You know, I'm your basic anti-war leftie. I think this whole Iraq thing will turn out to be the biggest disaster in U.S. history.
That said, calling somebody like McCain a "warmongering douchebag" is bloody childish. You think he has no notion of what war is like? Or doesn't care? Wrong on bothcounts.
I use to have considerable respect for McCain. That's somewhat eroded by the right-wing pandering he did in order to get the Republican nomination. But I still respect him enough to think that ignorant sniping and namecalling is only a... well, what's the word? Yeah, "douchbag".
Certainly the Linux community doesn't really need to burn energy supporting a half dozen filesystems. Or a hundred different distros. Yet they do exist.
When somebody asks a question that could be answered by a very simple Google, they're either being funny or they're so terminally lazy it's silly to respond too them. And when the question is about a guy whose murder trial has been in the news (especially the nerdcentric news) for months, I think it's safe to assume that the questioner is not being lazy.
hurchill certainly had the highest confidence in him... Right, like a wartime PM is going to admit that his chief general is anything but brilliant.
but his record is faultless Didn't I address that issue? If you're just going to ignore my arguments, we really don't have a lot to talk about.
Clippy was useless. He wanted to know the "genre" of my novel. How can they call their software "user friendly" if you have to learn technical jargon that?
I know that a lot of people who worked with Monty found him somewhat less than brilliant. He did have a high victory rate, but that seems to have been achieved by using intelligence data (recall that the Allies had access to much of the Axis encrypted radio traffic) to avoid battle until he had an overwhelming advantage. While other commanders were pushing the fight home, he was holding back until he could score easy wins.
Even during the war, Monty was notorious for this. Of course nobody could call him on his misuse of intelligence, since the very existence of that intelligence was the most closely guarded secret of the war, even more than the Manhattan Project.
I'm no expert, armchair or otherwise. But I've never read a military historian who had anything nice to say about Monty.
Cliffs Notes are for literary works that people can't be bothered to actually read. They don't have them for technical documents like the PMBOK. The technical equivalent is known as a "textbook".
There's a lot more to Netflix and Amazon's suggestions software than "picking out keywords". There's some fairly sophisticated pattern matching going on there. That certainly qualifies as "artificial intelligence" if only the most basic kind.
And there's a lot more sophisticated stuff going on that more clearly qualifies as AI. But you never hear it called that. Why? Because back when AI technology first started to go commercial it was horribly oversold, and the term is now one you avoid if you're looking for venture capital. So now AI goes under other, less science-fictiony names.
In other words, nothing happened to AI, except that it continued to develop at a reasonable pace. It's just that nobody calls it AI.
OK, I Googled it, and you're sort of correct. What Monty actually said was, "The U.S. has broken the second rule of war. That is, don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don't march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself."
(God, what a twit. It's astonishing who the Brits will trust an army with.)
Have you seen the rent for rubber rooms?
Maybe we could go halvsies. You're at least as compulsive as I am (I only wrote half the posts in this silly thread) and I wouldn't exactly call any of your posts "rational".
I guess demonizing people is your substitute for logic. When you were sure that you were right, you went on and on about not needing to justify yourself to "you people". (Of course it didn't occur to you that this was exactly what you were doing!) And now that the conversation has reached the point where you begin to see the inconsistency and pure lameness of arguments, so you cut me off by casting doubts on my sanity.
You know, people are pretty sick of this rhetorical device. Demonizing and belittling people who disagree with you has been a stock in trade of right-wing politicians (and a few left-wing idiots like Michael Moore) for a couple of decades now. It doesn't work, and if you think it does you're only fooling yourself. But then, that was always my argument, that you're fooling yourself.
I didn't contradict anything. Oh no? Here's my summary of our little back-and-forth:
You assert that there's no point in playing nice with the gitmo detainees, because we've "bending over backwards" to accomodate the Muslims and it hasn't done us any good.
I challenge you to cite even one example of this BOB behavior.
You come up with a lot of complicated reasons why you shouldn't have to, mostly having to do with the fact that "your kind" wouldn't pay attention even if you did.
