Sorry, badly-written quick example on my part for using a foreigner. Was just trying to illustrate one quick example of why it would be necessary for a secret court. I don't think you quite read my post right, because in the situation I gave it wasn't hearsay or two people in a bar. Unless you consider it hearsay whenever someone hears somebody say something to them, in which case a lot of witnesses are going to be thrown out.
The major flaw in my source was having a bombmaker traveling to the states to do the bombing himself. A bit less likely.
Anyways, that aside, I think a good, reliable source of intel, particularly one which can be confirmed, should be enough to act on in situations like that. But I Am Not A Secret Court Member.
It's not new at all, the word has just changed to "terrorist". I'd say it's a hell of a lot better than it was for "communist", but this could just be the beginning. Our legal system usually does pretty well at catching people turning in their enemies, and I'm sure we'll see a great law suit or someone put away for a while for it.
There will be physical evidence in most cases. There will be phone calls, documents, forged documents, passport pages torn out and thrown in the trash, you name it. I'd like to think a complete lack of evidence would be enough to discourage the average investigator, let the person go, but maybe monitor him for a couple months just to make sure.
If you think the law is bad now, wait and see what happens if another terrorist attack gets pulled off because cops couldn't arrest him despite there being strong supsicions of an individual commiting one. That's when there will be hell to pay for Joe Citizen. This one isn't too bad. Sorry, that was a bit too long of a rant. I've been drinking.
Say you were "the feds" for a minute. Now pretend you have an established, credible source inside of a terrorist organization. This guy has constantly proven reliable and always feeds you good intel. This time he comes to you with a picture of him and another guy at a bar, and tells you the guy is a bombmaker who is planning a trip to, say, Seattle, to blow up a coffee shop frequented by military members. This is your only evidence. All the travel dates for your suspect line up with what you've been told, and there's no reason to believe that this is not the truth. How else do you arrest this probable terrorist? You have no unclassifiable evidence that can be brought to a normal judge. Just SHOWING him the picture would expose your source, and we all know how much trouble Karl Rove is in for something similar.
Unfortunately there is nothing established within the legal system. Yes, there should be a control on it, and yes, it should be used in accordance with any applicable laws, but there has to be a way to try or detain someone without getting people killed.
I would personally suggest something along the lines of a "secret" trial, only allow a defense lawyer with the appropriate security clearance, and if the defendant chooses to see the evidence he'll just have to spend his time in absolute solitary confinement in a special prison made for people who are likely to leak this sort of stuff should they be able to communicate.
Also please keep in mind the people doing this are normal people. They're not taking murderers and rapists and asking them to go kidnap random people. Most of the time it's just good people, good cops, trying to do what is right on the evidence they have. I applaud them for doing it at a time when public opinion is so negatively against them and it's a constitutionally grey area.
Hopefully our legal system can catch up to our new threats like cyber crimes, spam, and terrorism.
I doubt it. We paid a lot more than $3k/year on employees earning less than $30K/year. It was roughly 40-50% in addition to the salary we paid them. A $10/hour laborer cost us roughly $15/hour in taxes. IIRC, we had to match the social security and medicare benefits, pay some sort of money into unemployment, etc. Insurance costs were pretty bad too, along with all the OSHA-imposed expenses. Just buying all the government-mandated informative posters on minimum wage and how to report safety hazards cost a lot of money.
Already do that in the military. It's called zulu time. Times written as 2300Z are easily understood throughout the world. Then it's lima for local time. so in california (ignoring DST, which REALLY fucks this up), which is GMT -8, it'd be 1500L and 2300Z. Really, really easy. This way there is no confusion when the bombers in GMT+3 and the submarines in GMT-9 are trying to coordinate their attack on disneyland while talking to their leaders on the radio.
I personally prefer just using both timezones. Use zulu for any sort of coordination outside of the time zone you're in, or to help in travelling. Then just take a look at the local time to figure out when the sun's going to come up and when it's time to go out to bars, etc. That's what I do:)
A copy/paste from my reply to the other gentleman who replied, but I felt I could save some keystrokes since I am rather verbose.
It seems the issue here is that people are afraid the the government will either have to provide 0 religious channels, or provide one for every religion that asks for them. As beneficial as I actually think that'd be for americans to watch some TV explaining buddhism, islam, satanism, or even republicanism, I think that's going to the extreme. Just like saying "hippy liberals are going to make it illegal for me to even say 'God' to them". With a good charter or bilaws, it'd be easier for them to base the channel lineup on some simple polls, then provide one, two, or even ten public access channels that follow the same sort of system PBS does today. They produce some quality edutainment.
Is it that Cox doesn't want to show Falun Gong or Scientology programming period, or is it that there isn't a sufficient following in your city? I'd personally like to see a good, public access-like religious channel that allowed the lesserknowns a place to voice their views, since we all know that there are a ton of christian organizations out there that already have the money for TV shows, movies, and commercials all day.
Overall I agree with you, and commend you for reading your literature. I usually biblequiz anyone who tries to stop me on the street and lecture me on it, and I get rather annoyed if I know more than they do.
The problem I've been running into has been overexposure bordering on harassment. That and people exposing me to religion as part of their official capacities. School teachers arguing and trying to prove God exists, etc. The worst so far is a military commander asking all of the new members to his unit, upon first meeting them, "HAVE YOU BEEN SAVED YET?". You'd better answer yes, because you're in for a very long lecture and a copy of a certain book if you answer no.
Again, I agree people have no choice when it comes to whether they'll be exposed to a religion. But some people have taken that straight to harassment, especially on the streets and in some school systems. Recently there have been public schools where students read prayers or did whatever else for an hour or so a day. The problem is that yes, a person can ignore a comment about why "God is Good", but a forced spoonfeeding -a daily repitition of the same material and lecture in the hopes that he'll start to believe it- gets started up sometimes. Then it is hid behind in the name of "well, you're not free to exposure from it.". Maybe not, but common sense and limits should apply, even if our legalese has not perfected to the point where we know how to word every law 100% perfectly.
So to return to the topic again, it seems the issue here is that people are afraid the the government will either have to provide 0 religious channels, or provide one for every religion that asks for them. As beneficial as I actually think that'd be for americans to watch some TV explaining buddhism, islam, satanism, or even republicanism, I think that's going to the extreme. Just like saying "hippy liberals are going to make it illegal for me to even say 'God' to them". With a good charter or bilaws, it'd be easier for them to base the channel lineup on some simple polls, then provide one, two, or even ten public access channels that follow the same sort of system PBS does today. They produce some quality edutainment.
