You have to hand it to Mr Trump: he is making a magnificent job of polishing off the USA in every conceivable way.
And this "government shutdown" is most artistic. It reminds me of the Japanese samurai ceremony of seppuku (ritual suicide) - but without the merciful termination of the kaishaku (coup de grace).
... and the NGA. Although sueing the US government might be difficult and counterproductive.
I like this bit:
'When he looked up the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s website, he discovered it’s both a U.S. intelligence agency and part of the United States Department of Defense and “delivers world-class geospatial intelligence that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals and first responders"'.
In view of the article and what it reveals, this may be how the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade got bombed. The USAF may have been using their "world-class geospatial intelligence" to hit somewhere completely different, elsewhere in Belgrade or its environs. Not to mention dozens of other world-class clusterfucks since.
Seriously, any company that causes so much distress and harm deserves to be put out of business. Unless it has enough money to pay appropriate damages to all of its victims - whether they complain or not - and to fix its utterly insane software decisions.
The CEO actually didn't know what to do about IP addresses that couldn't be located more precisely than "the USA"? I can do that one instantly. Tell the user that the IP address can't be located more precisely than "the USA". I know it rankles to big business, but when all else fails you can always try telling the truth.
"Roderick claimed to have used a "professional" tracking device "that could not be wrong,"
Isn't it strange how many people nowadays know things like that, with absolute certainty. How could he possibly know that it "could not be wrong"? Because he paid a lot of money for it? Or because some shyster salesman sold him a bill of goods?
The issue here is you are dealing with a country without an open market system..
The interest rate is the price of money, and it is the fundamental price in any free market. No nation whose government (or central bank) controls its interest rates has a free market. The very idea is utterly ridiculous.
Moreover, the USA has very little in the way of free markets, precisely because it is controlled by capitalists. Capitalists loathe and detest free markets and competition, and always do their level best to eliminate them.
Nice try, but the truths in question are not the nature of existence. They were frequently things as simple as the size of his inauguration crown, whether or not it rained, whether or not he defeated isis, whether or not he had killed obamacare..
Hell the post has like a list of 6000.. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if you pointed out any inacuracies..
Funny list.
The only one that matters at all (at least to anyone who isn't a US citizen) is "whether or not he defeated ISIS". Obviously he didn't: even if he were disposed to, his staff and the denizens of the Pentagon, State and the CIA would have put him straight.
Inasmuch as there is something called "ISIS", it has been defeated in Syria by the efforts of Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. (Where by "Syria" I mean the Syrian armed forces, the Syrian government, and many Syrian citizens whether acting as individuals or in concert as militias).
The US government would not try to destroy ISIS, which it created and has sustained at such cost down the years.
The routine use of drones was initiated by the US government in the 1960s and 1970s. It was partly motivated by the realisation that the USSR could shoot down any aircraft - even a U-2 - and partly for reasons of cost and efficiency. Originally seen as ideal for reconnaissance and spying, they were soon modified to carry weapons.
For decades the US government was almost alone in its ability to deploy drones anywhere in the world, and thus to gain information - and optionally kill people and destroy buildings and vehicles - without the need for human presence.
Eventually other nations began to follow suit, as the cost of drone construction plummeted and the technical prerequisites became common knowledge.
And today we are beginning to see the ramifications develop. Apparently the UK government and the airport authorities never gave a moment's thought to the possibility that drones might be used systematically to interfere with airline operations - or even to shut down whole airports, much as a Web site is shut down by a denial of service attack.
It is interesting to think about what will come next. For a start, the nations that have traditionally felt immune to attack must think again. If drones can close down Gatwick Airport without any overt hostile acts, why should they not drop bombs on government offices or strafe roads and railways? Maybe even individuals with uneasy consciences may begin to feel happier under cover.
Russians used to be very friendly towards the USA - especially when they thought it was the land of milk and honey, where streets were paved with gold.
They are still prepared to treat the USA in a friendly way - as far as one can with someone who has tried to poison one and who is known to carry razors up both sleeves and a garrote in his pocket.
Well, his enemies called Lincoln a gorilla and the missing link. So far as I know, that puts Lincoln and Trump in a class apart, as the only US presidents every compared to apes or monkeys.
