I didn't say for what he thinks, but for what he IS. Real anarchists don't sit around, write web sites, and bitch. They make bombs and blow up police stations. I think shooting them is just fine with me. This guy was writing web sites, giving other people advice on how to make explosives, was caught with explosive equipment, and didn't express the slightest shred of regret or claim misunderstanding to the judge. Would you like to share an apartment with this winner? How about a city or a country?
Having a PhD doesn't make you educated. It means you convinced other like-minded people to grant you a doctorate. I have an advanced degree; they don't impress me.
Study of the "history of science" is bullshit. You do no actual science, and your focus on history is so narrow that you've missed the forest for the trees. You don't actually understand your topic, but you have an opinion on it. It's like being a physics groupie. Or, perhaps more accurately, a Luddite.
by your logic, this means that it would be "legal" to shoot the entire Defense department and heads of government of almost all nations.
See, the thing is that someone already DID take a shot at the Defense Department. Happened in September. You might have heard about it. Since then, the US government's (and most American's) sense of humor isn't exactly too keen when it comes to people who talk about violently overthrowing the government.
What you don't understand is that might always makes right. Now, the US government, by and large, uses its might for what I consider good purposes. It's not perfect, but as Churchill once said about democracy, it's better than any of the other alternatives, especially the ones espoused by this inbred.
The US, BTW, did NOT violate ANY "international law" by attacking Afghanistan. It invoked its right to self-defense under the UN charter. And since the ability to make laws depends on the ability to ENFORCE them, who exactly is enforcing international law? I could proclaim myself Emperor of the World, but until I have some power to make my title respected, I'm just a kook with an old towel wrapped around my shoulders.
It's amazing how much time people spend pissing and moaning about the behavior of the US, while ignoring countries like China and Syria, which flout UN resolutions all the time. The difference, of course, is that protesting on the streets of DC against the "fascist" US is safe, while protesting against China or Syria in downtown Beijing or Damascus will result in you finding yourself on the wrong end of a gun. I'm not impressed with crusaders going after easygoing targets.
you find this person's views distateful, and so it's ok to shoot him, in which case you've more in common with him than you realize
No, I don't mind people whose viewpoints are "distateful." I mind the viewpoints of people whose goal in life is to kill me and destroy the society I am a part of. Killing them before they kill me seems like a good idea, but I like myself, so that separates me from most liberals. I'm a liberal (in the classic sense of the word) who believes in self-preservation and the preservation of the things that I value.
I say you have a guy who writes about the violent overthrow of the government, describes how to build weapons, and is found with weapons, you don't wait until he USES the weapons. Sane societies know how to recognize threats to themselves and react accordingly.
we even were ready to give money to the Taliban before 911 happened
Wrong. We gave money to aid groups. In fact, the US was (and is) the largest donor of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan (pledges from other countries don't count until the money, food, and/or medicine is actually delivered). No US aid went to the Taliban, as the US (and the rest of the world except for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE) did not recognize it as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
We support Israel (a government based upon a religion), even when most of the international community in the UN has shown and documented that Israel is wrong in acting unilaterally. The US government, does things in the interest of money and resources like oil.
Israel is a democracy which is the homeland of the Jews. You can be a citizen of Israel and observe any religion you want, or none at all. This is in contrast to, say, Saudi Arabia, where being Jewish is illegal. The difference is that Israel is the homeland of Jews (only Jew haters seem to forget this tidbit), and any Jew gets automatic citizenship. Non-Jews (who make up over 20% of the population) can vote, hold public office, and do all of the things that other democracies allow.
How is Israel acting "unilaterally" a bad thing? Do the Spanish need to ask for permission from the UN when arresting Basque separatists? Did the US ask for permission from, say, Sweeden, before conquering the North American continent? Or does asking permission only apply to Jews? Christians and Moslems and Communists can do whatever they feel like to anyone else, but if a Jew decides to defend his homeland, he's a criminal who can't act without permission from the UN.
This is the same UN, by the way, which sponsored an "anti-racism" conference, complete with handouts of Jews with fangs, drinking blood from Arabs. Forums denouncing Jew hatred were shouted down.
The European and Arab countries from whom you think Israel needs to ask permission are the same ones that spent the last 2,000 years alternating between humiliating and exterminating their Jewish populations. For some reason, it doesn't seem too likely that Jews should give much of a shit what anyone in Europe or the Middle East has to say about what Jews do and don't do.