So I think that would be too much... a matter of where the other person's nose starts, so your own freedom ends there.
An excellent belief it is. I subscribe to the Harm Principle. It's a quick read if you haven't already. My exception I point out is one he himself said: "his independence... over his own body and mind". In many places in society it has become not accidental exposure or a splash of religion but a fervent attempt to douse people in it, hidden behind a veil of "but we're allowed to expose people to it."
I think at this point we're not really arguing anything, merely having a little discussion on it with each party (mainly me) going offtopic more and more. I'm just glad the mods haven't modded us all down for discussing politics.religion on a politics.slashdot forum.
You'd have to go to pretty serious lengths (like the things mentioned above) to not get your hardware detected by the latest and greatest distros.
Really? I bought a Dell Inspiron 8500 a few years ago. Don't laugh, it's a great laptop, I prefer it to the equivalent alienware offering at the time. The sound, modem, and ethernet were all impossible to find drivers for. So was my UXGA display. Over the last couple years the drivers have come out. Except when I was staying in a hotel with wireless internet access. I had to go find an XP CD and reinstall XP so I could use my wireless card, which I went to great lengths to buy specifically so that it wouldn't work with linux. Fair enough, I did buy a Dell, not exactly a linux ally, but it's a fairly common chipset.
Latest ubuntu doesn't support it, but last time I looked I was unable to get any online drivers to work for it. Of course if you know of a good new repository, please do share:).
I'm not saying the problem isn't much smaller than it was before. I'm truly amazed at how much the gap between windows hardware support and linux hardware support has shrunk in the last 4 years, but the problem hasn't been solved quite yet. There's still plenty to be done, and it's awfully hard to pat yourself on the back while working. So get back to work!
in other words, the number 1 problem of linux is the problem of social class and elitism. this has also been the number 1 problem of computer science over the years, and from the first compiled language to the first open peer protocol (tcp/ip)... it has been the rising tide that lifts all boats, not some genius CS idiot with their pet project or ideology.
As much as I agree that there is a trend of elitism in the crowd lately, this is like blaming linguists for how poorly the average person speaks languages, especially foreign ones. Linguists take the time to see how it works. They study it. They learn as much as they can about all sorts of interesting languages. They really tend to care about it. Then they're surprised when an american doesn't know what "bonjour" or "hola" means. It's just complete dismay that someone WOULDN'T know that. So the linguist tries to help. Only the american doesn't want to know, doesn't want to learn, and is pissed off at the linguist for being shocked that not everyone knew this commond word.
It's their failure to keep their eyes open. It's their failure to learn and listen when millions of people around the world have just been trying to show them something. Just a little bit, that's all. My grandmother never had a computer, but she was a pretty good typist back in the day. A while ago she requested that I build her a computer. She was writing email in no time because she wanted to. My grandfather was out of the loop a long time, but now he's using AIM, knows he'd rather have cable modem instead of dialup, and prefers email to snail mail. Sure, he should've tried to keep up a little bit since he learned to use a typewriter, but its' ok. He decided to start learning again.
How can anyone consider themselves alive once they've determined that they'd rather not learn anything anymore? Nothing new at all? There's no reason somebody in their 80s or 90s can't learn a new way of doing things. They've got more experience adjusting to change than you can even imagine. They just don't WANT to anymore.
Perhaps they never got a good education because they never wanted to pursue knowledge?
If you put this much energy into battling cancer we would have had a cure for AIDS 10 years ago. K, Thanks bubye So, umm, if I worked really, really hard to make linux great, would windows become stable?
You're both right and wrong. Many christians would complete your sentence "Freedom of religion means you can practice christianity as you see fit." Freedom of religion does indeed include freedom from religion. It means you can't be pummeled 24x7 by religious fanatics that THEIR cause is the right one and that yours is the wrong one, even if yours is NONE. And no, as much as theists like to say atheism is still a religion, it's not. Ok, HARD atheism is, because it's a positive belief in something which can not possibly be proven, that there is no god. But simply NOT believing in god is not a belief in anything, therefor not a religion. Wait, I didn't mean to turn myself around in semantics, damnit!
Anyways, many of the founders of america were deists. A lot of them wrote some pretty mean things about christianity that would get american politicians stoned to death these days.
Here are some quotes for you from our founding fathers: "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."..........From the "Treaty of Tripoli" which was signed during the term of George Washington and ratified by congress during the term of John Adams.
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read,"a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." -Thomas Jefferson
"The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten then, that while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting non-believer, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference. James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was: "[E]perience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of main- taining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation." Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England." -Benjamin Franklin
And what is christianity slowly doing? It's slowly starting to try to take power within american society. Leaders within the churches are claiming they're merely trying to "Take it back", but to be honest, they haven't had it since the salem witch trials. And for good reason. It protects the people as well as the churches. Now you're telling me I don't have the freedom FROM religion? I'm sorry, but I have to stand up for myself on this one. I'm not giving in to you any longer. I'm not goin
Thanks for assuming I'm not a troll. I do look somewhat like a troll, and have similar manners with women, but I can assure you I wasn't intending to troll with my post.
Now it's up to you to help fix the things you see that are broken. I'd love to, but I'm a pretty crappy coder, and I'm lucky if I have three hours of free time in any given day.
To address the embedded systems point, you're right, but I didn't mean to address that issue since most people aren't concerned with software that has no noticable interface to them. I don't care much if my thermostat was designed by NSA, NASA, the flat earth society, or Linus himself. "Alls I care about is it works good" so to speak. Of course I'd prefer to see it run linux, but I'm a bit more on the idealistic nerd side of things.
I actually think linux, particularly a distro like fedora or ubuntu, is absolutely perfect for kids. There are a ton of websites for kids that replace almost all of the educational software out there. I've been amazed by all the edutainment, flash games, etc. I've seen online. And those all work fine in linux (as long as you take the time to install all the proper codecs, plugins, software, sound drivers). On top of the, IMHO, kid-friendly GUI, it's safer. As soon as they're old enough, teach your kid to click that picture of the tweety bird or a soccer ball. Let them log themselves in as a user with almost no privileges. They're not going to mess your system up the way they tend to on windows, so you can safely stop watching them with that worried look in your eye. Plus I believe it's just like teaching a kid to grow up multilingual. Expose them to differences and adversity as soon as possible, let them figure it out, but help them if they need it. They're smarter than people give them credit for, and will grow up learning logic instead of just memorizing where to click when they want to do something.