Truth exists. You can ignore it or call it lies, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Many things were said by Trump and the Russian aids that were trivially proven untrue, usually with a 30 second Google search.
Whether truth exists, as you say, or not is a question that philosophers have been arguing about for several thousand years - and they still haven't decided.
Imagine a world with no human beings, or reasoning animals of any kind. In that world, does truth "exist"? What is, certainly is. But where does "truth" come into it? Truth is a feature of statements: we say that some are true and others are false. No people, no statements, no truth or falsity.
It is a bit worrying that your concern for truth seems narrowly focused on Mr Trump and his supporters. Do you understand that other people tell lies, too? And people often say things that are untrue without realising it - which are not lies, just mistakes. (Just saying...)
Lastly, your innocent remark about relying on "a 30 second Google search" to establish the truth knocks the bottom out of any credibility you might have had. Google? Really?? I suppose the 30 seconds is how long it takes you to look down the list of Google hits and find one that suits your particular bias.
A lot of nonsense is talked about "trade deals" between governments. In fact, of course, governments cannot make any positive contributions to trade - or, really, much of anything else.
But they can screw it up thoroughly if they put their minds to it.
"Free trade" is what people did before there were governments to stop them. It's politicians, and only politicians, who impose tariffs, tell us what we can and can't buy or sell, and thus make global commerce run as smoothly as a car with the handbrake permanently applied.
Governments having "trade negotiations" are like gangsters divvying up the spoils of their respective territories.
Russia can have Syria. Let's see how that works out for them.
Russia doesn't want Syria. You may not understand, but some people just want to keep the peace, trade with one another on a fair basis, and live a decent life. It's not compulsory to exploit, plunder, cheat and kill in order to feel valid.
The Russian government waited as long as it possibly could before giving support to the Syrian government. Another month or so, and Syria would have gone the same way as Libya - much to Washington's satisfaction.
Since 2015 Russia has given Syria the minimum help it needed to defeat the terorists, reclaim its cities and other land and remain a viable, democratic, secular society.
What has Russia gained from this? Something very important: it prevented the creation of a terrorist stronghold just 600 miles from its own frontier.
Spies in 2012-2014 caught trying to recruit US... They went around New York developers offering lucrative Moscow property deals in exchange for getting sanctions lifted against Russia.
That's damned odd, since the sanctions were only imposed in 2014 and later. Did those guys have precognition, or what?
Moreover, the Russian government has never had the slightest motive to try to get sanctions lifted. They have done Europe a lot of economic harm - tens or hundreds of billions worth - and Russia a great deal of good. (Had you noticed that Russia, not the USA, is now the world's leading exporter of wheat? And safe, healthy wheat - not the GM muck the USA produces).
Of course it's no skin off Uncle Sam's nose if Europe suffers economic harm. (As, for instance, by buying expensive American LNG instead of cheap Russian gas from a pipeline - while the USA itself, breathtakingly, is buying the cheap Russian stuff). In fact, it's seen as a positive secondary benefit.
The big idea is to keep Russia from cooperating with Europe - especially Germany - to their mutual advantage. It's quite amusing to kibitz and wonder how long the Germans will go on hurting themselves to gratify Washington before they finally start asking, "Why are we actually doing this?" Surely there are limits to the joy of masochism...
Slashdot Mirror
Old people brains show signs of "compromised cognitive-emotional resilience", or as it's otherwise known "becoming immune to the world".
No doubt because they have learned enough about the world to understand how terrifying and irrational it can be.
The saying in biology is "use it or lose it". Older brains are just out of practice.
Because they have been thinking, learning and solving problems for over 50 years - is that your argument?
Frankly, nobody has any evidence you're even from the US, you don't speak English particularly well
Why would anyone need such evidence? Has Slashdot suddenly become restricted to US citizens?
And I'm confused. Surely not speaking English particularly well would be evidence that a person is a US citizen.
You have to hand it to Mr Trump: he is making a magnificent job of polishing off the USA in every conceivable way.
And this "government shutdown" is most artistic. It reminds me of the Japanese samurai ceremony of seppuku (ritual suicide) - but without the merciful termination of the kaishaku (coup de grace).
And you know that garden gnomes keep going missing, don't you? They're gathering for something.
Beautiful!
... and the NGA. Although sueing the US government might be difficult and counterproductive.