Finally, explain how US support of Israel helps the US obtain more oil.
By the way, Chomsky is a well-documented liar. He has made up quotes from other people to support his own highly wacky positions. You should read some David Horowitz and Andrew Sullivan.
To defeat terrorism would require a better more authorative world government
That's a highly scary thought. I bet under your world government, we're just going to solve all these problems that breed terrorism by forcing people to, say, give medical care for free, or build housing for free, or provide food for free. Sounds like slavery to me, personally. If you want to run around and take care of the poor and downtrodden, go do it yourself and leave me alone.
Being arrested doesn't mean anything more than the fact that you've been arrested. "Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply until your trial begins. Then the state has to prove you did the crime as opposed to you having to prove that you didn't do the crime.
Amazing that you can cite chapter and verse on when "legitimate" protesters were detained, but you don't even understand basic bits of the legal system. What do they teach in schools today?
Which means he can what, write encyclopedia articles? Having a doctorate in a bullshit topic isn't proof of anything other than there being too much money available for college scholarships.
No, Americans aren't mad at Arabs and Moslems because they need some sort of outlet.
They're mad after watching Arabs cheering on the streets after 9/11, handing out sweets in celebration. Unlike the 1984 reference you mention, that wasn't faked.
They're mad that countries like Saudi Arabia begged us to protect them, yet curse us behind our backs and call us their "white slaves."
They're mad that countries that recieve $2Billion/year in US aid (Egypt) encourage hatred of America.
They're mad that the French, who haven't found a fascist master they won't grovel to, are telling the US how to react.
They're mad that every time a plane goes overhead, they need to wonder for a second if it's going to spray poison or crash into the nearest building.
They're mad that there's a band of fucks roaming the planet abusing the asylum laws of Western democracies in an attempt to overthrow them.
They're mad that self-righteous assholes have placed themselves in judgement of their morals, assuming that the Great Unwashed are just not worthy of opinions because they actually work for a living.
I love hearing morons pissing and moaning IN A PUBLIC FORUM that the "fascist" government has taken away their freedom of speech. Try that in a real fascist country, like China, and see what no freedom of speech really means.
Let me get this straight: he advocates using violence against the state to overthrow it, and then complains when the state returns the favor? Since when do anarchists belive in following rules?
If he's a real anarchist, then shooting him should be perfectly legal. After all, he believes in the rule of the jungle. Guess that only applies for everyone but him.
In the end, another rich, white crybaby. Big deal.
Wow; you got this exactly backwards. Read the Salon story on it. The bookstore refused to give up the records and was willing to fight. Lewinsky eventually turned the records over to the Feds herself.
It's good to know that fact-checking remains irrelevant to paranoid delusion.
-jon
Re:Mod parent up
on
What is .NET?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Languages like LISP cannot be compiled to bytecode because the JVM doesn't support tail-recursion.
Funny, I don't remember the x86 opcode for tail recursion. Or the 68K, SPARC, or PPC one. Would you care to remind me what it is? I guess since there isn't one, it's impossible to run Lisp on Windows, Mac, Sun, or IBM boxes.
Every computer language in existence is Turing-complete; they product code that runs on Turing machines. Some of these Turing machines may be faster or more efficient, but they're all equivalent.
For example: whne was the last time you went to Best Buy and bought any program that was Java based?
When was the last time you went to Best Buy and bought any program that was written in Visual Basic? How about Perl? Python?
Shrink-wrap software for consumers is a VERY small part of the software market. Most software is developed for corporate use, not consumers. Java is very viable for corporate development, especially for server-side code. Swing isn't nearly as successful, but it can do the job if you're a good Swng programmer.
I was just going to mod you down, but you're so fucking stupid, I have to say something.
Do you SERIOUSLY think that the only reason people attack other people is because the attackee did something to the attacker? Why don't you ask a former Korean "comfort woman" about what she did to the Japanese soldier who kept her as a sex slave? You could also ask the population of Nanking what they did...but the Japanese killed most of them.
Want more examples? How about asking a rape victim what she did? How about a child kidnapped and killed by a pedophile? I'm avoiding the mention of Nazis only to avoid someone claiming Goodwin's Law, but...
You must be a complete moron to not notice that there are some rotten, rotten people in this world.
