I am not making the case for whether Hezbollah is a good or bad actor. I am stating that every government seeks to shut up people who dont have the same interests as them. The US is more subtle at it (it has to be being a democracy) but it is effective all the same. Actually the Chinese probably should learn from the US govt and stop using a hammer to kill an ant. Invisible pesticide will kill pesky ants like Falun Gong and Hezbollah just as well:)
Arab residents of Israel proper can vote. Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza cannot vote while Jewish settlers in the West Bank can vote. You prove my point by mentioning there are 7 Arab MPs in a 100 member Knesset when the population of Israel (including west Bank and Gaza ) is 40 % Arab. Unless you are making the point that the 'terrorists' of Gaza vote for Sharon and Olmert:)
The websites were shutdown as part of a law the US congress passed in February to target Iran , Syria and Hezbollah. I think it was called the Syria-Iran relations act. The logic used was the Al-Manar TV station website promoted al-Manar thus earning money for Hezbollah which the US government interprets as supporting terrorism (this is kind of like saying if CNN shows people in little Havan a marching and calling for Fidel Castro's overthroew we should shut down CNN.com) Once we start treating free speech as optional depending on whether it offends our friends or not we are on a very slippery slope. Next we might start shutting down holocaust websites as it hurts the feeling of neo-Nazi followers.
The question is censorship not moral equivalence and the holier than thou attitude most common joes have about it. Fact is every government follows and breaks laws when it suits their purpose. The US or China are not special in this regard. BTW in China even if all the candidates for elections have to be from the communist party at least everyone is eligible to vote . In Israel if you live in the West Bank whether you get to vote in Israeli elections depends on whether you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim . (Only Jewish residents can vote). So talking about moral equivalence between Israel and China is not a very strong argument.
The US government has censored Hezbollah websites by forcing the provider to shutdown the website. For the Chinese governement Falun Gong is a religious fundamentalist organization so they want to shut them down. However its human rights violation when China does it but "supporting our friends" when the US does it. Talk about double standards.
Do you realize most of the opponents of this bill are academics. They are opposing it as it allows foreign students to work off campus while they are studying on F1 visas. That would pretty much mean a drying up of the large pool of slave labour that most universities depend on for running their campuses aka Graduate Students. Go to any professors research lab in Engineering and Science and you would find it full of Indian and Chinese students. Some may actually like working for the professor but a lot of them do it to pay for their degrees as they are not allowed to work off campus while they are studying. So Professors get away with paying salaries which pretty much qualifies these students for welfare (only as foreigners they cant claim welfare so they live on Ramen). These are people with bachelors degrees, great academic records and in many cases prior work experience. If these students are allowed to work off campus companies would scoop them up and no professor could get away with being abusive. No wonder academics are opposing the bill for it would mean the end of getting research grants from the federal government , getting the work done using cheap Indian and Chinese students and going for Ultimate Frisbee games with their American students.
I used to work for an Israeli company and the feeling used to be that Americans were better suited to MArketing and customer facing jobs. Its kind of the result of the American education system where the jocks and cheerleaders are the respected ones so even the nerds pick up better social skills than people in the rest of the world. For pure tech work Indians and Russians were considered. You can see it even in the American research institutions which are structured so that the ones who can network the best attend the seminars and breakfasts are the ones who get funding and eventually make progress. Its not a bad system but it is limited to being incremental. No more can you have a brilliant scientist shut up in a lab for years and come up with a breakthrough which changes the world. That kind of mad scientist (Newton,copernicus) was possible when Europeans were the driving force of innovation (till WW2 basically) but in todays American world even amongst the nerdiest of communities the cheerleaders are on top e.g In the Open Source Community the coordinators and the speech makers are the most valued.
