope, pretty much that just qualifies them as a group of people that the US doesn't want to exist anymore. Since the country they were hiding in, Afghanistan, wouldn't see clear to extradite them, the US invaded and destroyed that country's government, and in the meantime took care of hunting down and arresting as many of the members of that group as they could find.
OK, I'm getting real tired of "Patriot act is the end of all civil rights ever". That's crap.
Kevin Mitnick was held for 4 and a half --count 'em--4 and a half years, no bail hearing, no charges pressed, well before 9/11 (February 1995 to be precise).
In case you hadn't noticed, the US government has lots of guns and people that can use them. Holding this Mike individual without a trial is precedented, if unconstitutional and morally wrong.
The only way I can even think this could be justified is if the US decided he wasn't entitled to due process because he was attempting treason from outside the country.
Umm..none of this is to say, of course, that this jackass (errr...alleged jackass) doesn't deserve what's coming to him.
"We are not in a position to tell other countries what form of government to take"
Yeah, actually, the US is in a position to do that. Militarily and economically, the US is in a position to do exactly that. That's been proven over the last few weeks, just in case you weren't watching the news. Whether it's a good or bad thing to do, that's an entirely different argument to make, but saying the US is not in a position to do it is just dumb and shows a complete either a lack of understanding of coherent arguments or a lack of understanding of current events. The US is in a position to change the form of government of just about any other country on the globe right now.
Is there moral justification for changing another government? Dunno. That's a different question.
Yup. If you ever played Serious Sam 2, they actually put a bunch of little game developer caricatures riding around in crates that are roped together as a joke.
If you haven't ever thought about the whole "crate" thing before you are missing out. With very few exceptions, crates are everywhere. Think about it. Quake 2: you start out staring at a crate. Half Life: You leave the room where things blew up and are staring at a crate in 45 seconds.
It's mostly because game designers want to provide cover, but they don't want to actually design the things that really do provide cover in real life. Desks maybe. Overturned cars. Furniture. Machine parts. Things which are a lot less "cube" and therefore harder to model.
With the viewsonics, the key is to stick to the Professional series, like the 810P (a 21 inch CRT that I've got) or similar. These are the nice monitors, lots of refresh rates, plus you can plug just about anything into it and get a picture (not just a high refresh rate, a high refresh and an assload of other supported referesh rates). I've plugged old macs (with the old-style DB-15 2 row connector and an adapter) up to my new Powerbook DVI (which is what I'm typing on, at 1280x1024/75hz, coincidentally). Oh, and it works with PC's too:). It's easy as heck to set up in Xwindows because just about any refresh rate works.
Find a used HP LaserJet 4 (or even a 3) if you don't need color. I'd avoid eBay (or any online source) unless you can find a local auction (they're damn heavy to ship). They last forever. No ink to clog up anywhere, just nice, dry toner. Cartridges are readily available, and all of the printy-bits are in the replaceable cartridge, so if the drum gets scratched you just get a new toner cartridge and it's good as new. They're fairly economical, they warm up pretty quickly and print reasonably quickly. If it needs to be cleaned out, get a toner or HEPA vacuum (don't use a normal one, the toner's too fine and it goes right through the filters and bags) and clean it out.
Use good paper. A ream of cheap paper is $3. A ream of good paper is $4. Spend the extra buck to not jam the thing up all the time.
If you can find one with a JetDirect (ethernet port) built in, that's a bonus. The JetDirect usually includes an lpd-compatible print server, so Linux likes it, and MacOS loves it. Windows even works mostly, as much as it ever does anyway.
OK, imagine for a second that you have a surgeon doing surgery on you. Let's imagine that the hospital administrative staff is planning on how they're going to spend all the money from your insurance company on, hell, I don't know...new carpet for the nurse's lounge.