And what exactly did the US do to Osma bin Laden? His father was a fucking billionaire, who made his money building stuff for a government that has only remained in power because the US has backed it since the 1930s. The Saudi government, which BEGGED the US to protect it from Iraq then turns around and funds schools that do little more than teach terrorism and hate, while sponsoring a state religion that teaches that the Earth is flat and Pokemon is a Jewish conspiracy. Who exactly are the bad guys here?
And for the rest of the various Arab terrorist attacks against the US, what did the US (or more accurately, the actual people killed) do to the terrorists? The US put Marines in Beiruit to STOP the Israelis from killing all of the PLO leadership. As thanks for this, Hezbollah sent a suicide bomber to kill the troops stationed there. Egypt receives $2billion/year from the US in foreign aid. Meanwhile, a great deal of the strength of the Al Qeida movement comes from Egypt (the other main base for it is Saudi Arabia, the country we're protecting, remember?). Did you think that maybe, just maybe, you've got it exactly backwards and Al Qeida are the ones who need to learn to leave people alone?
As for what the Israelis did to the Palestinians, what they did is (gasp) return home under the right of self-determination that every other ethnic group on the planet claims. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the Palestinians moved to Palestine at about the same time as the vast majority of the Jews returned to their homeland, stupid liberals (and, of course, the legions of Jew-haters worldwide) have decided that the Jews are clearly at fault. The liberals blame the Jews because the Jews built a rich society (with a per capita GNP on par with the UK) in only 50 years. Clearly, they must be evil. As for the Jew-haters, well, we're back at you blaming the vicitim.
The reason why the Israelis live the life they live is because they haven't done to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians (and what the Arab and European countries did to their Jewish populations). The problem is that the Jews are too nice, and that the world won't allow Jews to behave the way that Moslems and Christians do. Go figure.
The French didn't help the Colonists out of some love of American freedom. They did it to screw the British. They would have helped the nacent Americans no matter what. Franklin was just hanging out with royalty (how unamerican!) and enjoying the high life in complete safety while Washington was freezing his ass off in a tent in New Jersey and the other Founding Fathers needed to keep hiding from British troops.
I'm not impressed, especially since the point of the quote is that we need to never give up a single freedom, lest we start down the slippery slope towards dictatorship. This is usually used as an excuse to pirate MP3s. Or, right now, it's used as an excuse as to why we can't have racial profiling or face scans or background checks.
Meanwhile, the person who originated the quote decided to spend the Revolutionary War, not fighting for freedom, but living in a beautiful guilded cage in a repressive dictatorship (England in the 1780s was far more democratic than 1780's France). Seems like Franklin, given the choice, chose comfort.
Every time I see that Ben Franklin quote, I'm reminded that while many Americans risked (and lost) their lives to throw off British rule, Franklin "suffered" by staying in France during the revolution. I guess he didn't mind his own safety being secure while other people fought. Hypocrite.
Except, of course, that it wasn't the Arab Palestinians that invaded and conquered Palestine in the first half of the 20th century. "Occupied Palestine" is called that because it's been conquered by a foreign military. Nobody in the West complained very loudly because of the power and influence of Zionist lobbies in the USA and Britan. Every nation on earth has condemned Israel, EXCEPT the USA and Britian.
Bzzzt. There is no such thing as "Occupied Palestine." First of all, there never was a country called "Palestine." The last independant country that existed in the area of Israel before 1948 was the Crusader states. Before that, it was (despite Arab and Muslim statements to the contrary) the ancient kingdom of Judea, re-established by the Hasmonean Dynasty in 165BC, after being conquered by Alexander the Great. Claims that the current-day Palestinians are the decendants of the Philistines are provably false, as shown by historical records around the time of Jesus, which indicate that there weren't any Philistines left in the area.
The simple fact is that most of Palestine was an empty wasteland until the end of the 19th century. If you don't believe me, read Mark Twain's travel log, "Innocents Abroad." You can also read Carl Marx's travel log from roughly the same time. Or, if you'd like, provide me with contrary evidence from another contemporary source. You can't, because they don't exist, but I like to see antisemites try. Watching them think is funny.
Anyway, Jews from Europe started returning to their ancient homeland, BUYING the land from locals, for often outrageous prices. At the same time, Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon came to Palestine to work in the factories and farms being established by the Jews. Notice, both groups arrived at the same time.