That's my take, anyways. I could be dead wrong.
I didn't respond to all of your points just because I feel like it'd be beating a dead horse, and your points all look fairly good to me. Linux is wonderful for all of those uses.
I'd still say the average user is more likely to be afraid of something with the word "server" in it, even if it's to safely store their files. I've known some people who aren't afraid to buy NAS when they already have a couple of computers networked, though. Sure, many of those run linux for good reason. And I'm glad they are, because that's much more intelligent than most other choices, and makes the product cheaper (no insane licensing costs). But the end user won't see that, and I think there's already a huge financial backing and support from a lot of companies for applications like that. As for using linux as a file server, sure it's home use, but the server side of linux has already been developed very well. It's quite often the best server solution. Period.
I just figured the main point of the idea of linux consolidation is that by consolidating they can reduce duplicated effort, and in doing so more efficiently improve linux. I'm just trying to highlight the reasons why [desktop] linux has such a small share of the home user market. The offerings in all the other markets are outstanding and outperform their competitors in most aspects, and that's the reason for widespread adoption. Plus the cool factor, price, and customizability (feature). Soon it's going to be necessary to have a basic understanding of linux to be employed as a sysadmin or netadmin, just like it is now necessary to be able to use microsoft products in most jobs. What I'd really like to see, though, is 20% of the computer-owning population (not 20% of computers, since those of us with 50 computers and a home datacenter tend to skew those numbers) are running an alternative OS. Then I'd like to see these people go to their admins at work and say "Hey, I have this linux thing on my computer and I like it better than this windows 2007. Is there any way we can
Actually, a lot of places have their minimum wage tied to the living wage. The whole point of a minimum wage, to many of the people who support it, was so that they could be paid enough to live off of. Of course now people want to be paid enough to have a 4 bedroom house, a swimming pool, a pony, and an SUV, and merely living has become pase(with that accent thing).
I'm not going to argue all of your points, but I'll say this. Everyone agrees rising health care costs are one of the major problems our country is currently facing. A rapidly escalating subset of problems within this field is STDs, which often lead to one of the other issues: infertility. Given that the rabid fucking within our society is contributing to many of our problems, I'd say getting laid MORE often would be low on my list of advice for people. Especially people who don't believe in wearing condoms.
To preface this, I love linux for every reason you've mentioned. It's customizable, I can learn from the source, and it's much better at specialized tasks. That being said, it seems to be the general idea within the community that eventually it should become a good desktop replacement. That seemed to be one of the complaints of this article. That too many man-hours were being put into specialized or redundant distros of linux instead of just making a few of them really good.
What are they wanting to do? The GUI on modern distributions seems pretty userfriendly to me.
Agreed, the GUI is great. But depending on the distro, a lot of people would have trouble with CLI stuff, be it apt-get or RPMs or whatever else needed to be done. Good luck getting grandma to compile it if there is no binary available for your distro.
most of them ship with Thunderbird and Evolution.
Agreed. These are great programs that have all the features most people need from their MS counterparts. In some ways they're a lot better. I'd say linux has accomplished this task. Unless you have to find drivers for your dialup, ethernet, or wireless NIC. Then you're a bit SOL. Sure, they likely exist online somewhere if you have anywhere near common hardware, but it's going to become a pain.
If you can use Word, etc you can easilly use OOo - they are very similar.
Agreed. OpenOffice.org is a great achievement and I hope it continues to get better. Some programs have been ported very well. Others have been somewhat copied. I don't care as long as I can get the same stuff done, and it's getting a lot better.
Right, because you *never* have to hunt down drivers or troubleshoot stuff under windows, windows is perfect. This is also something that cannot be "fixed" by the FOSS developers - it's purely down to the hardware manufacturers. If they refuse to release drivers and won't publish specs so 3rd parties can write them then support really is going to be sucky - the same would apply if they didn't release drivers for Windows.
You're entirely correct, of course. I made a note about that somewhere in my little rant. I'm just saying it doesn't matter to the end user. If you ordered a pizza and it arrived at your house cold, you might feel bad for the delivery boy for having a broken windshield or AC, but you'd still wish you had a warm pizza. Same idea to me, and most people.
To add to that, most people buy prebuilt dell/hp/compaq/IBM/fujitsu/gateway/emachines systems anyways. It can be $300 to buy a system with a 15" LCD display, a 90-day warranty, and winxp pre-installed. All the drivers come on a spiffy little CD. Windows already supports almost all of the hardware without a driver CD. It's gotten a lot better in the last few years. Granted if a luser loses his CDs, or you end up going to a newer OS you might need to do some driver hunting, but it won't be that hard to find if you know where to look for the chipset info.
I am not a developer, but if more effort were put into writing drivers for linux, and consolidating that effort, wouldn't it be somewhat doable even without the help of the hardware manufacturers? I'd be willing to put some money into a "Linux Drivers Foundation" that simply wrote drivers that could be used with any distro. I'm sure red hat and ubuntu would give it support, too. Tell me if I'm wrong, because I don't know much about writing drivers.
I'd say all your points are good, and valid, and you've shown some great reasons why things don't work perfectly out of the box, and that a lot of it isn't the fault of linux. I agree entirely. But I'd like to see something done about it someday, such that some of these gaps are filled in and it can become a desktop replacement for more people at home. I don't plan for linux to take microsoft down anytime soon, but I would like to see them forced to innovate, or at least fund more innovative companies.
Good job. You managed to pick ONE thing the average home user would actually use a computer for. I guess you just don't realize that the average home user doesn't know the difference between spyware and a virus, has no interest in networking their coffemaker and their fridge (with encryption, of course), and certainly doesn't care for a server.
Here's what they want:
1) so easy to use, even they can do it
2) check their spam daily
3) all of the programs they already know how to use already work on it.
4) easy transition (minimize lost settings, files, etc.) This includes things such as iTunes playlists.
5) the same hardware support they have in windows. That is, everything worked with windows when they bought that computer from Dell/Compaq/HP/Fujitsu, whatever. They didn't have to go hunt down drivers, troubleshoot anything, or settle irq conflicts. In fact, they're not quite sure what a driver is, but are pretty certain about putters.