I state that you cannot claim to "know" that the BOBing takes place when you can't even cite one example.
You state that your opinion is based on a "lifetime of experience".
We exchange numerous insults, ending with me calling you ignorant.
You challenge me to cite one example of your ignorance.
I'm amused by the odd role reversal, and sarcastically suggest it's based on a "lifetime of experience".
You pounce on this, saying "in other words, you don't know". Which is almost word-for-word what I said to you when the argument started!
I ask why "lifetime of experience" is valid argument for you but not for me.
You suddenly get very quiet.
Oh well, I guess the only objective fact here is we both need to get a life!
That's funny. For a long time there, you didn't want to let the issue go. Now that you've been caught contradicting yourself, you're insisting that "we're done".
We're back to what I said in the first place: this isn't about what's true or false. This is about you not wanting to admit that you don't know what you're talking about.
I've already explained why I won't bother to dig up links. "You learn to read." Yes you did. And when I sarcastically used the same argument to justify my own opinions, you pounced on this as "proof" that I didn't know what I was talking about. Pretty clueless.
If we could avoid land wars in Asia (so presciently predicted by Wallace Shawn in _The_Princess_Bride_)
I don't recall the line (not my favorite movie) but it was a quote, not a prediction. Douglas MacArthur is frequently quoted has saying that anybody who gets the U.S. involved in a land war in Asia should have his head examined. Widely quoted during the Vietnam War. I suspect this is one of those apocryphal quotes: I can't find a direct attribution to MacArthur anywhere, and he himself commanded U.S. forces during our first big land war in Asia, Korea.
In any case, "Asia" here really refers to the Far East, not the Middle East.
Didn't you also accuse me of spending a lot of time "pathetically trying to get in the last word?" To which you responded, "Nobody's putting a gun to your head."
You seem to have one set of rules for yourself, and another set for everybody else. You can make categorical assertions without having to cite examples; others have to back up what they say. If I grow tired of a conversation, it's because I'm a whiner, but you're free to come and go as you please. And of course you go the moment you're caught contradicting yourself.
To top it off, you have no sense of irony. Go away, we're done now.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I'm your basic anti-war leftie. I think this whole Iraq thing will turn out to be the biggest disaster in U.S. history.
That said, calling somebody like McCain a "warmongering douchebag" is bloody childish. You think he has no notion of what war is like? Or doesn't care? Wrong on both counts.
I use to have considerable respect for McCain. That's somewhat eroded by the right-wing pandering he did in order to get the Republican nomination. But I still respect him enough to think that ignorant sniping and namecalling is only a... well, what's the word? Yeah, "douchbag".
I would have shortened that search to http://google.com/search?q=bombs+away! But then, I'm an anal-retentive tech writer.
So who bombs at home?
This is Slashdot! "News for nerds, stuff that matters." What could matter more to a nerd than a bad Star Trek film?!
When somebody asks a question that could be answered by a very simple Google, they're either being funny or they're so terminally lazy it's silly to respond too them. And when the question is about a guy whose murder trial has been in the news (especially the nerdcentric news) for months, I think it's safe to assume that the questioner is not being lazy.
Your sarcasm detector needs adjustment.
Clippy was useless. He wanted to know the "genre" of my novel. How can they call their software "user friendly" if you have to learn technical jargon that?
I know that a lot of people who worked with Monty found him somewhat less than brilliant. He did have a high victory rate, but that seems to have been achieved by using intelligence data (recall that the Allies had access to much of the Axis encrypted radio traffic) to avoid battle until he had an overwhelming advantage. While other commanders were pushing the fight home, he was holding back until he could score easy wins.
Even during the war, Monty was notorious for this. Of course nobody could call him on his misuse of intelligence, since the very existence of that intelligence was the most closely guarded secret of the war, even more than the Manhattan Project.
I'm no expert, armchair or otherwise. But I've never read a military historian who had anything nice to say about Monty.
Yeah, I had the same problem with Microsoft Word. I bought it to write a novel. But it turns out you have to supply your own words!
