In case you hadn't notice, most hatred isn't based on logic. His relatives don't care that uncle Larry was someone the United States dislikes. Furthermore, if uncle Larry is hanging out in the Phillipines (i.e. not in a war zone) he might well expect that there won't be a hellfire missile popping through the window at any moment. He might expect a (Philippine) commando or police team, but that would probably give him the opportunity to surrender, or at least let his kids get out.
First we are not talking about the Phillipines but uncontroled parts of Pakistan and Yemen. In those places there is no local forces that will apprehend the al Qaeda leaders. How about we talk about reality and not fanciful what ifs?
I do not think it is a good thing for the US to be going around assassinating people, with very little oversight, in sovereign nations.
Uncontrolled area are not sovereign nations. If a government can not control an area it is no longer part of their country.
One of the major criticisms of drone weapons is that they make fighting too easy. Countries will go to war on a whim because it no longer involves anyone (you know) sacrificing his life. Drone pilots will be less likely to check their targets, and refuse to fire if there's doubt, because they're more isolated from the actual killing.
"Too ease" is a subjective term. Put yourself in the place of a military commander. You can put the lives of hundreds of soldiers at risk or you can call in a drone attack. To me the choice is simple. We are also not talking about countries going to war but a country prosecution an existing war. You also do not understand how drone attacks are done. Drone pilots do not check their targets; that is done by their controllers. If it was a manned aircraft the same procedure would occur. The pilot would report locked on and request weapons free and the controller would say yes or no. It does not matter where the pilot is the same thing would happen.
It seems that drones are very much living up to that criticism. Drone assassinations are becoming more common, and spreading from war zones to unstable foreign countries, to stable foreign countries. Will they eventually be used in a Waco type situation in Texas? Maybe the US will "accidentally" conduct a strike just on the other side of the Canadian border? Or the Mexican?
Like all slippery slope arguments this one is invalid too. You could just as easily say "Will they eventually take out speeders on the interstate with Hellfire missiles". My answer to all of your questions is no, none of those scenarios will happen. If you disagree then show me proof and not just wild speculation. What stable foreign country has been the site of a drone attack. As far as I can find it is uncontrolled parts of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. None of these areas could be considered stable. If they do spread to stable areas of countries then there would be an issue. So far that has not happened.
When I cross the US border I get pulled aside, often at gunpoint, because I have a common name. It turns out the guy they're looking for is black and has obvious tattoos, a description I obviously don't fit. Yet US border guards draw first and ask questions later. That experience gives me very little confidence in your government's desire to carefully check it's targets.
Do you expect the officers to pull you over, walk up to you window and say "Excuse me, are you the armed fugitive who has killed two police officers? I wouldn't want to offend you by drawing my gun without knowing"? The fact that you look like a fugitive is a bad situation but the Border patrol has a job to do. You have not been shot yet have you? It seems that the government's fire control is pretty good to me.
Care to cite references for those statements about "[c]rimes that are considered to be against society"? If it truly is a justified attack under fard al-ayn then why did major Muslim group make the following statements;
1. The American Muslim Political Co-ordination Committee (AMPCC), which is a group of major American Muslim organizations, including ICNA (our parent organization), issued a statement on September 11, 2001 condemning the terrorist attacks. The AMPCC statement read in part:
"American Muslims utterly condemn what are vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. We join with all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators. No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts."
2. Major American Muslim organizations including the Islamic Circle of North America, are signatories to the following statement released on September 21, 2001.
American Muslim Response to the September Attacks Released September 21, 2001 We, the undersigned Muslim organizations, support the President and Congress of the U.S. in the struggle against terrorism. Holding to the ideals of both our religion and our country, we condemn all forms of terrorism, and confirm the need for perpetrators of any such acts of violence to be brought to justice, including those who carried out the attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. At the same time, in the planning of this "war against terrorism," we call upon the President and Congress to reaffirm the values and principles that make this country great, namely that one is innocent until proven guilty, that all accused have the right to a fair trial, that no one be punished for the acts of another, and that respect for human life is supreme, regardless of race or religion. To this end, we urge the U.S. government not to abandon the due process of law in determining responsibility for the attacks and punishing the guilty parties. We are saddened by the possibility of military action, as we do not believe that terrorism can be eliminated solely or even effectively through military force. Rather we call upon our leaders to recognize that in order to rid the world of the ugliness of terrorism, our nation must understand its root causes. We hold out the hope that these root causes can be addressed through non-violent means, in a way that promotes peace and harmony between the nations of the world.
Signed: Afghan Muslim Association (Fremont, CA) American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice (AMGPJ) American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism (AMILA) Arab-American Congress, Council on American-Islamic Relations (Northern California) Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Bay Area Islamic Networks Group (ING) Islamic Society of the East Bay (Union City, CA) Islamic Society of San Francisco Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) West Zone Muslim American Society Muslim Community Association (MCA) Muslim Peace Fellowship (Nyack, NY) South Bay Islamic Association (San Jose, CA) Zaytuna Institute (Hayward, CA)
3. Prominent scholars worldwide have condemned terrorism as a heresy against Islam. The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, the oldest seat of Islamic learning, Sheikh MuhammedSayyedTantawi, has repeatedly condemned terrorism. He said in the name of Islamic law, he rejected and condemned the aggression against innocent civilian people, regardless of whatever side, sect or country the aggression came from. Prominent scholars of Saudi Arabia, Shaykh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz and ShaykhUthaimeen, also condemned the terrorist attacks. Every other major scholar of Islam, has come out against the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.
3. Statements of Prominent Islamic Scholars “Hijacking planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood constitute a form of injustice that can not be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crime
If professors who are currently working on proving that the Higgs boson exists accept the current theory that it does as fact they may move to new research based on that assumption. So instead of continuing to work to prove the existence of the Higgs boson they are spending their research dollars on something else. That is how finding gets diverted.