I like this bit:
'When he looked up the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s website, he discovered it’s both a U.S. intelligence agency and part of the United States Department of Defense and “delivers world-class geospatial intelligence that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals and first responders"'.
In view of the article and what it reveals, this may be how the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade got bombed. The USAF may have been using their "world-class geospatial intelligence" to hit somewhere completely different, elsewhere in Belgrade or its environs. Not to mention dozens of other world-class clusterfucks since.
Seriously, any company that causes so much distress and harm deserves to be put out of business. Unless it has enough money to pay appropriate damages to all of its victims - whether they complain or not - and to fix its utterly insane software decisions.
The CEO actually didn't know what to do about IP addresses that couldn't be located more precisely than "the USA"? I can do that one instantly. Tell the user that the IP address can't be located more precisely than "the USA". I know it rankles to big business, but when all else fails you can always try telling the truth.
"Roderick claimed to have used a "professional" tracking device "that could not be wrong,"
Isn't it strange how many people nowadays know things like that, with absolute certainty. How could he possibly know that it "could not be wrong"? Because he paid a lot of money for it? Or because some shyster salesman sold him a bill of goods?
I heard China will pay premium over scrap.
Which is the best use for aircraft carriers nowadays. If sent into battle they would take thousands of decent sailors down with them.
It's very basic.
Any organization that has an "Ethics" department wouldn't recognize ethics if it bit them.
And any nation that has a "Department of Justice" has no justice.
Just like Julian Assange and countless other whistleblowers, journalists, and boys who mentioned that the Emperor is naked.
The establishment's reaction to being shown up is always the same.
Shoot the messanger. Then we can all go back to sleep.
The issue here is you are dealing with a country without an open market system..
The interest rate is the price of money, and it is the fundamental price in any free market. No nation whose government (or central bank) controls its interest rates has a free market. The very idea is utterly ridiculous.
Moreover, the USA has very little in the way of free markets, precisely because it is controlled by capitalists. Capitalists loathe and detest free markets and competition, and always do their level best to eliminate them.
Wrong. We actually have them caught red handed. You don't know shit about this, that's true.
Please give concrete evidence of those statements.
Otherwise we shall have to conclude that you are making them up and know nothing.
I wouldn't want to work at HPE / DXC anyways. Nastiest vendor I've ever met.
So sad. For most of its long life, Hewlett-Packard was the epitome of honesty and straight dealing.
I have a hard time figuring out whether you're naive or a moron.
Well, that's the Dunning-Kruger effect for you.
Nice try, but the truths in question are not the nature of existence. They were frequently things as simple as the size of his inauguration crown, whether or not it rained, whether or not he defeated isis, whether or not he had killed obamacare..
Hell the post has like a list of 6000.. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if you pointed out any inacuracies..
Funny list.
The only one that matters at all (at least to anyone who isn't a US citizen) is "whether or not he defeated ISIS". Obviously he didn't: even if he were disposed to, his staff and the denizens of the Pentagon, State and the CIA would have put him straight.
Inasmuch as there is something called "ISIS", it has been defeated in Syria by the efforts of Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. (Where by "Syria" I mean the Syrian armed forces, the Syrian government, and many Syrian citizens whether acting as individuals or in concert as militias).
The US government would not try to destroy ISIS, which it created and has sustained at such cost down the years.
The routine use of drones was initiated by the US government in the 1960s and 1970s. It was partly motivated by the realisation that the USSR could shoot down any aircraft - even a U-2 - and partly for reasons of cost and efficiency. Originally seen as ideal for reconnaissance and spying, they were soon modified to carry weapons.
For decades the US government was almost alone in its ability to deploy drones anywhere in the world, and thus to gain information - and optionally kill people and destroy buildings and vehicles - without the need for human presence.
Eventually other nations began to follow suit, as the cost of drone construction plummeted and the technical prerequisites became common knowledge.
And today we are beginning to see the ramifications develop. Apparently the UK government and the airport authorities never gave a moment's thought to the possibility that drones might be used systematically to interfere with airline operations - or even to shut down whole airports, much as a Web site is shut down by a denial of service attack.