6) multimedia support out of the box. They don't want to install their Line-Ux CD just to find out that the media player can't even play their porn or their mp3s. They need codecs? "What are those? Where can they buy them? RTFA? Where can I buy an RTFA? Oh, you mean check the interweb? Google said I should download winamp!"
I really have no idea why I haven't run into a single linux distro that supports my porn and mp3s without extra codec downloads. I'm not sure why most STILL don't include read-only support for my NTFS partitions. To be honest, I'm amazed they don't have it fully figured out such that I can WRITE to my NTFS partitions as well. Especially since I've got some nifty 300GB external hard drives for my windows laptop. Why is it a windows laptop? See the above issues.
I realize most of the problems are really caused by crappy licensing agreements by the "owners" of whatever licenses or code, and a lot of the other problems are caused by hardware manufacturers refusing to release drivers or help us to write them, but the end user doesn't really care. The average 50 year old jet mechanic couldn't give a damn if it's because the software author's daughter died yesterday. He wants his shit to work to do the stuff HE does. And most people do the EXACT same thing and little else.
As for me, I'll switch entirely, and get the rest of my family running it, as soon as all the porn that windows media player plays is playable under linux, red alert 2 works perfectly, and gaim has caught up with trillian. The browser is about the same, evolution and thunderbird are great for email, the hardware support appears half-assed at best,.... I'm done with that.
To bring back to your point: "The car industry works fine with having a range of products from small compact cars to large trucks" This is a valid point, but also completely off. The true analogy would be going into a car dealership and telling them:
Buyer: "I just want a car. It has to have A/C, working lights and brakes, and get me to and from work."
Dealer: "Will you be hauling sand or rocks. What kind of towing capacity do you need?"
Buyer repeats: "just a car. For transportation. To and from work. And maybe the movies occasionally. I'd like to be able to get it on in the back seat too".
Dealer: "Oooooh. Ok, yeah, we have that. Here's what we can do for you. We've got this great frame out back, it's really happening. Then you can go across the street and buy the interior. We'll even tow it down the street to the corner for you to get the engine put in. You can repaint it whatever color you want (fully customizable!), but nobody has lights for it, so you'll have to find those before you drive it at night. Oh, and it needs 100 octane, so you'll have to go to one of these special petrol stations."
Linux's problem is your idea of "why would you expect one product to be all of those things." The truth is, the majo
Code probably isn't run on these systems that hasn't been gone over, line by line, by the NSA itself.
Are you trying to imply that the NSA only runs in-house software or FOSS programs? Do you REALLY think Microsoft would allow that? Somehow I doubt it. Why would they trust that insecure, terrorist-supporting software when they can use trusted, innovative software?
Please don't post stupid propaganda when you have no clue. Either that or you chose your words very well in an attempt to deceive people.
The USAF requires all of their troops to complete Law Of Armed Conflict (LOAC) training annually. I'm not sure about the army or navy, but chances are that they have the same requirements.
A quick search on any decent search engine would get a lot of results for military briefs, military legal office.doc files, and various other articles. One such example is:
Those who violate LOAC may be held criminally liable for war crimes and court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
this legal brief also states that: Committing a LOAC violation because you were ordered to will not excuse you from punishment. LOAC violations may be prosecuted under the UCMJ
Now if you're arguing whether america will subject its troops to the ICC, that's a whole different story. But you're DEAD wrong about the rest. It's been proven many times in court martial that an order is no excuse to break the law. And don't even start thinking that military prison sentences are lighter than the civilian counterpart, or easier. They aren't. But you're right that, to my knowledge, the average citizen, incapable of being ordered, has never been found guilty of following an order. Soldiers sure as hell have.
Actually, that'd be great, especially if it could run on a seperate highest priority process and allow me to kill some of my funky processes easily. Seriously. I'd use it. In my windows box I'd probably use it more often than I use the start menu. It'd allow me to ALMOST stop using ctrl+alt+del.
going by that percentage, are all the irish terrorists?
Yes.
how about all hindus (tamil tigers)?
Yes.
maybe everyone from montana (oklahoma city).
Yes.
maybe all christians (abortion clinics).
Yes.
how about all jews
Yes.
I have trouble finding a single redeeming quality for any of the groups you mentioned above. I'd go so far as to say that, historically, all large groups of people are terrorists, and I wouldn't trust them with much. Actually, I once knew a really nice girl from montana:), but I'm sure her father would've killed me given the chance.
Here in america we solved this problem years ago! Everybody drives their own car wherever they go. There is no mass transit, and the environment be damned. The only city that hasn't been able to make the switch is New York, and look what happened to them. Viva la automobile (with large back seat)!
I'd say you're a bit off. The US and UK military do train together sometimes, conduct joint missions sometimes, and share some common supplies. (standardized NATO routs and uniforms, weapons, etc.) for a lot of very good reasons. It's a lot easier for both of us if we use the same ammo and weapons and end up having to fight ye olde Soviet Union. Troops can be sent over without equipment and be geared by the brits with the same stuff they already use. Troops can be sent over with crates of guns but not enough ammo for them and the brits can help. The list goes on and on, and the standardization is for a reason.
That being said, although most members of the US military who have worked with the UK military respect them, american soldiers know they're not the same army. There are many distinct differences, and american soldiers would not hesitate to remove them from this planet should the need arise. That being said, brits would not hesitate to do the same should the need arise for them.
Alliances work together to the extent that it is perceived to be in both parties' best interests to do so and not an inch further. Americans develop weapons and sell them to the brits because:
1) americans were already going to develop them 2) they're unlikely to be used against amreicans in the immediate future 3) it offsets the development costs
To reiterate, I do feel you're somewhat right, and am pointing out where the two militaries are somewhat similar and share some common suppliers. I'm also saying that, when it comes down to troops in the field, nobody is confused as to which army is which, and there is no question where the loyalties of each army lie.
Funny, a website removed mine for me! I visited this website while I was searching for porn, and this popup told me I had spyware on my computer, and I could run their program to clean it! Problem solved! That was really nice of them. I was trying to find their address so I could mail them a thank you card but I couldn't find their address anywhere, and I didn't see a help file when the program installed.