Ok I interviewed with Apple for their San Jose office and turned them down. During my interview even the interviewer from Apple said " We dont expect people to have Obbject C experience as its so obscure and we train them" So maybe the reason Indian programmers dont have Objective C experience is because it is not used widely. The other point is if you have basic understanding of programming language concepts learning a dialect of a language is not a big deal. Also whats the thing abt people who install a Linux CD which makes them think *Nix experience makes their penises longer/boobs bigger (take your pick) . I work with *nix (sic)at college but I also use Windows on my laptop. Anything which really needs to be done on *nix (sic) I just ssh in to my department servers and work from my Windows laptop so whats the big deal? In any case anyone who understands basic computer productivity rules should be productive irrespective of platform. Secondly Mac computers are toys for people with money to burn. Their market positioning is like that of BMWs and Mercs. Just like you wouldnt find a lot of Merc mechanics in a developing country you wont find a lot of Mac programmers in India. And just like a good mechanic certified to service GM cars can retrain to service Mercs a competent.net programmer can retrain for the Mac OS platform
Hey its a free country . You can eat what you want. We look upon Americans eating beef in the same way as we look on South Koreans eating dogs or Eskimos eating raw whale blubber. The gag factor is high but if you want to eat it who am I to prevent you but please try and not do it in front of me:)
800$ India = 8000$ US or 16000$ California. Believe me most Indian software programmers lead a much better life than California programmers. However they have to do it in the middle of society where rest of society is jealous of them so they have to kind of lead a life of fear as the poor might lash out at them anytime. So California is much better in that manner where the programmers are at the bottom so they dont have to be scared Rather the stockbrokers are afraid of the day programmers rise in revolution and storm the Bastille. Guess its your choice what you prefer if peace of mind come to California ; great lifestyle stay in India
Basically 9/11 has put an end to hijacking for ever. Earlier in an hijack the passengers would meekly follow orders in the expectation that eventually the government would negotiate their release or rescue them. However post 9/11 passengers have no way of knowing if the hijackers plan to negotiate or just hit a building. So it becomes a choice between sitting quitely and dying or fighting back. Even the most pacifist and cowardly person would fight like crazy in such a situation. Forget box cutters even if the terrorists got AK 47s aboard they still couldnt shoot a whole lane load of passengers before being taken down unless they actually had like at 25% of the passengers in their team. Rarely do terrorists have that kind of manpower- terrorism by definition is used by parties with inadequate manpower to fight open battles.
You deserve to be fucked in the ass with a broken broom. You dont want to have children and save money that way but at the same time you want social security payments in your old age paid by other peoples children , be protected from foreign invasions by other peoples children , treated when you are sick by other peoples children etc etc. People who dont have children are parasites on society. I propose all the people who dont have at least two children should be disqualified from collecting any social security, be barred from emergency rooms even if they are keeling over from heart attacks and sent off to Iraq to be used for exchanging with any hostages the insurgents capture. Then these selfish bastards will realize why they should have children.
I dont think that will ever happen . The rich are too good at preserving their playgrounds and getting the government to pay for it. There will always be some places preserved in the name of environmentalism which the common joe cannot afford to visit as he is too busy working 2 jobs to pay for food
How is it a bad analogy? I am just making the point that mind boggling levels of minituarization has happened in one field so it is possible in another. I dont claim it will happen but I say there is a possibility it could. BTW if Moore's law continues for another 20 years the energy density of a chip will have to be higher than the core of a fission reactor. Obviously this is not possible which is why people are shifting over to superscalar architectures and multiple cores instead of just reducing the wavelength and increasing the clock cycle. This is called thinking out of the box. Maybe some fusion scientist will come up with some out of the box thinking so that the temperatures required for fusion are not the mind boggling ones we have today
Well all organic garbage contain CH chains. Technology could break down these chains and use the H relesed for fusion. Given that my hand held calculator is more powerfull than the 2 room large ENIAC of yesteryear I would not be surprised if in the future fusion reactors could be minituarized to fit in cars. Of course noone would really use these as most cars would run on the pavement embedded electric network and charge their batteries by induction. Maybe camping equipment manufacturers would sell it to the yuppies of tomorrow who would like to go off the grid during vacations.
Do you mean for the cost of Iraq we could have a true welfare state with universal healthcare? But why would you want to do that? Iraq creates jobs at Hummer, Halliburton, Black Hawk security and a host of other small businesses who are the life blood of America. It also generates work for Doctors and Nurses at VA hospitals who just sit on their bums during peacetime. At the end when we rebuild Iraq with their oil money it will also generate jobs . Also we the taxpayer paid for the college education of all these snot nosed kids who went to college on ROTC scholarships. Now we are getting our money's worth. They thought they were getting a free ride . Just turn out for drill a few times a week and the government picks up your college bill. Same for the reserves who had no problem taking the reserve pay when they were not being activated. I say to all the anti war mothers of soldiers pay us back all the money your kids took from us to get through college and for being on the reserve with interest before you protest the war. There is no draft . Everyone being sent there is doing it for the money. When will these people stop whining?