I'd prefer to have the surgeon saving my life. I'd prefer to have a bureaucrat figuring out what color carpet to put in the lounge. I'd prefer to have soldiers fighting the war, and I'd prefer to have congresscritters keeping jobs here in the States. Because having most congresscritters fighting wars is not what we elected them to do.
Seriously. Let's see..hmm...we can buy equipment to rebuild technical infrastructure in Iraq from the U.S., and give the tech job market a little boost and get some of the money back (corporations do pay some taxes, and probably the folks to build the equipment pay income tax) or we can just flush all that money out to some other country and get nothing but resentment from the tech sector. Let's see, it makes economic sense, political sense, and possibly technical sense if you want to argue the whole CDMA vs GSM thing (please don't, here, AGAIN).
Wow. Seems like this might perhaps just be a good idea.
I have a friend who is a project manager at a "Major Wireless Carrier" who said that the reason it's not here yet is that it's "really hard".
OK, every country in the entire friggin WORLD has this except for the US. The only reason we DON'T have it is that the carriers didn't want to make it easy to switch over. It can't be that hard if most of Europe has it, because y'all in Europe have more cell phones than we do. Japan's got number portability, and they've got assloads more phones than we do. This isn't a matter of expense or difficulty, it's a matter of protecting wireless carrier's bottom lines at the expense of consumer expense.
For example, another friend of mine was really ticked at SprintPCS. But in order to change carriers, he'd have to get his business cards and stationery reprinted, at a fairly high expense. So he's locked in until this number portability thing happens, at which point I'm thinking he'll probably kick their sorry asses out.
Oh, and the 18,000 kurds killed by the iraqi regime. And their friends and families. They'll miss out on all the freedoms too.
And the thousands of tortured dead iraqi dissidents.
Sometimes the cost, in measure of lives lost, money spent, or liberties denied, of fighting a war is less than the cost of not fighting it. We've seen the cost of not fighting a war that should have been fought. What if Neville Chamberlain would have seeen through "peace in our time"? What if Stalin had seen through the false friendship offered by his western ally? What if the French had decided that maybe they shouldn't cement the guns of the Maginot line pointing east?
Sorry, my less-modern history isn't quite up to snuff. I bet I could make this go on for pages and pages of "what if".
I'm thinking they're a bit less biased (officially they are neither pro nor anti war). I don't agree with all of AI's stances, but they do a good job of investigating and documenting sources, and they don't really like the U.S. government either (that whole capital punishment thing among others) so I'm sure you'll find them to be "unbiased" as well (the current definition of "unbiased" on/. seems to be "doesn't like the U.S.").
Written by a British Labour MP. Feeding people into plastic shredders FEET FIRST SO THEY'LL SCREAM LONGER is FAR beyond nasty and spiteful. I'm not even sure there are words for that.
Oh, but Saddam was taking care of that for us. Dropping $50K to every family of a suicide bomber.
Or, how about the other arab countries allow immigration of Palestinian refugees?
Stick it, bozo.
Re:Wait a minute here....
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
Wow.
OK, let's see. "War was almost over". Go read a history book. Or quit falling asleep in history class. We hadn't even attempted an invasion of Japan yet when the shooting stopped. The estimates at the time were that something in the neighborhood of 400,000 soldiers would die on both sides in order to stop the war.
Oh, and I love this: "It is morally wrong and totally insulting to attribute the prosperity,perseverance and resoluteness of post war Japan and Germany to America." Because they were doing all those great things with thier Prosperity and Perseverance before the war. Like building up armies to invade their neighbors, kill lots of Jews and bomb our sorry asses at Pearl Harbor. Would Japan or Germany (or any of Europe) be as economically well of as they are without the rebuilding help that we provided? Go look at the Marshall Plan sometime.
Am I saying that the Japanese didn't work their asses off? Given that we were out of there in the mid-50's for the most part, I don't think that's bloody likely. But, I am saying that we pointed them in the right direction and gave them a jumpstart in the right direction, without which maybe they would have lapsed back into the fun of the dictatorial facist crap that would start the mess over again.