On a small side note, I've been getting a lot of psychic popups since then. They keep asking me if I want a bigger penis and linking me to all sorts of good products to help me out. I'm not sure where they're coming from, but I really appreciate it.
I wouldn't say AM is a good example. The little walkie-talkies all the high school kids say "over and out" on are a much better example of things people actually use. Where have you been living? AM is only used for crappy talk shows and Traffic Info.
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Sorry, badly-written quick example on my part for using a foreigner. Was just trying to illustrate one quick example of why it would be necessary for a secret court. I don't think you quite read my post right, because in the situation I gave it wasn't hearsay or two people in a bar. Unless you consider it hearsay whenever someone hears somebody say something to them, in which case a lot of witnesses are going to be thrown out.
The major flaw in my source was having a bombmaker traveling to the states to do the bombing himself. A bit less likely.
Anyways, that aside, I think a good, reliable source of intel, particularly one which can be confirmed, should be enough to act on in situations like that. But I Am Not A Secret Court Member.
It's not new at all, the word has just changed to "terrorist". I'd say it's a hell of a lot better than it was for "communist", but this could just be the beginning. Our legal system usually does pretty well at catching people turning in their enemies, and I'm sure we'll see a great law suit or someone put away for a while for it.
There will be physical evidence in most cases. There will be phone calls, documents, forged documents, passport pages torn out and thrown in the trash, you name it. I'd like to think a complete lack of evidence would be enough to discourage the average investigator, let the person go, but maybe monitor him for a couple months just to make sure.
If you think the law is bad now, wait and see what happens if another terrorist attack gets pulled off because cops couldn't arrest him despite there being strong supsicions of an individual commiting one. That's when there will be hell to pay for Joe Citizen. This one isn't too bad. Sorry, that was a bit too long of a rant. I've been drinking.
Maybe you couldn't get an 'A' because of your overuse of apostrophe's?
Say you were "the feds" for a minute. Now pretend you have an established, credible source inside of a terrorist organization. This guy has constantly proven reliable and always feeds you good intel. This time he comes to you with a picture of him and another guy at a bar, and tells you the guy is a bombmaker who is planning a trip to, say, Seattle, to blow up a coffee shop frequented by military members. This is your only evidence. All the travel dates for your suspect line up with what you've been told, and there's no reason to believe that this is not the truth. How else do you arrest this probable terrorist? You have no unclassifiable evidence that can be brought to a normal judge. Just SHOWING him the picture would expose your source, and we all know how much trouble Karl Rove is in for something similar.
Unfortunately there is nothing established within the legal system. Yes, there should be a control on it, and yes, it should be used in accordance with any applicable laws, but there has to be a way to try or detain someone without getting people killed.
I would personally suggest something along the lines of a "secret" trial, only allow a defense lawyer with the appropriate security clearance, and if the defendant chooses to see the evidence he'll just have to spend his time in absolute solitary confinement in a special prison made for people who are likely to leak this sort of stuff should they be able to communicate.
Also please keep in mind the people doing this are normal people. They're not taking murderers and rapists and asking them to go kidnap random people. Most of the time it's just good people, good cops, trying to do what is right on the evidence they have. I applaud them for doing it at a time when public opinion is so negatively against them and it's a constitutionally grey area.
Hopefully our legal system can catch up to our new threats like cyber crimes, spam, and terrorism.
I doubt it. We paid a lot more than $3k/year on employees earning less than $30K/year. It was roughly 40-50% in addition to the salary we paid them. A $10/hour laborer cost us roughly $15/hour in taxes. IIRC, we had to match the social security and medicare benefits, pay some sort of money into unemployment, etc. Insurance costs were pretty bad too, along with all the OSHA-imposed expenses. Just buying all the government-mandated informative posters on minimum wage and how to report safety hazards cost a lot of money.
Already do that in the military. It's called zulu time. Times written as 2300Z are easily understood throughout the world. Then it's lima for local time. so in california (ignoring DST, which REALLY fucks this up), which is GMT -8, it'd be 1500L and 2300Z. Really, really easy. This way there is no confusion when the bombers in GMT+3 and the submarines in GMT-9 are trying to coordinate their attack on disneyland while talking to their leaders on the radio.
:)
I personally prefer just using both timezones. Use zulu for any sort of coordination outside of the time zone you're in, or to help in travelling. Then just take a look at the local time to figure out when the sun's going to come up and when it's time to go out to bars, etc. That's what I do
A copy/paste from my reply to the other gentleman who replied, but I felt I could save some keystrokes since I am rather verbose.
It seems the issue here is that people are afraid the the government will either have to provide 0 religious channels, or provide one for every religion that asks for them. As beneficial as I actually think that'd be for americans to watch some TV explaining buddhism, islam, satanism, or even republicanism, I think that's going to the extreme. Just like saying "hippy liberals are going to make it illegal for me to even say 'God' to them". With a good charter or bilaws, it'd be easier for them to base the channel lineup on some simple polls, then provide one, two, or even ten public access channels that follow the same sort of system PBS does today. They produce some quality edutainment.
Is it that Cox doesn't want to show Falun Gong or Scientology programming period, or is it that there isn't a sufficient following in your city? I'd personally like to see a good, public access-like religious channel that allowed the lesserknowns a place to voice their views, since we all know that there are a ton of christian organizations out there that already have the money for TV shows, movies, and commercials all day.
The problem I've been running into has been overexposure bordering on harassment. That and people exposing me to religion as part of their official capacities. School teachers arguing and trying to prove God exists, etc. The worst so far is a military commander asking all of the new members to his unit, upon first meeting them, "HAVE YOU BEEN SAVED YET?". You'd better answer yes, because you're in for a very long lecture and a copy of a certain book if you answer no.
Again, I agree people have no choice when it comes to whether they'll be exposed to a religion. But some people have taken that straight to harassment, especially on the streets and in some school systems. Recently there have been public schools where students read prayers or did whatever else for an hour or so a day. The problem is that yes, a person can ignore a comment about why "God is Good", but a forced spoonfeeding -a daily repitition of the same material and lecture in the hopes that he'll start to believe it- gets started up sometimes. Then it is hid behind in the name of "well, you're not free to exposure from it.". Maybe not, but common sense and limits should apply, even if our legalese has not perfected to the point where we know how to word every law 100% perfectly.