For the Republicans out there THIS IS MEANT TO BE SARCASM
who moderated this post Funny. Dumb guy doesnt even read the article and shoots off his mouth. Look at the effing pictures and you would know its not a triangle. OMG I just realized the moderator might be laughing at his stupidity and thats why he/she moderated it Funny. Well its not kind to laugh at rednecks. its not their faults their Moms really loved their Brothers.
Whoever gave you the idea China is a communist country? China has the purest form of capitalism in the world today. Its a total Laissez Faire economy Anything goes You can kill people and sell their organs as long as you make a profit. Just because the dictators in charge call themselves communist doesnt make them communist. Communism has been abused so much by dictators that people have come to associate the word with dictatorship. Whereas in reality a true communist state is a most democratic one as everyone is equal. I guess the US population is kind of uneducated as they grew up under the "Communist Threat" which was actually the Russian empire threat. It would have existed even if Russia was a capitalist country. The cold war was a fight between two elites. The politburo in Russia and the New England families who control America's Banking and Government. Even if Russia was capitalist but didnt allow market access to these families the cold war would still have been on. Now the closest thing to true communism as it was meant to be is the trade union movement and social security . So you could say USA is the only true communist country in the world but that wouldnt go down very well with a generation brought up to hate communists!!
According to the laws of war if you are fighting out of uniform and you are captured you are considered a spy and not a soldier and do not get pow status. They have status very similar to unlawfull combatants. This is a reason lot of commando raids are done by people wearing uniform even though the raid would be easier to do if you could just be dressed as the enemy. So my question is why not use this kind of material to create a uniform which matches the enemy's uniform and if you think you are about to get captured flick a switch and switch to full uniform. Voila you are no longer an unlawful combatant and rather a POW
Slashdot Mirror
I am not making the case for whether Hezbollah is a good or bad actor. I am stating that every government seeks to shut up people who dont have the same interests as them. The US is more subtle at it (it has to be being a democracy) but it is effective all the same. Actually the Chinese probably should learn from the US govt and stop using a hammer to kill an ant. Invisible pesticide will kill pesky ants like Falun Gong and Hezbollah just as well :)
Arab residents of Israel proper can vote. Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza cannot vote while Jewish settlers in the West Bank can vote. You prove my point by mentioning there are 7 Arab MPs in a 100 member Knesset when the population of Israel (including west Bank and Gaza ) is 40 % Arab. Unless you are making the point that the 'terrorists' of Gaza vote for Sharon and Olmert :)
The websites were shutdown as part of a law the US congress passed in February to target Iran , Syria and Hezbollah. I think it was called the Syria-Iran relations act. The logic used was the Al-Manar TV station website promoted al-Manar thus earning money for Hezbollah which the US government interprets as supporting terrorism (this is kind of like saying if CNN shows people in little Havan a marching and calling for Fidel Castro's overthroew we should shut down CNN.com) Once we start treating free speech as optional depending on whether it offends our friends or not we are on a very slippery slope. Next we might start shutting down holocaust websites as it hurts the feeling of neo-Nazi followers.
The question is censorship not moral equivalence and the holier than thou attitude most common joes have about it. Fact is every government follows and breaks laws when it suits their purpose. The US or China are not special in this regard.
BTW in China even if all the candidates for elections have to be from the communist party at least everyone is eligible to vote . In Israel if you live in the West Bank whether you get to vote in Israeli elections depends on whether you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim . (Only Jewish residents can vote). So talking about moral equivalence between Israel and China is not a very strong argument.
The US government has censored Hezbollah websites by forcing the provider to shutdown the website. For the Chinese governement Falun Gong is a religious fundamentalist organization so they want to shut them down. However its human rights violation when China does it but "supporting our friends" when the US does it. Talk about double standards.