The experiment has not even been replicated. There could have been some flaw that created false results like the faster than light experiment done by the same organization. This 99.9999% certainty is based on the detection by two sensors. What is the probability that both sensors malfunctioned? What is the probability that the timing between those sensors was flawed so they didn't really detect the decay at the same time? What is the probability that one of the sensors was flawed and miss read an energy level making it look like they were the same? There are many things that can go wrong in an experiment which is why the scientific method requires replication. At least replicate it a few time before taking the results as fact. How many times was the experiment run without getting these results? Once in an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.
Then perhaps they should ask Uncle Bob if Uncle Larry was a al Quada leader. Uncle Bob should conform the fact considering he is an al Qaeda leader too. Then they should ask Uncle Bob why he is putting them in danger by being there when he knows he too could be killed at any time. Or maybe they should read the papers. Several times al Jazzera has confirmed that the people killed by drone strikes were al Qaeda leaders. People do not live in a vacuum and it is up to them to find the facts.
It is not a "whim". There has to be some intelligence that confirms the person is an al Qaeda leader. No you can not see that evidence as you do not have the security clearance to see it and the evidence itself would reveal how the military got the evidence. This is not a criminal matter. It is not about gang bosses planning on stealing things. The US Senate and Congress has authorized any means necessary to deal with al Qaeda and the Taliban. Drone strikes are one of those means. In an armed conflict a trial is not necessary.
What is your solution to dealing with a known al Qaeda leader in a country where the local authorities can not or will not capture and extradite them? If you say "Send in a Seal team". I say no. Most of these compounds are much more heavily defended than Bin Ladens (he was trying to hide). First a Seal Team would not be enough; It would require a much larger force. Casualties on the terrorist side would be much higher as any force would have to fight their way from a landing area to the target. There could also be heavy US casualties. In the end the al Qaeda leader will probably fight to the end and die anyway. So when I look at the outcome on one hand I see 100 terrorist side casualties and 20 US casualties wile in the other hand I see 20 terrorist side casualties but both end with a dead al Qaeda leader. It is an easy decision for me. Also al Qaeda leaders move around; they are not completely stupid. It is very easy to have a few drones loitering in areas where the leader has been seen and strike when his location is confirmed. That takes minutes. To mount an assault takes hours and the leader would have moved on by then.
It is not standard and proprietary and needs to go.
Agreed but not right now. What happens to all the sites that are designed for IE 8? Do they just disappear? IE 9 has only been out for a bit over a year and that is a bit too soon for it to be the oldest supported browser.
It is silly to be spending millions today to upgrade to IE 8 when it is already obsolete and IE 9 is about to go out of date.
Agreed but I was not talking about upgrading. It is also silly to throw away all the investment in IE 8 sites and have to re-design and re-program them for IE 9 when they work just fine in IE 8. I am not talking about new sites; I am talking about legacy sites that work fine in current browsers but might not in future browsers.
The latest standard will free up your time and a browser will be just a browser again and not a whole browser-like mess that IE and Netscape were in a battle to proprietize the web.
Chasing changing standards and standards becoming obsolete does not "ree up your time" it just make you re-program the same site over and over because it needs to be done a little differently in the new standard and the old standard no longer works.
I suggest that it would stop if people stopped classifying people as the "other", and started seeing them as people.
I guess you stopped reading after the first sentence. To refresh your memory, here is the second sentence;
People need to look at the specific people they are considering killing, see them as individuals and ask "Has this specific person wronged me or the people I an sworn to protect in such a way as to deserve death?".
And further along;
Perhaps that can change to "An American killed my father but you did not do it yourself therefore I will not kill you".
But everybody has an inherent desire for vengeance for wrongs done, and the more personal that wrong, the more we are all inclined to exact vengeance.
In India a man name Mahatma Gandhi was persecuted, beaten and imprisoned for his political views though he never took vengeance on anyone who wronged him. His followers also had the same issues but the movement never use violence or vengeance. One of the things that separate man from animals is that man can suppress his desires. I can understand that my vengeance will cause more damage than good and decide to forego it. Everyone has the choice and most people have the capacity to make that choice.
As for the opium girls, their plight is tragic but why did the farmers borrow tens of thousands of dollars from drug smugglers? Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to heroine production which is then transported to the western world and causing health issues? Maybe it could be done better and the girls protected but their fathers are the ones to blame for creating the situation in the first place.
Anybody who thinks we have done or are doing "good" in Afghanistan is wrong.
Nice succinct unsupported claim. It all depends on what you mean by good. Is everything that has happened in Afghanistan good? Definitely no. Are some things that happened in Afghanistan good? Definitely yes. Elections have taken place. Sharia law, which was not agreed to by a majority of the people, has been removed. Training camps for terrorists who would have done horrendous acts all over the world have been destroyed. Women and girls are allowed to go to school. Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Yes.
Anybody who thinks the right people are being targeted by drone strikes is wrong.
Who do you think are the right people? Perhaps they are targeting the people that they have locations for.
Why are you so upset over a tiny little chance that maybe this will turn out to be a different particle, and that a few professors would have wasted a couple months of work on that?
That assumes a couple of things; 1. That it will take only a couple of months to replicate and prove. It may take years especially if funding get diverted to post-Higgs bosun study. 2. That their estimates of probability are actually correct. From the article they stated that if one sensor detected decay as predicted for a Higgs bison it was 90% probability that it was one. Later they state that since two detected the decay simultaneously the probability goes up to 99.999%. From elementary probability if one event has a 10% chance of being wrong then the chance of the same error happening twice is 1% and not 0.0001%. What if there was a problem with the sensors and they bot sent incorrect readings? 3. That the theory is correct. What if what they were seeing is a secondary decay from a higher mass particle. In all the papers they state that they have found something consistent with Higgs bosun and it may be something completely different and the theory may be completely wrong. When one has a theory and looks for it long enough one might just "find" it and then realize it was a mistake.