Sure, there were Arabs in the area ahead of time (the family of the current Palestinian representative in Jerusalem has been in Jerusalem since Crusader days), but there were also Jews there, too. Sfad, Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Hebron have had continuous Jewish populations for literally thousands of years.
In any event, anti-Jewish feelings began erupting among the Arabs, leading to the pogrom in Hebron in 1929 (where the British evacuated the Jewish families from Hebron, leaving it Judenrein for the first time in over 3000 years) and the attacks in Jerusalem from 1936 to 1939.
The period from WWII until the founding of Israel is pretty well documented. Read a reputable history book and learn something about it. The Jews accepted the UN partition plan; the Arabs didn't. The Arab states called on the Arabs living in Palestine to evacuate, so the Arab armies could kill the Jews and not accidently kill Arabs. They also spread rumors that the Jews were going to kill any Arabs they found. Unfortunately for the Arabs, against all odds, the Jews won. The land that had been under UN mandate that did not become Israeli territory was OCCUPIED by Egypt and Jordan. So, if anything, the occupiers were Arab countries. You can also note that Egypt and Jordan did NOT establish a Palistinian state on these land, or even invest in any infrastructure. They let the Arabs (who they told to run away from their homes) rot.
When Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 (in a war started when Israel was threatened by large Syrian and Egyptian armies being massed on the borders, and after Egypt cut off an international waterway to Israeli traffic, which is considered an act of war under international law), Israel captured land that was completely disputed. Egypt and Jordan (the previous "owners" of the land) had captured them in war, and had no legal rights to the land. The UN had apparently abandoned all claim to the land. England, which had been the previous owner of the land, gave it to the UN and washed their hands of it. So we have some territory THAT NO ONE OWNED. How Israel could be considered to be occupiers when Egypt and Jordan weren't is beyond me.
There is still the small matter of the mass expulsion of Jews from Arab lands after the formation of the state of Israel. Where were they supposed to go? When are they going to be compensated for their loss of property? It seems to me that the obvious solution is the exchange of populations; Jews for Arabs. It was done in Cyprus (and the guy in charge of that plan was given a Nobel Peace Prize). It was done in India/Pakistan. It was done with Germans in many parts of Europe after WW II. Yet somehow, Israel is supposed to absorb both the Jews thrown out of Arab lands, plus Arabs who ran away from their own homes, and the Jews who were thrown out of their homes in Arab countries aren't entitled to compensation while the Arabs who ran away from their own homes are entitled to compensation. Seems rather screwy to me. But the rules that apply for the rest of the world just never seem to apply for Israel.
It would be much easier if the "anti-Zionists" just admitted that they hate Jews and want to exterminate them. Then we can stop pretending this is about anything else other than raw, stupid hatred. But since the Holocaust made it unfashionable to say you hate Jews, people instead say they hate "Zionism," as if there is a difference. Zionism is the believe that Jews, like every other ethnic group on the planet, have the right to live in their homeland. If it's not allowed for Jews to live in what is undisputably their place of origin, what right do Kosovars have to Kosovo or Serbs for Serbia or the Irish for Ireland? Be consistent already.
Sorry to interrupt your stupidity with facts. You can now return to your hate-filled existence.
* terrorism has, in the past, accomplished political goals
Terrorism is NOT in the eye of the beholder. There is a very simple definition of terrorism. It is attacking civilian targets for political gains. I am not aware of a single incident in the US Revolution where US troops killed British non-combatants in an attempt to oust the Brits.
Other freedom movements have done the same; I don't know of any examples of Indians killing British citizens to free the Subcontinent. The vast majority of the US Civil Rights movement was peaceful (which is amazing considering how ill-treated Blacks had been. Palestinians should take note.)
The PLO/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Hizbollah/PFLP/etc. seem to specialize in killing civilians, or using their own civilians (especially children) as cover for snipers. They claim that since all Israelis can be drafted, they're all military targets. Therefore, none of their acts are terrorism. Then, through an amazing act of sophistry, they declare that they have no military of their own, so any Israeli attack that kills Palestinians is an attack on civilians. With the Palestinians being brown-ish and poor and the Israelis being white-ish and rich, the Left worldwide decides that clearly, the richer, whiter group of people must be in the wrong. And we get the absurd idea that all violence is terrorism.
It's time to put this canard to bed, once and for all.
The most likely explaination is that the reporter just doesn't know what he's talking about. The people who did the cracking are going to be at some 3-letter US Agency that isn't know for talking to the press. Who told him it took 5 days? Maybe it took 5 days from the time the WSJ turned the data over to the government until their contact gave them some info back.