Let me put it this way: Democracies are all about productive people. Facist regimes are not. By pointing both Germany and Japan (and hopefully Iraq) onto that path, we gave them a good lead on building their economies quickly.
Oh, and Iraq's already a cesspool. They could surrender now, or they could have surrendered 5 years ago, and we would still have to rebuild it. Iraq has a lot of really smart, highly educated people, and not nearly enough infrastructure, due to sanctions and corruption at very high levels.
I'm not sure about that. The TV thing was relatively minor compared to the fact that they nearly drove Chrysler bankrupt (Chrysler ended up taking unprecedented governmetn loans in order to stay solvent) and they hurt Ford and GM real bad. Detroit is still recovering (I don't just mean the automakers either, the entire town is still recovering). Japan managed to make everything we made better, faster, and cheaper for a really long time. The only thing that really saved us was that we managed to ramp our productivity up, and (unfortunately) displace a lot of jobs to asia and Central America for cheaper labor. Not a great solution, but it kept them solvent and got them to the point they could modernize and produce good cars again.
Slashdot Mirror
(extremely off-topic reply follows) Governments aren't under pressure to reduce spending. Governments are under presure to increase spending to things like invading other countries, giving money and food to people who don't work, figuring out new and different ways to screw citizens out of natural resources, "saving the environment", and studies to make sure that we're all aware that drinking beer is bad for us. So they have to simultaneously tax the crap out of anybody that makes money and cut a lot of things that are really worthwhile, like pure research and rocket science.
Private enterprise really is the best way to get to space. I just hope when they colonize mars they remember exactly why a government that that could get to the moon can't even reliably send people into orbit and bring them back anymore, and set up their government with the additional checks and balances to keep from repeating those mistakes.
I'm not bitter or anything though. Just because it's right after the end of a quarter and all.
Sorry, this isn't nearly the flame it sounds like.
How, exactly, is forcing all spam to have a subject line that starts "ADV:" abridging freedom of speech? The spammers are just as welcome to spam away, as long as they put those 4 little characters at the beginning of their subject line. That's it. It doesn't legislate what is contained in the body or even the rest of the subject of the email.
I'm not completely disagreeing with you: government regulation is generally a bad thing. However, in the past we've had industries (the movie industry, the music industry, and the videogame industry to name three) that have desired, not out of any sense of civic responsibility but through simple desire to maintain control of their industries, to voluntarily rate the content they produce, to prominently label it, if you will. If they had not made that decision, the government was on the verge of regulating and forcing what would probably be significantly more draconian regulation upon them (remember what Tipper Gore was famous for before she almost became first lady?). The industries involved have done an excellent PR job making it look like they were taking care of the problem of kids watching "bad things" at the theatre, but in reality it was the immediate threat of government intervention that drove the labeling of content in all three of those industries.
The BCE industry doesn't have that kind of centralized authority. So they'll never self regulate, leaving only one option: Regulation being forced upon them. They could have voluntarily said "we'll put a note in the SMTP header" or "we'll only use specific domain names" or even "we won't forge headers". As a result of continuing bad conduct by the bulk commercial emailers, they get regulated. This has been coming for a couple of years now, enough time for the industry to band together and set some standards (and muscle out the little guys, consolidate their industry into a few big powerhouse BCE's, maybe pay people to accept and read spam). However, that didn't happen because it would cut into their profit margins too much. So this state government is being a bit more heavy-handed than they probably need to be, but the window of opportunity for a more subtle approach is over.
Government regulation is bad. But it generally takes a really long time, so smart industries can self regulate just enough to avoid mandated regulations being jammed down their throats. What we have with BCE is a really dumb industry. (Not to say that they don't have money, but they're dumb, they've been shitting where they sleep.)
The Clay County club is doing field day near Liberty. Great location, lots of fun.