Funny thing but I never said anything about heaven or hell, good or evil. What I was talking about is intent as a legal term. To kill and enemy combatant is a legal intent. To cause terror in a populous is an illegal intent.
Other posters have already mentioned the way the founders of al-Qaeda (or maybe al-Qaeda itself in an earlier incarnation) received assistance from the US military. The intentions at the time were arguably "good", stopping the spread of Soviet influence in countries like Afghanistan.
The fact a good act of helping a people fight an invading oppressor has been turned against the people helping has nothing to do with the people offering the help. It has much more to do with the people who were being helped being ungrateful.
Ultimately, it's the consequences that matter. When drone strikes or nuclear bombs kill far too many civilians, then maybe it's time to change the means, the tools used to carry out your intent.
There are lots of organizations and only a few of them have the goal of inflicting damage on the Western World. Many of the "terrorist groups" did not exist before 9/11/01 and are resistance forces, with goals limited to either their nation's borders or the broader defense of islamic states.
Considering that we are discussing drone attacks and not terrorist groups in general how about we stick to that subject. For example, ETA is trying to win freedom for the Basque region. Some call them freedom fighters while some call them terrorists and their objective is something other than causing damage to the Western World. On the other hand, since they have never been targeted by a drone attack their group is not a subject of this discussion. Al Qaeda has been targeted by drones. Al Qaeda had committed terrorist actions outside their territory. One of al Qaeda's main mottoes is "Death to America". Organizations such as those are the one we are talking about. What organizations other than al Qaeda and the Taliban have been targeted by drones? I can not find any. Talking about lots of organization when we are only discussing two, al Qaeda and the Taliban, is irrelevant.
Go watch Rambo III (1988). He's playing buzkashi with the locals in Pakistan, when two Soviet attack helicopters kill almost everyone in the village. Rambo says something 80s like "It's my war now" and then goes into Afghanistan to rescue his old boss and kick the entire Soviet Army's ass. Replace "Soviets" with "USA" and you'll understand why so many in the Middle East are pissed off at having their villages bombed by drones.
Did Rambo go to Russia and bomb office towers? Did he go to other countries and send suicide bombers at embassies? No, he took legitimate military action against military targets in the country where the unprovoked attack came from. That is exactly my point; there is a huge difference between military action and terrorism.
There has to be someone to wave the Bible or the Quoran. They are called religious leaders. An un-charismatic, illiterate religious leader waving the Bible will not get many followers and would be ineffective. If the effective leaders are dead or decide to take another line of action other than terrorism then maybe terrorism will decrease.
Any planned actions that require multiple people to complete automatically forms a military hierarchy. There is a term for a leaderless group; rabble. A rabble is easy to disperse.
And in case you didn't notice, the fighters in Afghanistan are not part of a conventional military hierarchy.
I guess you are unfamiliar with Ahmad Shah Massoud "Lion of Panjshir" who was a commander during the Soviet invasion. I bet if he and his lieutenants were not around the Soviets wound not have ad as much of an issue.
If leaders in al-Qaeda are not important then why have them? If there are no leaders they why do media, including al Jazeera, call them leaders? If there are no leaders then who is the US targeting? In any movement leaders are what hold the movement together. Without leaders movements fall apart.
There is an issue here in that many Muslims are being killed by Americans. A death for a death would fit into this philosophy. But does that mean that any Muslim can legitimately kill any American? I don't think so. There is also another issue in that a crime must have been committed. For example, if someone attacks someone else and in the fight loses an eye does the defender owe the attacker an eye? Absolutely not as the defender did not break the law in defending himself.
I think it also means that punishment can only be meted out on the specific perpetrator of the injury; not his family, not his ethnic group, not members of his nationality, etc. One can only punish the one who did the crime.
The "eye for an eye" concept is much more complex than most people understand. The problem is that charismatic leaders can easily corrupt it into becoming "Your grandfather killed my grandfather therefore I will destroy your country".
It all depends on what you mean by "by the time there's an HTML6". If you are talking about 2015 the mine is probably closer. If you are talking about 2030 then your is probably closer.
By the way, there are a few physical issues with speech recognition that can not be overcome by technology. First, that do not work well when you are close to others and do not want to bother them or let them know way you are doing. A bus or a crowded office does not work well when everyone is using speech recognition to control and input to a computer. Secondly, speech recognition is a very poor command method for doing fine work like editing a document. How would you tell a computer exactly where you wanted to insert some text? Pointing with a mouse is faster. Data entry is very different than data editing.
Until we get true, low cost, gesture based VR the desktop is not going away for the average person.
For an organized movement to be effective it takes leadership. There need to be people who are willing to plan, organize and command actions. These leaders need charisma to convince others to join them and follow orders. It takes intelligence to plan the actions. It take courage to carry them out. Very few people have these attributes in enough abundance to convince other to follow them when the possibility of death is very high. Drone strikes work in three ways. First it they eliminate the current leaders so that the organization must look to less qualified people to lead. As the quality of leadership goes down the organization is easier to infiltrate and dismantle. Secondly, it may dawn on the people around the leaders that being near them and supporting them may not be the safest option. They may tell the leaders to go away from their homes and decrease support. Third, intelligent people who may become terrorist leader may look at their life expectancy as a terrorist leader and think of alternate means of getting their message across. Perhaps there is another solution that does not involve putting their own head in the noose.
It would stop if people got past the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" teachings of the Old Testament (I am not sure what the quran says about this but I bet there is a similar quote). People need to look at the specific people they are considering killing, see them as individuals and ask "Has this specific person wronged me or the people I an sworn to protect in such a way as to deserve death?". I believe in most cases the answer will be no; especially in generational conflicts. Maybe this will stop the "An American killed my father; you are an American prepare to die". Did the person being threatened do the killing? No, therefore that specific person does not deserve death. Perhaps that can change to "An American killed my father but you did not do it yourself therefore I will not kill you".