So to return to the topic again, it seems the issue here is that people are afraid the the government will either have to provide 0 religious channels, or provide one for every religion that asks for them. As beneficial as I actually think that'd be for americans to watch some TV explaining buddhism, islam, satanism, or even republicanism, I think that's going to the extreme. Just like saying "hippy liberals are going to make it illegal for me to even say 'God' to them". With a good charter or bilaws, it'd be easier for them to base the channel lineup on some simple polls, then provide one, two, or even ten public access channels that follow the same sort of system PBS does today. They produce some quality edutainment.
An excellent belief it is. I subscribe to the Harm Principle. It's a quick read if you haven't already. My exception I point out is one he himself said: "his independence
I think at this point we're not really arguing anything, merely having a little discussion on it with each party (mainly me) going offtopic more and more. I'm just glad the mods haven't modded us all down for discussing politics.religion on a politics.slashdot forum.
Really? I bought a Dell Inspiron 8500 a few years ago. Don't laugh, it's a great laptop, I prefer it to the equivalent alienware offering at the time. The sound, modem, and ethernet were all impossible to find drivers for. So was my UXGA display. Over the last couple years the drivers have come out. Except when I was staying in a hotel with wireless internet access. I had to go find an XP CD and reinstall XP so I could use my wireless card, which I went to great lengths to buy specifically so that it wouldn't work with linux. Fair enough, I did buy a Dell, not exactly a linux ally, but it's a fairly common chipset.
Latest ubuntu doesn't support it, but last time I looked I was unable to get any online drivers to work for it. Of course if you know of a good new repository, please do share
I'm not saying the problem isn't much smaller than it was before. I'm truly amazed at how much the gap between windows hardware support and linux hardware support has shrunk in the last 4 years, but the problem hasn't been solved quite yet. There's still plenty to be done, and it's awfully hard to pat yourself on the back while working. So get back to work!
in other words, the number 1 problem of linux is the problem of social class and elitism. this has also been the number 1 problem of computer science over the years, and from the first compiled language to the first open peer protocol (tcp/ip)... it has been the rising tide that lifts all boats, not some genius CS idiot with their pet project or ideology.
As much as I agree that there is a trend of elitism in the crowd lately, this is like blaming linguists for how poorly the average person speaks languages, especially foreign ones. Linguists take the time to see how it works. They study it. They learn as much as they can about all sorts of interesting languages. They really tend to care about it. Then they're surprised when an american doesn't know what "bonjour" or "hola" means. It's just complete dismay that someone WOULDN'T know that. So the linguist tries to help. Only the american doesn't want to know, doesn't want to learn, and is pissed off at the linguist for being shocked that not everyone knew this commond word.
It's their failure to keep their eyes open. It's their failure to learn and listen when millions of people around the world have just been trying to show them something. Just a little bit, that's all. My grandmother never had a computer, but she was a pretty good typist back in the day. A while ago she requested that I build her a computer. She was writing email in no time because she wanted to. My grandfather was out of the loop a long time, but now he's using AIM, knows he'd rather have cable modem instead of dialup, and prefers email to snail mail. Sure, he should've tried to keep up a little bit since he learned to use a typewriter, but its' ok. He decided to start learning again.
How can anyone consider themselves alive once they've determined that they'd rather not learn anything anymore? Nothing new at all? There's no reason somebody in their 80s or 90s can't learn a new way of doing things. They've got more experience adjusting to change than you can even imagine. They just don't WANT to anymore.
Perhaps they never got a good education because they never wanted to pursue knowledge?
If you put this much energy into battling cancer we would have had a cure for AIDS 10 years ago. K, Thanks bubye
..........From the "Treaty of Tripoli" which was signed during the term of George Washington and ratified by congress during the term of John Adams.
So, umm, if I worked really, really hard to make linux great, would windows become stable?
You're both right and wrong. Many christians would complete your sentence "Freedom of religion means you can practice christianity as you see fit." Freedom of religion does indeed include freedom from religion. It means you can't be pummeled 24x7 by religious fanatics that THEIR cause is the right one and that yours is the wrong one, even if yours is NONE. And no, as much as theists like to say atheism is still a religion, it's not. Ok, HARD atheism is, because it's a positive belief in something which can not possibly be proven, that there is no god. But simply NOT believing in god is not a belief in anything, therefor not a religion. Wait, I didn't mean to turn myself around in semantics, damnit!
Anyways, many of the founders of america were deists. A lot of them wrote some pretty mean things about christianity that would get american politicians stoned to death these days.
Here are some quotes for you from our founding fathers:
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read,"a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."
-Thomas Jefferson
"The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten then, that while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting non-believer, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference. James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was: "[E]perience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of main- taining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation."
Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England."
-Benjamin Franklin
And what is christianity slowly doing? It's slowly starting to try to take power within american society. Leaders within the churches are claiming they're merely trying to "Take it back", but to be honest, they haven't had it since the salem witch trials. And for good reason. It protects the people as well as the churches. Now you're telling me I don't have the freedom FROM religion? I'm sorry, but I have to stand up for myself on this one. I'm not giving in to you any longer. I'm not goin
Thanks for assuming I'm not a troll. I do look somewhat like a troll, and have similar manners with women, but I can assure you I wasn't intending to troll with my post.
Now it's up to you to help fix the things you see that are broken.
I'd love to, but I'm a pretty crappy coder, and I'm lucky if I have three hours of free time in any given day.
To address the embedded systems point, you're right, but I didn't mean to address that issue since most people aren't concerned with software that has no noticable interface to them. I don't care much if my thermostat was designed by NSA, NASA, the flat earth society, or Linus himself. "Alls I care about is it works good" so to speak. Of course I'd prefer to see it run linux, but I'm a bit more on the idealistic nerd side of things.
I actually think linux, particularly a distro like fedora or ubuntu, is absolutely perfect for kids. There are a ton of websites for kids that replace almost all of the educational software out there. I've been amazed by all the edutainment, flash games, etc. I've seen online. And those all work fine in linux (as long as you take the time to install all the proper codecs, plugins, software, sound drivers). On top of the, IMHO, kid-friendly GUI, it's safer. As soon as they're old enough, teach your kid to click that picture of the tweety bird or a soccer ball. Let them log themselves in as a user with almost no privileges. They're not going to mess your system up the way they tend to on windows, so you can safely stop watching them with that worried look in your eye. Plus I believe it's just like teaching a kid to grow up multilingual. Expose them to differences and adversity as soon as possible, let them figure it out, but help them if they need it. They're smarter than people give them credit for, and will grow up learning logic instead of just memorizing where to click when they want to do something.