Field day is a hoot. If you've got any interest at all in radio, find a local club. You may find a few other linux geeks there also. It's a fun technical hobby. Just ask, maybe GW4PTS sometime.
Yeah. Because, you know, Apple never puts out service packs. Let's see....I'm running OS X version 10.2.6. That'd be 6--count 'em--6 major upgrade points since release, plus security updates periodically. That averages out to one every couple of months. Windows 2000, on the other hand, is up to a whopping service pack 4 and it's been out for nearly 3 years. And it's probably needed more service packs than that. Last time I did an install of Win2k I spent more time downloading patches than I spent installing the OS. If they'd roll them into SP's more often it would take me less time to get boxes up and running.
I'm more concerned on my MS boxes that MS only puts out one paid upgrade every 3-5 years. What's wrong with their R&D that it takes 3 to 5 years to put out an upgrade of any significance. I remember in the NT 3.5/3.51 days that MS said they'd be on an annual OS update schedule. That sure didn't last long.
I'm not really seeing much conflict here. The RIAA asks, and Congress gives. For this to be a conflict of interest, Congress would need to actually represent something other than the large corporations.
And typically the company asking for the injunction has to put up a bond in the event that they lose the case. It'll be interesting to see SCO, a company with little cash reserves that's been operating in the red come up with that kind of cash.
RTFC.
I don't want to block all flash content. Just specific flash content, in this case content from specific servers. If I didn't want flash at all, I could just remove it, but some flash content is OK, some of it is annoying as hell.
I really just wish that Mozilla would implement a "block flash crap from this server" option along with the "block images from this server".
Given the level of help I've typically gotten from Microsoft, I'd prefer to use real insurance: backups. Lots of backups. If your only recourse in the event of a database going down is to call the vendor, you'd best just start working on the resume now.
And I can back up a MySQL database and offsite/onsite copy the tapes as necessary, just like SQL Server or Oracle. Generally I can start a server rebuild/restore in less than the time it takes to give some level one tech support asshat my phone number for the tenth time anyway. I've got verified documentation for setting up the server, and a good stream of verified backups. If you don't have that level of documentation and tape, you're just hosed anyway.
Yeah, I propose a new rule for slashdot discussions, similar to the Nazi rule on Usenet: The first party to mention the MPAA or RIAA in a discussion not about copyright loses by default.
War's a bit tricky.
Al Qaeda isn't a country. At least not on the map I've got. They aren't even qualified as a government-in-exile, which has some precedent for declaring war and such. Nope, pretty much that just qualifies them as a group of people that the US doesn't want to exist anymore. Since the country they were hiding in, Afghanistan, wouldn't see clear to extradite them, the US invaded and destroyed that country's government, and in the meantime took care of hunting down and arresting as many of the members of that group as they could find.
OK, I'm getting real tired of "Patriot act is the end of all civil rights ever". That's crap.
Kevin Mitnick was held for 4 and a half --count 'em--4 and a half years, no bail hearing, no charges pressed, well before 9/11 (February 1995 to be precise).
In case you hadn't noticed, the US government has lots of guns and people that can use them. Holding this Mike individual without a trial is precedented, if unconstitutional and morally wrong.
The only way I can even think this could be justified is if the US decided he wasn't entitled to due process because he was attempting treason from outside the country.
Umm..none of this is to say, of course, that this jackass (errr...alleged jackass) doesn't deserve what's coming to him.
Just a little gripe here.
"We are not in a position to tell other countries what form of government to take"
Yeah, actually, the US is in a position to do that. Militarily and economically, the US is in a position to do exactly that. That's been proven over the last few weeks, just in case you weren't watching the news. Whether it's a good or bad thing to do, that's an entirely different argument to make, but saying the US is not in a position to do it is just dumb and shows a complete either a lack of understanding of coherent arguments or a lack of understanding of current events. The US is in a position to change the form of government of just about any other country on the globe right now.