When we can get away from battles between factions and deconstruct it to what it really is, people killing people, maybe we can stop the cycle.
Some may call drone strikes terrorism but I do not. In my mind the difference is intent. The intent of a drone strike is to eliminate the training and control structure of a organization whose main goal is to inflict damage on the Western World. This is very different than the intent of al-Qaeda which is to change policy by terrorizing people. The fact that drones sometimes miss and usually kill possibly innocent people does not change the intent. How many terrorist commanders are deliberately staying in civilian areas to try to protect themselves. Should we allow enemy commanders to use human shields? It is well known that the US will take out and al-Qaeda leader they find. It is up to the al-Qaeda leader to decide whose lives are put at risk by being close by. How many of the "innocent civilians" are actually supplying and supporting terrorists or possibly terrorists themselves?
You need to look at this from a developer's point of view as well. When one is developing a site it costs money. To update that site it costs money. When deciding a target browser a big consideration is audience. Do I target a new standard that can only be seen properly by 10% of users or do I target an older standard that can be seen by 90% of users? From a business standpoint the decision is simple; go with the 90%. It takes years for browsers to become completely compatible with new standards. IE 8 is only three years old. You may see that as a long time but companies who have invested large sums of money in a web site see it as very short.
In effect a developer has a choice between targeting an non-cutting edge standard or greatly increasing their budget to deal with multiple standards and continue to pour money down that hole as standards change. Again the business decision is pretty clear; go with the non-cutting edge standard.
Living standards are useless. It is very simple to write a standards that says a browser should do such and such when presented with this new tag. It takes time to work through how those new tags interact with existing tags and decide how conflicts are handled. What if the new tag is inside this other tag? What if it is wraps this other tag? That analysis has to be done for every tag in the standard. When that is done then the browsers have to be written, tested and deployed. It takes a lot of money to write browser code and I doubt very much that any company if ever going to keep up with a "living standard".
Browsers will always lag behind standards due to implementation time and sites will always lag behind browser due to audience concerns. In the end, if HTML 5.99 appears in a couple of years I bet that most browsers will still be at HTML 5.20 and most sites will still be at HTML 5.0.
It sounds like you want HTML 6 to replace the desktop. Considering the different OSes out there this may be an unrealistic goal. In general a web browser is designed to retrieve and display information from other computers. It is not designed to record information on one's own computer. We have much better applications for that and it does not require stuffing everything into one box.
That would not be an issue as you are not getting into the vehicle and driving off. All "bait car" arrests are made after the suspect has obviously attempted to steal the vehicle. Opening a door, turning off the lights and closing the door can in no way be construed as theft. Another point is that the cameras are pointed to capture images of someone sitting in the driver's seat. It would probably net capture an image of someone turning lights off.
There is a big difference between the actions of one “rogue agent” and SOP for the DEA. Panting an entire organization with the actions of a few in invalid in any circumstances.
Entrapment is offering to sell drugs and then arresting people who buy them. That is different than waiting for a request to buy drugs and arresting people when the transaction completes. Here are two examples;
Undercover officer; Want to buy (insert illegal drug here)? Person; Sure Person and officer exchange "drugs" for money. Officer arrests person. That is entrapment as the officer made the first offer of an illegal action.
Undercover officer; Looking for something)? Person; Yeah, got any (insert illegal drug here)? Person and officer exchange "drugs" for money. Officer arrests person. That is not entrapment as the person made the first offer of an illegal action.
In the case of the cell phone, if the officer sent texts offering to sell drugs that would be entrapment. On the other hand if the officer responded to texts asking for drugs that would not be entrapment.
You are exaggerating to an incredible degree here.
What exactly do you consider to be exaggerations?
You think those people wouldn't be paid if they weren't working on the Higgs results?
How about we pay them to work on something based on a more proven theory rather than, what is at this point, yet another layer of conjecture. How many layers of conjecture does it take to change from theory to flight of fancy? If this is true and this is true and this is true and this is true and this is true then this could be true.
You are talking about costs that are at least an order of magnitude smaller.
An order of magnitude less than horrendously expensive it still very expensive.
And what would you have those PhDs and grad students do in the meantime?
How about working on the data from the current experiment to prove it rather than assuming it proves the theory. Isn't there other things to work on in theoretical physics rather that work based on the unproven existence of Higgs bosun?
I think I see where we diverge in our ideas. I see a huge difference between a theoretical physicist and theoreticians. To me theoretical physicists takes proven fact and theorizes one or two levels and describes what they think is real. A theoretician doesn't care how many layers of conjecture are between facts and their theory. To me there are so many layers of conjecture up to the Higgs bosun that going past that is a flight of fancy.
This reminds me of an old joke; Three PHDs are on a train to Glasgow; an economist, an engineer and a mathematician. The economist looks out the window, see some black sheep and states "All the sheep in Scotland are black". The engineer looks out the window, shakes his head and states"Some of the sheep are black". The mathematician looks out the window, sighs and states "In Scotland there exists at least one field where the sheep are black on at least one side". The mathematician is absolutely correct because all that was observed was one field and one side of each sheep.
In this instance it seems that one experiment has a hazy picture of a black animal and the theoreticians are trying to state "See, black sheep are everywhere just like we theorized; lets move on".
Theoretical research still takes people and computers; both of which cost money. A research team consisting of two PHDs and four grad students can easily cost $1Mill. a year. Multiply that by the number of interested research groups and the possible waste can be huge. Are you really willing to risk wasting millions of dollars in very scarce funding for theoretical research just because one can not wait to be sure that the single experiment was not an anomaly?
Here is a quote from CERN Director General Rolf Heuer; “The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.” Even the CERN director does not claim to have found the Higgs boson; just a particle consistent with it. As it is said earlier in the article, it could be Higgs or it could be something more exotic. At least replicate the experiment first.