The reason for not going to the toilet first was because he had a seat directly over the wing (where there's fuel). Al Qeida bomb experts had figured out where the bomb would do the most damage. You can't get much explosive in the sole of a shoe, but get that spark going near a lot of fuel, and boom.
Blowing up the toilet would have killed Reid and probably no one else.
a dope-smoking, skirt-chasing, tree-hugging, draft-dodging son of another career politician
To be fair to Gore (who is a dope-smoking, tree-hugging pseudo-intellectual), he is NOT a skirt chaser or a draft dodger. Unlike GWB, he went to 'Nam, even though Gore's father was an anti-war US Senator, and he could have easily avoided the draft with a stay in the National Guard (like GWB did).
You might be thinkiing of Clinton, who did draft-dodge (if going to grad school counts as draft dodging), smoke dope, hug trees, and chase skirts (but was the son of travelling salesman, not a US Senator). Criticize Gore for what he did, not what his predecessor did.
In a way, yes. MS is the model virtually every dot-com software company aspires to. Their attitude towards software development for a long time was "rush it out, we'll get it right the next time through."
Now that they've got a monopoly, they take more time to do releases and hire better people. But there are still problems with their code base. Interestingly, their Mac products (which have been re-written from the ground up since 1995 or so) are very high quality. Makes you wonder what they'd do if they could trash all their old code and start fresh. I bet MS would produce some high quality stuff. And I say this as someone who is NOT an MS fan.
To be fair, it's not just MS. Guy Kawasaki, long-time Apple evangelist, once made a speech where he said "don't be afraid to be crappy." He was encouraging people to release fast, release often. While there are ways to do release-early-and-often and produce high-quality results, virtually no dot-coms actually follow these steps. Combine that with the amazingly unqualified people who call themselves "software engineers," and the criminally incompetent people who pass themselves off as "software project and program managers", and you get disasters.
And the Japanese economy has been in recession for over 10 years. One of the reasons for the recession is that companies are too static and don't fire employees they don't need. Another problem is the bad loans made by Japanese banks because of these special relationships.
I wouldn't use Japan as evidence of anything good,in economic models.
Bullcrap. I've found that private sector techies tend to be woefully under-trained and under-educated, and the quality of their work shows it.
Count the programmers at the average dot-com who actually have degrees in CS. Then count the number of people working in federal research labs who have MSs or PhDs.
When you're working on mission-critical systems, where "mission critical" means "lots of people will die if you fuck up", the stakes are higher and people understand that. Dot-commers tend to do highly slapdash work because they figure they'll just sell the bug fixes as an upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
Learn to read.
-jon
Study of the "history of science" is bullshit. You do no actual science, and your focus on history is so narrow that you've missed the forest for the trees. You don't actually understand your topic, but you have an opinion on it. It's like being a physics groupie. Or, perhaps more accurately, a Luddite.
-jon
See, the thing is that someone already DID take a shot at the Defense Department. Happened in September. You might have heard about it. Since then, the US government's (and most American's) sense of humor isn't exactly too keen when it comes to people who talk about violently overthrowing the government.
What you don't understand is that might always makes right. Now, the US government, by and large, uses its might for what I consider good purposes. It's not perfect, but as Churchill once said about democracy, it's better than any of the other alternatives, especially the ones espoused by this inbred.
The US, BTW, did NOT violate ANY "international law" by attacking Afghanistan. It invoked its right to self-defense under the UN charter. And since the ability to make laws depends on the ability to ENFORCE them, who exactly is enforcing international law? I could proclaim myself Emperor of the World, but until I have some power to make my title respected, I'm just a kook with an old towel wrapped around my shoulders.
It's amazing how much time people spend pissing and moaning about the behavior of the US, while ignoring countries like China and Syria, which flout UN resolutions all the time. The difference, of course, is that protesting on the streets of DC against the "fascist" US is safe, while protesting against China or Syria in downtown Beijing or Damascus will result in you finding yourself on the wrong end of a gun. I'm not impressed with crusaders going after easygoing targets.
you find this person's views distateful, and so it's ok to shoot him, in which case you've more in common with him than you realize
No, I don't mind people whose viewpoints are "distateful." I mind the viewpoints of people whose goal in life is to kill me and destroy the society I am a part of. Killing them before they kill me seems like a good idea, but I like myself, so that separates me from most liberals. I'm a liberal (in the classic sense of the word) who believes in self-preservation and the preservation of the things that I value.