Is there moral justification for changing another government? Dunno. That's a different question.
Yup. If you ever played Serious Sam 2, they actually put a bunch of little game developer caricatures riding around in crates that are roped together as a joke.
If you haven't ever thought about the whole "crate" thing before you are missing out. With very few exceptions, crates are everywhere. Think about it. Quake 2: you start out staring at a crate. Half Life: You leave the room where things blew up and are staring at a crate in 45 seconds.
It's mostly because game designers want to provide cover, but they don't want to actually design the things that really do provide cover in real life. Desks maybe. Overturned cars. Furniture. Machine parts. Things which are a lot less "cube" and therefore harder to model.
With the viewsonics, the key is to stick to the Professional series, like the 810P (a 21 inch CRT that I've got) or similar. These are the nice monitors, lots of refresh rates, plus you can plug just about anything into it and get a picture (not just a high refresh rate, a high refresh and an assload of other supported referesh rates). I've plugged old macs (with the old-style DB-15 2 row connector and an adapter) up to my new Powerbook DVI (which is what I'm typing on, at 1280x1024/75hz, coincidentally). Oh, and it works with PC's too :). It's easy as heck to set up in Xwindows because just about any refresh rate works.
Find a used HP LaserJet 4 (or even a 3) if you don't need color. I'd avoid eBay (or any online source) unless you can find a local auction (they're damn heavy to ship). They last forever. No ink to clog up anywhere, just nice, dry toner. Cartridges are readily available, and all of the printy-bits are in the replaceable cartridge, so if the drum gets scratched you just get a new toner cartridge and it's good as new. They're fairly economical, they warm up pretty quickly and print reasonably quickly. If it needs to be cleaned out, get a toner or HEPA vacuum (don't use a normal one, the toner's too fine and it goes right through the filters and bags) and clean it out.
Use good paper. A ream of cheap paper is $3. A ream of good paper is $4. Spend the extra buck to not jam the thing up all the time.
If you can find one with a JetDirect (ethernet port) built in, that's a bonus. The JetDirect usually includes an lpd-compatible print server, so Linux likes it, and MacOS loves it. Windows even works mostly, as much as it ever does anyway.
OK, imagine for a second that you have a surgeon doing surgery on you. Let's imagine that the hospital administrative staff is planning on how they're going to spend all the money from your insurance company on, hell, I don't know...new carpet for the nurse's lounge.
I'd prefer to have the surgeon saving my life. I'd prefer to have a bureaucrat figuring out what color carpet to put in the lounge. I'd prefer to have soldiers fighting the war, and I'd prefer to have congresscritters keeping jobs here in the States. Because having most congresscritters fighting wars is not what we elected them to do.
Well said.
Seriously. Let's see..hmm...we can buy equipment to rebuild technical infrastructure in Iraq from the U.S., and give the tech job market a little boost and get some of the money back (corporations do pay some taxes, and probably the folks to build the equipment pay income tax) or we can just flush all that money out to some other country and get nothing but resentment from the tech sector. Let's see, it makes economic sense, political sense, and possibly technical sense if you want to argue the whole CDMA vs GSM thing (please don't, here, AGAIN).
Wow. Seems like this might perhaps just be a good idea.
No kidding.
I have a friend who is a project manager at a "Major Wireless Carrier" who said that the reason it's not here yet is that it's "really hard".
OK, every country in the entire friggin WORLD has this except for the US. The only reason we DON'T have it is that the carriers didn't want to make it easy to switch over. It can't be that hard if most of Europe has it, because y'all in Europe have more cell phones than we do. Japan's got number portability, and they've got assloads more phones than we do. This isn't a matter of expense or difficulty, it's a matter of protecting wireless carrier's bottom lines at the expense of consumer expense.
For example, another friend of mine was really ticked at SprintPCS. But in order to change carriers, he'd have to get his business cards and stationery reprinted, at a fairly high expense. So he's locked in until this number portability thing happens, at which point I'm thinking he'll probably kick their sorry asses out.