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In case you hadn't notice, most hatred isn't based on logic. His relatives don't care that uncle Larry was someone the United States dislikes. Furthermore, if uncle Larry is hanging out in the Phillipines (i.e. not in a war zone) he might well expect that there won't be a hellfire missile popping through the window at any moment. He might expect a (Philippine) commando or police team, but that would probably give him the opportunity to surrender, or at least let his kids get out.
First we are not talking about the Phillipines but uncontroled parts of Pakistan and Yemen. In those places there is no local forces that will apprehend the al Qaeda leaders. How about we talk about reality and not fanciful what ifs?
I do not think it is a good thing for the US to be going around assassinating people, with very little oversight, in sovereign nations.
Uncontrolled area are not sovereign nations. If a government can not control an area it is no longer part of their country.
One of the major criticisms of drone weapons is that they make fighting too easy. Countries will go to war on a whim because it no longer involves anyone (you know) sacrificing his life. Drone pilots will be less likely to check their targets, and refuse to fire if there's doubt, because they're more isolated from the actual killing.
"Too ease" is a subjective term. Put yourself in the place of a military commander. You can put the lives of hundreds of soldiers at risk or you can call in a drone attack. To me the choice is simple. We are also not talking about countries going to war but a country prosecution an existing war. You also do not understand how drone attacks are done. Drone pilots do not check their targets; that is done by their controllers. If it was a manned aircraft the same procedure would occur. The pilot would report locked on and request weapons free and the controller would say yes or no. It does not matter where the pilot is the same thing would happen.
It seems that drones are very much living up to that criticism. Drone assassinations are becoming more common, and spreading from war zones to unstable foreign countries, to stable foreign countries. Will they eventually be used in a Waco type situation in Texas? Maybe the US will "accidentally" conduct a strike just on the other side of the Canadian border? Or the Mexican?
Like all slippery slope arguments this one is invalid too. You could just as easily say "Will they eventually take out speeders on the interstate with Hellfire missiles". My answer to all of your questions is no, none of those scenarios will happen. If you disagree then show me proof and not just wild speculation. What stable foreign country has been the site of a drone attack. As far as I can find it is uncontrolled parts of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. None of these areas could be considered stable. If they do spread to stable areas of countries then there would be an issue. So far that has not happened.
When I cross the US border I get pulled aside, often at gunpoint, because I have a common name. It turns out the guy they're looking for is black and has obvious tattoos, a description I obviously don't fit. Yet US border guards draw first and ask questions later. That experience gives me very little confidence in your government's desire to carefully check it's targets.
Do you expect the officers to pull you over, walk up to you window and say "Excuse me, are you the armed fugitive who has killed two police officers? I wouldn't want to offend you by drawing my gun without knowing"? The fact that you look like a fugitive is a bad situation but the Border patrol has a job to do. You have not been shot yet have you? It seems that the government's fire control is pretty good to me.
Care to cite references for those statements about "[c]rimes that are considered to be against society"?
If it truly is a justified attack under fard al-ayn then why did major Muslim group make the following statements;
1. The American Muslim Political Co-ordination Committee (AMPCC), which is a group of major American Muslim organizations, including ICNA (our parent organization), issued a statement on September 11, 2001 condemning the terrorist attacks. The AMPCC statement read in part:
"American Muslims utterly condemn what are vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. We join with all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators. No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts."
2. Major American Muslim organizations including the Islamic Circle of North America, are signatories to the following statement released on September 21, 2001.
American Muslim Response to the September Attacks Released September 21, 2001
We, the undersigned Muslim organizations, support the President and Congress of the U.S. in the struggle against terrorism. Holding to the ideals of both our religion and our country, we condemn all forms of terrorism, and confirm the need for perpetrators of any such acts of violence to be brought to justice, including those who carried out the attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
At the same time, in the planning of this "war against terrorism," we call upon the President and Congress to reaffirm the values and principles that make this country great, namely that one is innocent until proven guilty, that all accused have the right to a fair trial, that no one be punished for the acts of another, and that respect for human life is supreme, regardless of race or religion. To this end, we urge the U.S. government not to abandon the due process of law in determining responsibility for the attacks and punishing the guilty parties.
We are saddened by the possibility of military action, as we do not believe that terrorism can be eliminated solely or even effectively through military force. Rather we call upon our leaders to recognize that in order to rid the world of the ugliness of terrorism, our nation must understand its root causes. We hold out the hope that these root causes can be addressed through non-violent means, in a way that promotes peace and harmony between the nations of the world.
Signed:
Afghan Muslim Association (Fremont, CA)
American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice (AMGPJ)
American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism (AMILA)
Arab-American Congress, Council on American-Islamic Relations (Northern California)
Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Bay Area
Islamic Networks Group (ING)
Islamic Society of the East Bay (Union City, CA)
Islamic Society of San Francisco
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) West Zone
Muslim American Society
Muslim Community Association (MCA)
Muslim Peace Fellowship (Nyack, NY)
South Bay Islamic Association (San Jose, CA)
Zaytuna Institute (Hayward, CA)
3. Prominent scholars worldwide have condemned terrorism as a heresy against Islam. The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, the oldest seat of Islamic learning, Sheikh MuhammedSayyedTantawi, has repeatedly condemned terrorism. He said in the name of Islamic law, he rejected and condemned the aggression against innocent civilian people, regardless of whatever side, sect or country the aggression came from.
Prominent scholars of Saudi Arabia, Shaykh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz and ShaykhUthaimeen, also condemned the terrorist attacks. Every other major scholar of Islam, has come out against the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.
3. Statements of Prominent Islamic Scholars “Hijacking planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood constitute a form of injustice that can not be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crime
Is the Red Neck Rocket Scientist thinking about using the phrase "Hey Bubba, watch this!!" just before he hits the launch button?
If professors who are currently working on proving that the Higgs boson exists accept the current theory that it does as fact they may move to new research based on that assumption. So instead of continuing to work to prove the existence of the Higgs boson they are spending their research dollars on something else. That is how finding gets diverted.