At my college campus security puts a hold on your record so until you pay the fines u cant register for next semester
Brings a whole new meaning to the engineers traditional sigh of relief
Do you realize most of the opponents of this bill are academics. They are opposing it as it allows foreign students to work off campus while they are studying on F1 visas. That would pretty much mean a drying up of the large pool of slave labour that most universities depend on for running their campuses aka Graduate Students. Go to any professors research lab in Engineering and Science and you would find it full of Indian and Chinese students. Some may actually like working for the professor but a lot of them do it to pay for their degrees as they are not allowed to work off campus while they are studying. So Professors get away with paying salaries which pretty much qualifies these students for welfare (only as foreigners they cant claim welfare so they live on Ramen). These are people with bachelors degrees, great academic records and in many cases prior work experience. If these students are allowed to work off campus companies would scoop them up and no professor could get away with being abusive. No wonder academics are opposing the bill for it would mean the end of getting research grants from the federal government , getting the work done using cheap Indian and Chinese students and going for Ultimate Frisbee games with their American students.
So what language do you speak? Redneck? Coz if you speak English you have a better chance of understanding an Indian Accent than an Okie accent
I used to work for an Israeli company and the feeling used to be that Americans were better suited to MArketing and customer facing jobs. Its kind of the result of the American education system where the jocks and cheerleaders are the respected ones so even the nerds pick up better social skills than people in the rest of the world. For pure tech work Indians and Russians were considered. You can see it even in the American research institutions which are structured so that the ones who can network the best attend the seminars and breakfasts are the ones who get funding and eventually make progress. Its not a bad system but it is limited to being incremental. No more can you have a brilliant scientist shut up in a lab for years and come up with a breakthrough which changes the world. That kind of mad scientist (Newton,copernicus) was possible when Europeans were the driving force of innovation (till WW2 basically) but in todays American world even amongst the nerdiest of communities the cheerleaders are on top e.g In the Open Source Community the coordinators and the speech makers are the most valued.
Ok I interviewed with Apple for their San Jose office and turned them down. During my interview even the interviewer from Apple said " We dont expect people to have Obbject C experience as its so obscure and we train them" So maybe the reason Indian programmers dont have Objective C experience is because it is not used widely. The other point is if you have basic understanding of programming language concepts learning a dialect of a language is not a big deal. Also whats the thing abt people who install a Linux CD which makes them think *Nix experience makes their penises longer/boobs bigger (take your pick) . I work with *nix (sic)at college but I also use Windows on my laptop. Anything which really needs to be done on *nix (sic) I just ssh in to my department servers and work from my Windows laptop so whats the big deal? In any case anyone who understands basic computer productivity rules should be productive irrespective of platform. Secondly Mac computers are toys for people with money to burn. Their market positioning is like that of BMWs and Mercs. Just like you wouldnt find a lot of Merc mechanics in a developing country you wont find a lot of Mac programmers in India. And just like a good mechanic certified to service GM cars can retrain to service Mercs a competent .net programmer can retrain for the Mac OS platform
Hey its a free country . You can eat what you want. We look upon Americans eating beef in the same way as we look on South Koreans eating dogs or Eskimos eating raw whale blubber. The gag factor is high but if you want to eat it who am I to prevent you but please try and not do it in front of me :)
800$ India = 8000$ US or 16000$ California.
Believe me most Indian software programmers lead a much better life than California programmers. However they have to do it in the middle of society where rest of society is jealous of them so they have to kind of lead a life of fear as the poor might lash out at them anytime. So California is much better in that manner where the programmers are at the bottom so they dont have to be scared Rather the stockbrokers are afraid of the day programmers rise in revolution and storm the Bastille. Guess its your choice what you prefer if peace of mind come to California ; great lifestyle stay in India
Basically 9/11 has put an end to hijacking for ever. Earlier in an hijack the passengers would meekly follow orders in the expectation that eventually the government would negotiate their release or rescue them. However post 9/11 passengers have no way of knowing if the hijackers plan to negotiate or just hit a building. So it becomes a choice between sitting quitely and dying or fighting back. Even the most pacifist and cowardly person would fight like crazy in such a situation. Forget box cutters even if the terrorists got AK 47s aboard they still couldnt shoot a whole lane load of passengers before being taken down unless they actually had like at 25% of the passengers in their team. Rarely do terrorists have that kind of manpower- terrorism by definition is used by parties with inadequate manpower to fight open battles.