That's my take, anyways. I could be dead wrong.
I didn't respond to all of your points just because I feel like it'd be beating a dead horse, and your points all look fairly good to me. Linux is wonderful for all of those uses.
I'd still say the average user is more likely to be afraid of something with the word "server" in it, even if it's to safely store their files. I've known some people who aren't afraid to buy NAS when they already have a couple of computers networked, though. Sure, many of those run linux for good reason. And I'm glad they are, because that's much more intelligent than most other choices, and makes the product cheaper (no insane licensing costs). But the end user won't see that, and I think there's already a huge financial backing and support from a lot of companies for applications like that. As for using linux as a file server, sure it's home use, but the server side of linux has already been developed very well. It's quite often the best server solution. Period.
I just figured the main point of the idea of linux consolidation is that by consolidating they can reduce duplicated effort, and in doing so more efficiently improve linux. I'm just trying to highlight the reasons why [desktop] linux has such a small share of the home user market. The offerings in all the other markets are outstanding and outperform their competitors in most aspects, and that's the reason for widespread adoption. Plus the cool factor, price, and customizability (feature). Soon it's going to be necessary to have a basic understanding of linux to be employed as a sysadmin or netadmin, just like it is now necessary to be able to use microsoft products in most jobs. What I'd really like to see, though, is 20% of the computer-owning population (not 20% of computers, since those of us with 50 computers and a home datacenter tend to skew those numbers) are running an alternative OS. Then I'd like to see these people go to their admins at work and say "Hey, I have this linux thing on my computer and I like it better than this windows 2007. Is there any way we can
Actually, a lot of places have their minimum wage tied to the living wage. The whole point of a minimum wage, to many of the people who support it, was so that they could be paid enough to live off of. Of course now people want to be paid enough to have a 4 bedroom house, a swimming pool, a pony, and an SUV, and merely living has become pase(with that accent thing).
I'm not going to argue all of your points, but I'll say this. Everyone agrees rising health care costs are one of the major problems our country is currently facing. A rapidly escalating subset of problems within this field is STDs, which often lead to one of the other issues: infertility. Given that the rabid fucking within our society is contributing to many of our problems, I'd say getting laid MORE often would be low on my list of advice for people. Especially people who don't believe in wearing condoms.
To preface this, I love linux for every reason you've mentioned. It's customizable, I can learn from the source, and it's much better at specialized tasks. That being said, it seems to be the general idea within the community that eventually it should become a good desktop replacement. That seemed to be one of the complaints of this article. That too many man-hours were being put into specialized or redundant distros of linux instead of just making a few of them really good.
What are they wanting to do? The GUI on modern distributions seems pretty userfriendly to me.
Agreed, the GUI is great. But depending on the distro, a lot of people would have trouble with CLI stuff, be it apt-get or RPMs or whatever else needed to be done. Good luck getting grandma to compile it if there is no binary available for your distro.
most of them ship with Thunderbird and Evolution.
Agreed. These are great programs that have all the features most people need from their MS counterparts. In some ways they're a lot better. I'd say linux has accomplished this task. Unless you have to find drivers for your dialup, ethernet, or wireless NIC. Then you're a bit SOL. Sure, they likely exist online somewhere if you have anywhere near common hardware, but it's going to become a pain.
If you can use Word, etc you can easilly use OOo - they are very similar.
Agreed. OpenOffice.org is a great achievement and I hope it continues to get better. Some programs have been ported very well. Others have been somewhat copied. I don't care as long as I can get the same stuff done, and it's getting a lot better.
Right, because you *never* have to hunt down drivers or troubleshoot stuff under windows, windows is perfect. This is also something that cannot be "fixed" by the FOSS developers - it's purely down to the hardware manufacturers. If they refuse to release drivers and won't publish specs so 3rd parties can write them then support really is going to be sucky - the same would apply if they didn't release drivers for Windows.
You're entirely correct, of course. I made a note about that somewhere in my little rant. I'm just saying it doesn't matter to the end user. If you ordered a pizza and it arrived at your house cold, you might feel bad for the delivery boy for having a broken windshield or AC, but you'd still wish you had a warm pizza. Same idea to me, and most people.
To add to that, most people buy prebuilt dell/hp/compaq/IBM/fujitsu/gateway/emachines systems anyways. It can be $300 to buy a system with a 15" LCD display, a 90-day warranty, and winxp pre-installed. All the drivers come on a spiffy little CD. Windows already supports almost all of the hardware without a driver CD. It's gotten a lot better in the last few years. Granted if a luser loses his CDs, or you end up going to a newer OS you might need to do some driver hunting, but it won't be that hard to find if you know where to look for the chipset info.
I am not a developer, but if more effort were put into writing drivers for linux, and consolidating that effort, wouldn't it be somewhat doable even without the help of the hardware manufacturers? I'd be willing to put some money into a "Linux Drivers Foundation" that simply wrote drivers that could be used with any distro. I'm sure red hat and ubuntu would give it support, too. Tell me if I'm wrong, because I don't know much about writing drivers.
I'd say all your points are good, and valid, and you've shown some great reasons why things don't work perfectly out of the box, and that a lot of it isn't the fault of linux. I agree entirely. But I'd like to see something done about it someday, such that some of these gaps are filled in and it can become a desktop replacement for more people at home. I don't plan for linux to take microsoft down anytime soon, but I would like to see them forced to innovate, or at least fund more innovative companies.
As much as I do enjoy using linux, the
4) Use for children
Good job. You managed to pick ONE thing the average home user would actually use a computer for. I guess you just don't realize that the average home user doesn't know the difference between spyware and a virus, has no interest in networking their coffemaker and their fridge (with encryption, of course), and certainly doesn't care for a server.
Here's what they want:
1) so easy to use, even they can do it
2) check their spam daily
3) all of the programs they already know how to use already work on it.
4) easy transition (minimize lost settings, files, etc.) This includes things such as iTunes playlists.
5) the same hardware support they have in windows. That is, everything worked with windows when they bought that computer from Dell/Compaq/HP/Fujitsu, whatever. They didn't have to go hunt down drivers, troubleshoot anything, or settle irq conflicts. In fact, they're not quite sure what a driver is, but are pretty certain about putters.