That title is very misleading.
Cliffs Notes are for literary works that people can't be bothered to actually read. They don't have them for technical documents like the PMBOK. The technical equivalent is known as a "textbook".
There's a lot more to Netflix and Amazon's suggestions software than "picking out keywords". There's some fairly sophisticated pattern matching going on there. That certainly qualifies as "artificial intelligence" if only the most basic kind.
And there's a lot more sophisticated stuff going on that more clearly qualifies as AI. But you never hear it called that. Why? Because back when AI technology first started to go commercial it was horribly oversold, and the term is now one you avoid if you're looking for venture capital. So now AI goes under other, less science-fictiony names.
In other words, nothing happened to AI, except that it continued to develop at a reasonable pace. It's just that nobody calls it AI.
OK, I Googled it, and you're sort of correct. What Monty actually said was, "The U.S. has broken the second rule of war. That is, don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don't march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself."
(God, what a twit. It's astonishing who the Brits will trust an army with.)
Have you seen the rent for rubber rooms? Maybe we could go halvsies. You're at least as compulsive as I am (I only wrote half the posts in this silly thread) and I wouldn't exactly call any of your posts "rational".
I guess demonizing people is your substitute for logic. When you were sure that you were right, you went on and on about not needing to justify yourself to "you people". (Of course it didn't occur to you that this was exactly what you were doing!) And now that the conversation has reached the point where you begin to see the inconsistency and pure lameness of arguments, so you cut me off by casting doubts on my sanity.
You know, people are pretty sick of this rhetorical device. Demonizing and belittling people who disagree with you has been a stock in trade of right-wing politicians (and a few left-wing idiots like Michael Moore) for a couple of decades now. It doesn't work, and if you think it does you're only fooling yourself. But then, that was always my argument, that you're fooling yourself.
In other words: no, you get fucked.
- You assert that there's no point in playing nice with the gitmo detainees, because we've "bending over backwards" to accomodate the Muslims and it hasn't done us any good.
- I challenge you to cite even one example of this BOB behavior.
- You come up with a lot of complicated reasons why you shouldn't have to, mostly having to do with the fact that "your kind" wouldn't pay attention even if you did.
- I state that you cannot claim to "know" that the BOBing takes place when you can't even cite one example.
- You state that your opinion is based on a "lifetime of experience".
- We exchange numerous insults, ending with me calling you ignorant.
- You challenge me to cite one example of your ignorance.
- I'm amused by the odd role reversal, and sarcastically suggest it's based on a "lifetime of experience".
- You pounce on this, saying "in other words, you don't know". Which is almost word-for-word what I said to you when the argument started!
- I ask why "lifetime of experience" is valid argument for you but not for me.
- You suddenly get very quiet.
Oh well, I guess the only objective fact here is we both need to get a life!What can I say, I'm desperate for entertainment...
"You're a loser" seems to be your answer for everything. You should run for office. I hear the Republicans are hiring.
That's funny. For a long time there, you didn't want to let the issue go. Now that you've been caught contradicting yourself, you're insisting that "we're done".
We're back to what I said in the first place: this isn't about what's true or false. This is about you not wanting to admit that you don't know what you're talking about.
I don't recall the line (not my favorite movie) but it was a quote, not a prediction. Douglas MacArthur is frequently quoted has saying that anybody who gets the U.S. involved in a land war in Asia should have his head examined. Widely quoted during the Vietnam War. I suspect this is one of those apocryphal quotes: I can't find a direct attribution to MacArthur anywhere, and he himself commanded U.S. forces during our first big land war in Asia, Korea.
In any case, "Asia" here really refers to the Far East, not the Middle East.
You seem to have one set of rules for yourself, and another set for everybody else. You can make categorical assertions without having to cite examples; others have to back up what they say. If I grow tired of a conversation, it's because I'm a whiner, but you're free to come and go as you please. And of course you go the moment you're caught contradicting yourself.
To top it off, you have no sense of irony. Go away, we're done now.