The experiment has not even been replicated. There could have been some flaw that created false results like the faster than light experiment done by the same organization. This 99.9999% certainty is based on the detection by two sensors. What is the probability that both sensors malfunctioned? What is the probability that the timing between those sensors was flawed so they didn't really detect the decay at the same time? What is the probability that one of the sensors was flawed and miss read an energy level making it look like they were the same? There are many things that can go wrong in an experiment which is why the scientific method requires replication. At least replicate it a few time before taking the results as fact. How many times was the experiment run without getting these results? Once in an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.
Then perhaps they should ask Uncle Bob if Uncle Larry was a al Quada leader. Uncle Bob should conform the fact considering he is an al Qaeda leader too. Then they should ask Uncle Bob why he is putting them in danger by being there when he knows he too could be killed at any time. Or maybe they should read the papers. Several times al Jazzera has confirmed that the people killed by drone strikes were al Qaeda leaders. People do not live in a vacuum and it is up to them to find the facts.
It is not a "whim". There has to be some intelligence that confirms the person is an al Qaeda leader. No you can not see that evidence as you do not have the security clearance to see it and the evidence itself would reveal how the military got the evidence. This is not a criminal matter. It is not about gang bosses planning on stealing things. The US Senate and Congress has authorized any means necessary to deal with al Qaeda and the Taliban. Drone strikes are one of those means. In an armed conflict a trial is not necessary.
What is your solution to dealing with a known al Qaeda leader in a country where the local authorities can not or will not capture and extradite them? If you say "Send in a Seal team". I say no. Most of these compounds are much more heavily defended than Bin Ladens (he was trying to hide). First a Seal Team would not be enough; It would require a much larger force. Casualties on the terrorist side would be much higher as any force would have to fight their way from a landing area to the target. There could also be heavy US casualties. In the end the al Qaeda leader will probably fight to the end and die anyway. So when I look at the outcome on one hand I see 100 terrorist side casualties and 20 US casualties wile in the other hand I see 20 terrorist side casualties but both end with a dead al Qaeda leader. It is an easy decision for me. Also al Qaeda leaders move around; they are not completely stupid. It is very easy to have a few drones loitering in areas where the leader has been seen and strike when his location is confirmed. That takes minutes. To mount an assault takes hours and the leader would have moved on by then.
It is not standard and proprietary and needs to go.
Agreed but not right now. What happens to all the sites that are designed for IE 8? Do they just disappear? IE 9 has only been out for a bit over a year and that is a bit too soon for it to be the oldest supported browser.
It is silly to be spending millions today to upgrade to IE 8 when it is already obsolete and IE 9 is about to go out of date.
Agreed but I was not talking about upgrading. It is also silly to throw away all the investment in IE 8 sites and have to re-design and re-program them for IE 9 when they work just fine in IE 8. I am not talking about new sites; I am talking about legacy sites that work fine in current browsers but might not in future browsers.
The latest standard will free up your time and a browser will be just a browser again and not a whole browser-like mess that IE and Netscape were in a battle to proprietize the web.
Chasing changing standards and standards becoming obsolete does not "ree up your time" it just make you re-program the same site over and over because it needs to be done a little differently in the new standard and the old standard no longer works.
I suggest that it would stop if people stopped classifying people as the "other", and started seeing them as people.
I guess you stopped reading after the first sentence. To refresh your memory, here is the second sentence;
People need to look at the specific people they are considering killing, see them as individuals and ask "Has this specific person wronged me or the people I an sworn to protect in such a way as to deserve death?".
And further along;
Perhaps that can change to "An American killed my father but you did not do it yourself therefore I will not kill you".
But everybody has an inherent desire for vengeance for wrongs done, and the more personal that wrong, the more we are all inclined to exact vengeance.
In India a man name Mahatma Gandhi was persecuted, beaten and imprisoned for his political views though he never took vengeance on anyone who wronged him. His followers also had the same issues but the movement never use violence or vengeance. One of the things that separate man from animals is that man can suppress his desires. I can understand that my vengeance will cause more damage than good and decide to forego it. Everyone has the choice and most people have the capacity to make that choice.
As for the opium girls, their plight is tragic but why did the farmers borrow tens of thousands of dollars from drug smugglers? Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to heroine production which is then transported to the western world and causing health issues? Maybe it could be done better and the girls protected but their fathers are the ones to blame for creating the situation in the first place.
Anybody who thinks we have done or are doing "good" in Afghanistan is wrong.
Nice succinct unsupported claim. It all depends on what you mean by good. Is everything that has happened in Afghanistan good? Definitely no. Are some things that happened in Afghanistan good? Definitely yes. Elections have taken place. Sharia law, which was not agreed to by a majority of the people, has been removed. Training camps for terrorists who would have done horrendous acts all over the world have been destroyed. Women and girls are allowed to go to school. Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Yes.
Anybody who thinks the right people are being targeted by drone strikes is wrong.
Who do you think are the right people? Perhaps they are targeting the people that they have locations for.
Why are you so upset over a tiny little chance that maybe this will turn out to be a different particle, and that a few professors would have wasted a couple months of work on that?
That assumes a couple of things;
1. That it will take only a couple of months to replicate and prove. It may take years especially if funding get diverted to post-Higgs bosun study.
2. That their estimates of probability are actually correct. From the article they stated that if one sensor detected decay as predicted for a Higgs bison it was 90% probability that it was one. Later they state that since two detected the decay simultaneously the probability goes up to 99.999%. From elementary probability if one event has a 10% chance of being wrong then the chance of the same error happening twice is 1% and not 0.0001%. What if there was a problem with the sensors and they bot sent incorrect readings?
3. That the theory is correct. What if what they were seeing is a secondary decay from a higher mass particle. In all the papers they state that they have found something consistent with Higgs bosun and it may be something completely different and the theory may be completely wrong. When one has a theory and looks for it long enough one might just "find" it and then realize it was a mistake.