6) multimedia support out of the box. They don't want to install their Line-Ux CD just to find out that the media player can't even play their porn or their mp3s. They need codecs? "What are those? Where can they buy them? RTFA? Where can I buy an RTFA? Oh, you mean check the interweb? Google said I should download winamp!"
I really have no idea why I haven't run into a single linux distro that supports my porn and mp3s without extra codec downloads. I'm not sure why most STILL don't include read-only support for my NTFS partitions. To be honest, I'm amazed they don't have it fully figured out such that I can WRITE to my NTFS partitions as well. Especially since I've got some nifty 300GB external hard drives for my windows laptop. Why is it a windows laptop? See the above issues.
I realize most of the problems are really caused by crappy licensing agreements by the "owners" of whatever licenses or code, and a lot of the other problems are caused by hardware manufacturers refusing to release drivers or help us to write them, but the end user doesn't really care. The average 50 year old jet mechanic couldn't give a damn if it's because the software author's daughter died yesterday. He wants his shit to work to do the stuff HE does. And most people do the EXACT same thing and little else.
As for me, I'll switch entirely, and get the rest of my family running it, as soon as all the porn that windows media player plays is playable under linux, red alert 2 works perfectly, and gaim has caught up with trillian. The browser is about the same, evolution and thunderbird are great for email, the hardware support appears half-assed at best,
To bring back to your point: "The car industry works fine with having a range of products from small compact cars to large trucks" This is a valid point, but also completely off. The true analogy would be going into a car dealership and telling them:
Buyer: "I just want a car. It has to have A/C, working lights and brakes, and get me to and from work."
Dealer: "Will you be hauling sand or rocks. What kind of towing capacity do you need?"
Buyer repeats: "just a car. For transportation. To and from work. And maybe the movies occasionally. I'd like to be able to get it on in the back seat too".
Dealer: "Oooooh. Ok, yeah, we have that. Here's what we can do for you. We've got this great frame out back, it's really happening. Then you can go across the street and buy the interior. We'll even tow it down the street to the corner for you to get the engine put in. You can repaint it whatever color you want (fully customizable!), but nobody has lights for it, so you'll have to find those before you drive it at night. Oh, and it needs 100 octane, so you'll have to go to one of these special petrol stations."
Linux's problem is your idea of "why would you expect one product to be all of those things." The truth is, the majo
Are you trying to imply that the NSA only runs in-house software or FOSS programs? Do you REALLY think Microsoft would allow that? Somehow I doubt it. Why would they trust that insecure, terrorist-supporting software when they can use trusted, innovative software?
Please don't post stupid propaganda when you have no clue. Either that or you chose your words very well in an attempt to deceive people.
.doc files, and various other articles. One such example is:
The USAF requires all of their troops to complete Law Of Armed Conflict (LOAC) training annually. I'm not sure about the army or navy, but chances are that they have the same requirements.
A quick search on any decent search engine would get a lot of results for military briefs, military legal office
Those who violate LOAC may be held criminally liable for war crimes and court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
this legal brief also states that:
Committing a LOAC violation because you were ordered to will not excuse you from
punishment. LOAC violations may be prosecuted under the UCMJ
Now if you're arguing whether america will subject its troops to the ICC, that's a whole different story. But you're DEAD wrong about the rest. It's been proven many times in court martial that an order is no excuse to break the law. And don't even start thinking that military prison sentences are lighter than the civilian counterpart, or easier. They aren't. But you're right that, to my knowledge, the average citizen, incapable of being ordered, has never been found guilty of following an order. Soldiers sure as hell have.
It did. Perhaps you clicked the wrong link? There's only one god around here, to my knowledge.
Actually, that'd be great, especially if it could run on a seperate highest priority process and allow me to kill some of my funky processes easily. Seriously. I'd use it. In my windows box I'd probably use it more often than I use the start menu. It'd allow me to ALMOST stop using ctrl+alt+del.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I have trouble finding a single redeeming quality for any of the groups you mentioned above. I'd go so far as to say that, historically, all large groups of people are terrorists, and I wouldn't trust them with much. Actually, I once knew a really nice girl from montana
Does that answer your question?
Here in america we solved this problem years ago! Everybody drives their own car wherever they go. There is no mass transit, and the environment be damned. The only city that hasn't been able to make the switch is New York, and look what happened to them. Viva la automobile (with large back seat)!
I'd say you're a bit off. The US and UK military do train together sometimes, conduct joint missions sometimes, and share some common supplies. (standardized NATO routs and uniforms, weapons, etc.) for a lot of very good reasons. It's a lot easier for both of us if we use the same ammo and weapons and end up having to fight ye olde Soviet Union. Troops can be sent over without equipment and be geared by the brits with the same stuff they already use. Troops can be sent over with crates of guns but not enough ammo for them and the brits can help. The list goes on and on, and the standardization is for a reason.
That being said, although most members of the US military who have worked with the UK military respect them, american soldiers know they're not the same army. There are many distinct differences, and american soldiers would not hesitate to remove them from this planet should the need arise. That being said, brits would not hesitate to do the same should the need arise for them.
Alliances work together to the extent that it is perceived to be in both parties' best interests to do so and not an inch further. Americans develop weapons and sell them to the brits because:
1) americans were already going to develop them
2) they're unlikely to be used against amreicans in the immediate future
3) it offsets the development costs
To reiterate, I do feel you're somewhat right, and am pointing out where the two militaries are somewhat similar and share some common suppliers. I'm also saying that, when it comes down to troops in the field, nobody is confused as to which army is which, and there is no question where the loyalties of each army lie.
San Francisco.
Funny, a website removed mine for me! I visited this website while I was searching for porn, and this popup told me I had spyware on my computer, and I could run their program to clean it! Problem solved! That was really nice of them. I was trying to find their address so I could mail them a thank you card but I couldn't find their address anywhere, and I didn't see a help file when the program installed.
On a small side note, I've been getting a lot of psychic popups since then. They keep asking me if I want a bigger penis and linking me to all sorts of good products to help me out. I'm not sure where they're coming from, but I really appreciate it.
I wouldn't say AM is a good example. The little walkie-talkies all the high school kids say "over and out" on are a much better example of things people actually use. Where have you been living? AM is only used for crappy talk shows and Traffic Info.