I say you have a guy who writes about the violent overthrow of the government, describes how to build weapons, and is found with weapons, you don't wait until he USES the weapons. Sane societies know how to recognize threats to themselves and react accordingly.
-jon
we even were ready to give money to the Taliban before 911 happened
Wrong. We gave money to aid groups. In fact, the US was (and is) the largest donor of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan (pledges from other countries don't count until the money, food, and/or medicine is actually delivered). No US aid went to the Taliban, as the US (and the rest of the world except for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE) did not recognize it as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
We support Israel (a government based upon a religion), even when most of the international community in the UN has shown and documented that Israel is wrong in acting unilaterally. The US government, does things in the interest of money and resources like oil.
Israel is a democracy which is the homeland of the Jews. You can be a citizen of Israel and observe any religion you want, or none at all. This is in contrast to, say, Saudi Arabia, where being Jewish is illegal. The difference is that Israel is the homeland of Jews (only Jew haters seem to forget this tidbit), and any Jew gets automatic citizenship. Non-Jews (who make up over 20% of the population) can vote, hold public office, and do all of the things that other democracies allow.
How is Israel acting "unilaterally" a bad thing? Do the Spanish need to ask for permission from the UN when arresting Basque separatists? Did the US ask for permission from, say, Sweeden, before conquering the North American continent? Or does asking permission only apply to Jews? Christians and Moslems and Communists can do whatever they feel like to anyone else, but if a Jew decides to defend his homeland, he's a criminal who can't act without permission from the UN.
This is the same UN, by the way, which sponsored an "anti-racism" conference, complete with handouts of Jews with fangs, drinking blood from Arabs. Forums denouncing Jew hatred were shouted down.
The European and Arab countries from whom you think Israel needs to ask permission are the same ones that spent the last 2,000 years alternating between humiliating and exterminating their Jewish populations. For some reason, it doesn't seem too likely that Jews should give much of a shit what anyone in Europe or the Middle East has to say about what Jews do and don't do.
Finally, explain how US support of Israel helps the US obtain more oil.
By the way, Chomsky is a well-documented liar. He has made up quotes from other people to support his own highly wacky positions. You should read some David Horowitz and Andrew Sullivan.
To defeat terrorism would require a better more authorative world government
That's a highly scary thought. I bet under your world government, we're just going to solve all these problems that breed terrorism by forcing people to, say, give medical care for free, or build housing for free, or provide food for free. Sounds like slavery to me, personally. If you want to run around and take care of the poor and downtrodden, go do it yourself and leave me alone.
-jon
Being arrested doesn't mean anything more than the fact that you've been arrested. "Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply until your trial begins. Then the state has to prove you did the crime as opposed to you having to prove that you didn't do the crime.
Amazing that you can cite chapter and verse on when "legitimate" protesters were detained, but you don't even understand basic bits of the legal system. What do they teach in schools today?
-jon
-jon
Which means he can what, write encyclopedia articles? Having a doctorate in a bullshit topic isn't proof of anything other than there being too much money available for college scholarships.
-jon
They're mad after watching Arabs cheering on the streets after 9/11, handing out sweets in celebration. Unlike the 1984 reference you mention, that wasn't faked.
They're mad that countries like Saudi Arabia begged us to protect them, yet curse us behind our backs and call us their "white slaves."
They're mad that countries that recieve $2Billion/year in US aid (Egypt) encourage hatred of America.
They're mad that the French, who haven't found a fascist master they won't grovel to, are telling the US how to react.
They're mad that every time a plane goes overhead, they need to wonder for a second if it's going to spray poison or crash into the nearest building.
They're mad that there's a band of fucks roaming the planet abusing the asylum laws of Western democracies in an attempt to overthrow them.
They're mad that self-righteous assholes have placed themselves in judgement of their morals, assuming that the Great Unwashed are just not worthy of opinions because they actually work for a living.
I love hearing morons pissing and moaning IN A PUBLIC FORUM that the "fascist" government has taken away their freedom of speech. Try that in a real fascist country, like China, and see what no freedom of speech really means.
-jon
If he's a real anarchist, then shooting him should be perfectly legal. After all, he believes in the rule of the jungle. Guess that only applies for everyone but him.