You deserve to be fucked in the ass with a broken broom. You dont want to have children and save money that way but at the same time you want social security payments in your old age paid by other peoples children , be protected from foreign invasions by other peoples children , treated when you are sick by other peoples children etc etc. People who dont have children are parasites on society. I propose all the people who dont have at least two children should be disqualified from collecting any social security, be barred from emergency rooms even if they are keeling over from heart attacks and sent off to Iraq to be used for exchanging with any hostages the insurgents capture. Then these selfish bastards will realize why they should have children.
I dont think that will ever happen . The rich are too good at preserving their playgrounds and getting the government to pay for it. There will always be some places preserved in the name of environmentalism which the common joe cannot afford to visit as he is too busy working 2 jobs to pay for food
It's an endemically corrupt oligarchy, not a capitalist state.
The difference being???
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me now?
NSA analyst: No
How is it a bad analogy? I am just making the point that mind boggling levels of minituarization has happened in one field so it is possible in another. I dont claim it will happen but I say there is a possibility it could. BTW if Moore's law continues for another 20 years the energy density of a chip will have to be higher than the core of a fission reactor. Obviously this is not possible which is why people are shifting over to superscalar architectures and multiple cores instead of just reducing the wavelength and increasing the clock cycle. This is called thinking out of the box. Maybe some fusion scientist will come up with some out of the box thinking so that the temperatures required for fusion are not the mind boggling ones we have today
Well all organic garbage contain CH chains. Technology could break down these chains and use the H relesed for fusion. Given that my hand held calculator is more powerfull than the 2 room large ENIAC of yesteryear I would not be surprised if in the future fusion reactors could be minituarized to fit in cars. Of course noone would really use these as most cars would run on the pavement embedded electric network and charge their batteries by induction.
Maybe camping equipment manufacturers would sell it to the yuppies of tomorrow who would like to go off the grid during vacations.
Do you mean for the cost of Iraq we could have a true welfare state with universal healthcare? But why would you want to do that? Iraq creates jobs at Hummer, Halliburton, Black Hawk security and a host of other small businesses who are the life blood of America. It also generates work for Doctors and Nurses at VA hospitals who just sit on their bums during peacetime. At the end when we rebuild Iraq with their oil money it will also generate jobs . Also we the taxpayer paid for the college education of all these snot nosed kids who went to college on ROTC scholarships. Now we are getting our money's worth. They thought they were getting a free ride . Just turn out for drill a few times a week and the government picks up your college bill. Same for the reserves who had no problem taking the reserve pay when they were not being activated. I say to all the anti war mothers of soldiers pay us back all the money your kids took from us to get through college and for being on the reserve with interest before you protest the war. There is no draft . Everyone being sent there is doing it for the money. When will these people stop whining?
For the Republicans out there THIS IS MEANT TO BE SARCASM
who moderated this post Funny. Dumb guy doesnt even read the article and shoots off his mouth. Look at the effing pictures and you would know its not a triangle.
OMG I just realized the moderator might be laughing at his stupidity and thats why he/she moderated it Funny. Well its not kind to laugh at rednecks. its not their faults their Moms really loved their Brothers.
Whoever gave you the idea China is a communist country? China has the purest form of capitalism in the world today. Its a total Laissez Faire economy Anything goes You can kill people and sell their organs as long as you make a profit. Just because the dictators in charge call themselves communist doesnt make them communist. Communism has been abused so much by dictators that people have come to associate the word with dictatorship. Whereas in reality a true communist state is a most democratic one as everyone is equal. I guess the US population is kind of uneducated as they grew up under the "Communist Threat" which was actually the Russian empire threat. It would have existed even if Russia was a capitalist country. The cold war was a fight between two elites. The politburo in Russia and the New England families who control America's Banking and Government. Even if Russia was capitalist but didnt allow market access to these families the cold war would still have been on. Now the closest thing to true communism as it was meant to be is the trade union movement and social security . So you could say USA is the only true communist country in the world but that wouldnt go down very well with a generation brought up to hate communists!!
I actually meant you switch to your own uniform so noone can accuse you of being a spy
According to the laws of war if you are fighting out of uniform and you are captured you are considered a spy and not a soldier and do not get pow status. They have status very similar to unlawfull combatants. This is a reason lot of commando raids are done by people wearing uniform even though the raid would be easier to do if you could just be dressed as the enemy. So my question is why not use this kind of material to create a uniform which matches the enemy's uniform and if you think you are about to get captured flick a switch and switch to full uniform. Voila you are no longer an unlawful combatant and rather a POW