Oh, and the 18,000 kurds killed by the iraqi regime. And their friends and families. They'll miss out on all the freedoms too.
And the thousands of tortured dead iraqi dissidents.
Sometimes the cost, in measure of lives lost, money spent, or liberties denied, of fighting a war is less than the cost of not fighting it. We've seen the cost of not fighting a war that should have been fought. What if Neville Chamberlain would have seeen through "peace in our time"? What if Stalin had seen through the false friendship offered by his western ally? What if the French had decided that maybe they shouldn't cement the guns of the Maginot line pointing east?
Sorry, my less-modern history isn't quite up to snuff. I bet I could make this go on for pages and pages of "what if".
Maybe you'll find these a bit more trustworthy?
3 ?O penDocument&of=COUNTRIES%5CIRAQ
a q
/. seems to be "doesn't like the U.S.").
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE14012200
http://web.amnesty.org/web/web.nsf/pages/iraq_f
I'm thinking they're a bit less biased (officially they are neither pro nor anti war). I don't agree with all of AI's stances, but they do a good job of investigating and documenting sources, and they don't really like the U.S. government either (that whole capital punishment thing among others) so I'm sure you'll find them to be "unbiased" as well (the current definition of "unbiased" on
Nasty? Spiteful? Read this:8 4-61460 7,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,32
Written by a British Labour MP. Feeding people into plastic shredders FEET FIRST SO THEY'LL SCREAM LONGER is FAR beyond nasty and spiteful. I'm not even sure there are words for that.
Oh, but Saddam was taking care of that for us. Dropping $50K to every family of a suicide bomber.
Or, how about the other arab countries allow immigration of Palestinian refugees?
Stick it, bozo.
Wow.
OK, let's see. "War was almost over". Go read a history book. Or quit falling asleep in history class. We hadn't even attempted an invasion of Japan yet when the shooting stopped. The estimates at the time were that something in the neighborhood of 400,000 soldiers would die on both sides in order to stop the war.
Oh, and I love this: "It is morally wrong and totally insulting to attribute the prosperity,perseverance and resoluteness of post war Japan and Germany to America." Because they were doing all those great things with thier Prosperity and Perseverance before the war. Like building up armies to invade their neighbors, kill lots of Jews and bomb our sorry asses at Pearl Harbor. Would Japan or Germany (or any of Europe) be as economically well of as they are without the rebuilding help that we provided? Go look at the Marshall Plan sometime.
Am I saying that the Japanese didn't work their asses off? Given that we were out of there in the mid-50's for the most part, I don't think that's bloody likely. But, I am saying that we pointed them in the right direction and gave them a jumpstart in the right direction, without which maybe they would have lapsed back into the fun of the dictatorial facist crap that would start the mess over again.
Let me put it this way: Democracies are all about productive people. Facist regimes are not. By pointing both Germany and Japan (and hopefully Iraq) onto that path, we gave them a good lead on building their economies quickly.
Oh, and Iraq's already a cesspool. They could surrender now, or they could have surrendered 5 years ago, and we would still have to rebuild it. Iraq has a lot of really smart, highly educated people, and not nearly enough infrastructure, due to sanctions and corruption at very high levels.
I'm not sure about that. The TV thing was relatively minor compared to the fact that they nearly drove Chrysler bankrupt (Chrysler ended up taking unprecedented governmetn loans in order to stay solvent) and they hurt Ford and GM real bad. Detroit is still recovering (I don't just mean the automakers either, the entire town is still recovering). Japan managed to make everything we made better, faster, and cheaper for a really long time. The only thing that really saved us was that we managed to ramp our productivity up, and (unfortunately) displace a lot of jobs to asia and Central America for cheaper labor. Not a great solution, but it kept them solvent and got them to the point they could modernize and produce good cars again.