Funny thing but I never said anything about heaven or hell, good or evil. What I was talking about is intent as a legal term. To kill and enemy combatant is a legal intent. To cause terror in a populous is an illegal intent.
Other posters have already mentioned the way the founders of al-Qaeda (or maybe al-Qaeda itself in an earlier incarnation) received assistance from the US military. The intentions at the time were arguably "good", stopping the spread of Soviet influence in countries like Afghanistan.
The fact a good act of helping a people fight an invading oppressor has been turned against the people helping has nothing to do with the people offering the help. It has much more to do with the people who were being helped being ungrateful.
Ultimately, it's the consequences that matter. When drone strikes or nuclear bombs kill far too many civilians, then maybe it's time to change the means, the tools used to carry out your intent.
What would you suggest?
There are lots of organizations and only a few of them have the goal of inflicting damage on the Western World.
Many of the "terrorist groups" did not exist before 9/11/01 and are resistance forces, with goals limited to either their nation's borders or the broader defense of islamic states.
Considering that we are discussing drone attacks and not terrorist groups in general how about we stick to that subject. For example, ETA is trying to win freedom for the Basque region. Some call them freedom fighters while some call them terrorists and their objective is something other than causing damage to the Western World. On the other hand, since they have never been targeted by a drone attack their group is not a subject of this discussion. Al Qaeda has been targeted by drones. Al Qaeda had committed terrorist actions outside their territory. One of al Qaeda's main mottoes is "Death to America". Organizations such as those are the one we are talking about. What organizations other than al Qaeda and the Taliban have been targeted by drones? I can not find any. Talking about lots of organization when we are only discussing two, al Qaeda and the Taliban, is irrelevant.
Go watch Rambo III (1988).
He's playing buzkashi with the locals in Pakistan, when two Soviet attack helicopters kill almost everyone in the village.
Rambo says something 80s like "It's my war now" and then goes into Afghanistan to rescue his old boss and kick the entire Soviet Army's ass.
Replace "Soviets" with "USA" and you'll understand why so many in the Middle East are pissed off at having their villages bombed by drones.
Did Rambo go to Russia and bomb office towers? Did he go to other countries and send suicide bombers at embassies? No, he took legitimate military action against military targets in the country where the unprovoked attack came from. That is exactly my point; there is a huge difference between military action and terrorism.
Agreed!
There has to be someone to wave the Bible or the Quoran. They are called religious leaders. An un-charismatic, illiterate religious leader waving the Bible will not get many followers and would be ineffective. If the effective leaders are dead or decide to take another line of action other than terrorism then maybe terrorism will decrease.
Care to cite anything to support your assertion?
Any planned actions that require multiple people to complete automatically forms a military hierarchy. There is a term for a leaderless group; rabble. A rabble is easy to disperse.
And in case you didn't notice, the fighters in Afghanistan are not part of a conventional military hierarchy.
I guess you are unfamiliar with Ahmad Shah Massoud "Lion of Panjshir" who was a commander during the Soviet invasion. I bet if he and his lieutenants were not around the Soviets wound not have ad as much of an issue.
If leaders in al-Qaeda are not important then why have them? If there are no leaders they why do media, including al Jazeera, call them leaders? If there are no leaders then who is the US targeting? In any movement leaders are what hold the movement together. Without leaders movements fall apart.
There is an issue here in that many Muslims are being killed by Americans. A death for a death would fit into this philosophy. But does that mean that any Muslim can legitimately kill any American? I don't think so. There is also another issue in that a crime must have been committed. For example, if someone attacks someone else and in the fight loses an eye does the defender owe the attacker an eye? Absolutely not as the defender did not break the law in defending himself.
I think it also means that punishment can only be meted out on the specific perpetrator of the injury; not his family, not his ethnic group, not members of his nationality, etc. One can only punish the one who did the crime.
The "eye for an eye" concept is much more complex than most people understand. The problem is that charismatic leaders can easily corrupt it into becoming "Your grandfather killed my grandfather therefore I will destroy your country".
It all depends on what you mean by "by the time there's an HTML6". If you are talking about 2015 the mine is probably closer. If you are talking about 2030 then your is probably closer.
By the way, there are a few physical issues with speech recognition that can not be overcome by technology. First, that do not work well when you are close to others and do not want to bother them or let them know way you are doing. A bus or a crowded office does not work well when everyone is using speech recognition to control and input to a computer. Secondly, speech recognition is a very poor command method for doing fine work like editing a document. How would you tell a computer exactly where you wanted to insert some text? Pointing with a mouse is faster. Data entry is very different than data editing.
Until we get true, low cost, gesture based VR the desktop is not going away for the average person.
For an organized movement to be effective it takes leadership. There need to be people who are willing to plan, organize and command actions. These leaders need charisma to convince others to join them and follow orders. It takes intelligence to plan the actions. It take courage to carry them out. Very few people have these attributes in enough abundance to convince other to follow them when the possibility of death is very high. Drone strikes work in three ways. First it they eliminate the current leaders so that the organization must look to less qualified people to lead. As the quality of leadership goes down the organization is easier to infiltrate and dismantle. Secondly, it may dawn on the people around the leaders that being near them and supporting them may not be the safest option. They may tell the leaders to go away from their homes and decrease support. Third, intelligent people who may become terrorist leader may look at their life expectancy as a terrorist leader and think of alternate means of getting their message across. Perhaps there is another solution that does not involve putting their own head in the noose.
It would stop if people got past the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" teachings of the Old Testament (I am not sure what the quran says about this but I bet there is a similar quote). People need to look at the specific people they are considering killing, see them as individuals and ask "Has this specific person wronged me or the people I an sworn to protect in such a way as to deserve death?". I believe in most cases the answer will be no; especially in generational conflicts. Maybe this will stop the "An American killed my father; you are an American prepare to die". Did the person being threatened do the killing? No, therefore that specific person does not deserve death. Perhaps that can change to "An American killed my father but you did not do it yourself therefore I will not kill you".