It is interesting to think about what will come next. For a start, the nations that have traditionally felt immune to attack must think again. If drones can close down Gatwick Airport without any overt hostile acts, why should they not drop bombs on government offices or strafe roads and railways? Maybe even individuals with uneasy consciences may begin to feel happier under cover.
Russians used to be very friendly towards the USA - especially when they thought it was the land of milk and honey, where streets were paved with gold.
They are still prepared to treat the USA in a friendly way - as far as one can with someone who has tried to poison one and who is known to carry razors up both sleeves and a garrote in his pocket.
...we now have a baboon in the White House...
Well, his enemies called Lincoln a gorilla and the missing link. So far as I know, that puts Lincoln and Trump in a class apart, as the only US presidents every compared to apes or monkeys.
There was, there was. You're just too dumb to notice.
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye".
- Matthew 7:5
Truth exists. You can ignore it or call it lies, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Many things were said by Trump and the Russian aids that were trivially proven untrue, usually with a 30 second Google search.
Whether truth exists, as you say, or not is a question that philosophers have been arguing about for several thousand years - and they still haven't decided.
Imagine a world with no human beings, or reasoning animals of any kind. In that world, does truth "exist"? What is, certainly is. But where does "truth" come into it? Truth is a feature of statements: we say that some are true and others are false. No people, no statements, no truth or falsity.
It is a bit worrying that your concern for truth seems narrowly focused on Mr Trump and his supporters. Do you understand that other people tell lies, too? And people often say things that are untrue without realising it - which are not lies, just mistakes. (Just saying...)
Lastly, your innocent remark about relying on "a 30 second Google search" to establish the truth knocks the bottom out of any credibility you might have had. Google? Really?? I suppose the 30 seconds is how long it takes you to look down the list of Google hits and find one that suits your particular bias.
A lot of nonsense is talked about "trade deals" between governments. In fact, of course, governments cannot make any positive contributions to trade - or, really, much of anything else.
But they can screw it up thoroughly if they put their minds to it.
"Free trade" is what people did before there were governments to stop them. It's politicians, and only politicians, who impose tariffs, tell us what we can and can't buy or sell, and thus make global commerce run as smoothly as a car with the handbrake permanently applied.
Governments having "trade negotiations" are like gangsters divvying up the spoils of their respective territories.
That includes Obama's failed attempt to influence the UK Brexit Referendum in 2016.
One of the main reasons many of us voted Leave.
If Obama ordered me to drink a triple Glenmorangie, I would seriously consider not doing so.
Russia can have Syria. Let's see how that works out for them.
Russia doesn't want Syria. You may not understand, but some people just want to keep the peace, trade with one another on a fair basis, and live a decent life. It's not compulsory to exploit, plunder, cheat and kill in order to feel valid.
The Russian government waited as long as it possibly could before giving support to the Syrian government. Another month or so, and Syria would have gone the same way as Libya - much to Washington's satisfaction.
Since 2015 Russia has given Syria the minimum help it needed to defeat the terorists, reclaim its cities and other land and remain a viable, democratic, secular society.
What has Russia gained from this? Something very important: it prevented the creation of a terrorist stronghold just 600 miles from its own frontier.
Spies in 2012-2014 caught trying to recruit US... They went around New York developers offering lucrative Moscow property deals in exchange for getting sanctions lifted against Russia.
That's damned odd, since the sanctions were only imposed in 2014 and later. Did those guys have precognition, or what?
Moreover, the Russian government has never had the slightest motive to try to get sanctions lifted. They have done Europe a lot of economic harm - tens or hundreds of billions worth - and Russia a great deal of good. (Had you noticed that Russia, not the USA, is now the world's leading exporter of wheat? And safe, healthy wheat - not the GM muck the USA produces).
https://russia-insider.com/sit...
Of course it's no skin off Uncle Sam's nose if Europe suffers economic harm. (As, for instance, by buying expensive American LNG instead of cheap Russian gas from a pipeline - while the USA itself, breathtakingly, is buying the cheap Russian stuff). In fact, it's seen as a positive secondary benefit.
The big idea is to keep Russia from cooperating with Europe - especially Germany - to their mutual advantage. It's quite amusing to kibitz and wonder how long the Germans will go on hurting themselves to gratify Washington before they finally start asking, "Why are we actually doing this?" Surely there are limits to the joy of masochism...