When we can get away from battles between factions and deconstruct it to what it really is, people killing people, maybe we can stop the cycle.
Some may call drone strikes terrorism but I do not. In my mind the difference is intent. The intent of a drone strike is to eliminate the training and control structure of a organization whose main goal is to inflict damage on the Western World. This is very different than the intent of al-Qaeda which is to change policy by terrorizing people. The fact that drones sometimes miss and usually kill possibly innocent people does not change the intent. How many terrorist commanders are deliberately staying in civilian areas to try to protect themselves. Should we allow enemy commanders to use human shields? It is well known that the US will take out and al-Qaeda leader they find. It is up to the al-Qaeda leader to decide whose lives are put at risk by being close by. How many of the "innocent civilians" are actually supplying and supporting terrorists or possibly terrorists themselves?
You need to look at this from a developer's point of view as well. When one is developing a site it costs money. To update that site it costs money. When deciding a target browser a big consideration is audience. Do I target a new standard that can only be seen properly by 10% of users or do I target an older standard that can be seen by 90% of users? From a business standpoint the decision is simple; go with the 90%. It takes years for browsers to become completely compatible with new standards. IE 8 is only three years old. You may see that as a long time but companies who have invested large sums of money in a web site see it as very short.
In effect a developer has a choice between targeting an non-cutting edge standard or greatly increasing their budget to deal with multiple standards and continue to pour money down that hole as standards change. Again the business decision is pretty clear; go with the non-cutting edge standard.
Living standards are useless. It is very simple to write a standards that says a browser should do such and such when presented with this new tag. It takes time to work through how those new tags interact with existing tags and decide how conflicts are handled. What if the new tag is inside this other tag? What if it is wraps this other tag? That analysis has to be done for every tag in the standard. When that is done then the browsers have to be written, tested and deployed. It takes a lot of money to write browser code and I doubt very much that any company if ever going to keep up with a "living standard".
Browsers will always lag behind standards due to implementation time and sites will always lag behind browser due to audience concerns. In the end, if HTML 5.99 appears in a couple of years I bet that most browsers will still be at HTML 5.20 and most sites will still be at HTML 5.0.
It sounds like you want HTML 6 to replace the desktop. Considering the different OSes out there this may be an unrealistic goal. In general a web browser is designed to retrieve and display information from other computers. It is not designed to record information on one's own computer. We have much better applications for that and it does not require stuffing everything into one box.
That would not be an issue as you are not getting into the vehicle and driving off. All "bait car" arrests are made after the suspect has obviously attempted to steal the vehicle. Opening a door, turning off the lights and closing the door can in no way be construed as theft. Another point is that the cameras are pointed to capture images of someone sitting in the driver's seat. It would probably net capture an image of someone turning lights off.
There is a big difference between the actions of one “rogue agent” and SOP for the DEA. Panting an entire organization with the actions of a few in invalid in any circumstances.
Entrapment is offering to sell drugs and then arresting people who buy them. That is different than waiting for a request to buy drugs and arresting people when the transaction completes.
Here are two examples;
Undercover officer; Want to buy (insert illegal drug here)?
Person; Sure
Person and officer exchange "drugs" for money.
Officer arrests person. That is entrapment as the officer made the first offer of an illegal action.
Undercover officer; Looking for something)?
Person; Yeah, got any (insert illegal drug here)?
Person and officer exchange "drugs" for money.
Officer arrests person. That is not entrapment as the person made the first offer of an illegal action.
In the case of the cell phone, if the officer sent texts offering to sell drugs that would be entrapment. On the other hand if the officer responded to texts asking for drugs that would not be entrapment.
You are exaggerating to an incredible degree here.
What exactly do you consider to be exaggerations?
You think those people wouldn't be paid if they weren't working on the Higgs results?
How about we pay them to work on something based on a more proven theory rather than, what is at this point, yet another layer of conjecture. How many layers of conjecture does it take to change from theory to flight of fancy? If this is true and this is true and this is true and this is true and this is true then this could be true.
You are talking about costs that are at least an order of magnitude smaller.
An order of magnitude less than horrendously expensive it still very expensive.
And what would you have those PhDs and grad students do in the meantime?
How about working on the data from the current experiment to prove it rather than assuming it proves the theory. Isn't there other things to work on in theoretical physics rather that work based on the unproven existence of Higgs bosun?
I think I see where we diverge in our ideas. I see a huge difference between a theoretical physicist and theoreticians. To me theoretical physicists takes proven fact and theorizes one or two levels and describes what they think is real. A theoretician doesn't care how many layers of conjecture are between facts and their theory. To me there are so many layers of conjecture up to the Higgs bosun that going past that is a flight of fancy.
This reminds me of an old joke;
Three PHDs are on a train to Glasgow; an economist, an engineer and a mathematician.
The economist looks out the window, see some black sheep and states "All the sheep in Scotland are black".
The engineer looks out the window, shakes his head and states"Some of the sheep are black".
The mathematician looks out the window, sighs and states "In Scotland there exists at least one field where the sheep are black on at least one side".
The mathematician is absolutely correct because all that was observed was one field and one side of each sheep.
In this instance it seems that one experiment has a hazy picture of a black animal and the theoreticians are trying to state "See, black sheep are everywhere just like we theorized; lets move on".
Theoretical research still takes people and computers; both of which cost money. A research team consisting of two PHDs and four grad students can easily cost $1Mill. a year. Multiply that by the number of interested research groups and the possible waste can be huge. Are you really willing to risk wasting millions of dollars in very scarce funding for theoretical research just because one can not wait to be sure that the single experiment was not an anomaly?
Here is a quote from CERN Director General Rolf Heuer;
“The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.”
Even the CERN director does not claim to have found the Higgs boson; just a particle consistent with it. As it is said earlier in the article, it could be Higgs or it could be something more exotic. At least replicate the experiment first.