In the end, another rich, white crybaby. Big deal.
-jon
It's good to know that fact-checking remains irrelevant to paranoid delusion.
-jon
Funny, I don't remember the x86 opcode for tail recursion. Or the 68K, SPARC, or PPC one. Would you care to remind me what it is? I guess since there isn't one, it's impossible to run Lisp on Windows, Mac, Sun, or IBM boxes.
Every computer language in existence is Turing-complete; they product code that runs on Turing machines. Some of these Turing machines may be faster or more efficient, but they're all equivalent.
-jon
When was the last time you went to Best Buy and bought any program that was written in Visual Basic? How about Perl? Python?
Shrink-wrap software for consumers is a VERY small part of the software market. Most software is developed for corporate use, not consumers. Java is very viable for corporate development, especially for server-side code. Swing isn't nearly as successful, but it can do the job if you're a good Swng programmer.
-jon
-jon
Do you SERIOUSLY think that the only reason people attack other people is because the attackee did something to the attacker? Why don't you ask a former Korean "comfort woman" about what she did to the Japanese soldier who kept her as a sex slave? You could also ask the population of Nanking what they did...but the Japanese killed most of them.
Want more examples? How about asking a rape victim what she did? How about a child kidnapped and killed by a pedophile? I'm avoiding the mention of Nazis only to avoid someone claiming Goodwin's Law, but...
You must be a complete moron to not notice that there are some rotten, rotten people in this world.
And what exactly did the US do to Osma bin Laden? His father was a fucking billionaire, who made his money building stuff for a government that has only remained in power because the US has backed it since the 1930s. The Saudi government, which BEGGED the US to protect it from Iraq then turns around and funds schools that do little more than teach terrorism and hate, while sponsoring a state religion that teaches that the Earth is flat and Pokemon is a Jewish conspiracy. Who exactly are the bad guys here?
And for the rest of the various Arab terrorist attacks against the US, what did the US (or more accurately, the actual people killed) do to the terrorists? The US put Marines in Beiruit to STOP the Israelis from killing all of the PLO leadership. As thanks for this, Hezbollah sent a suicide bomber to kill the troops stationed there. Egypt receives $2billion/year from the US in foreign aid. Meanwhile, a great deal of the strength of the Al Qeida movement comes from Egypt (the other main base for it is Saudi Arabia, the country we're protecting, remember?). Did you think that maybe, just maybe, you've got it exactly backwards and Al Qeida are the ones who need to learn to leave people alone?
As for what the Israelis did to the Palestinians, what they did is (gasp) return home under the right of self-determination that every other ethnic group on the planet claims. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the Palestinians moved to Palestine at about the same time as the vast majority of the Jews returned to their homeland, stupid liberals (and, of course, the legions of Jew-haters worldwide) have decided that the Jews are clearly at fault. The liberals blame the Jews because the Jews built a rich society (with a per capita GNP on par with the UK) in only 50 years. Clearly, they must be evil. As for the Jew-haters, well, we're back at you blaming the vicitim.
The reason why the Israelis live the life they live is because they haven't done to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians (and what the Arab and European countries did to their Jewish populations). The problem is that the Jews are too nice, and that the world won't allow Jews to behave the way that Moslems and Christians do. Go figure.
-jon
I'm not impressed, especially since the point of the quote is that we need to never give up a single freedom, lest we start down the slippery slope towards dictatorship. This is usually used as an excuse to pirate MP3s. Or, right now, it's used as an excuse as to why we can't have racial profiling or face scans or background checks.
Meanwhile, the person who originated the quote decided to spend the Revolutionary War, not fighting for freedom, but living in a beautiful guilded cage in a repressive dictatorship (England in the 1780s was far more democratic than 1780's France). Seems like Franklin, given the choice, chose comfort.
-jon
Every time I see that Ben Franklin quote, I'm reminded that while many Americans risked (and lost) their lives to throw off British rule, Franklin "suffered" by staying in France during the revolution. I guess he didn't mind his own safety being secure while other people fought. Hypocrite.
-jon
Bzzzt. There is no such thing as "Occupied Palestine." First of all, there never was a country called "Palestine." The last independant country that existed in the area of Israel before 1948 was the Crusader states. Before that, it was (despite Arab and Muslim statements to the contrary) the ancient kingdom of Judea, re-established by the Hasmonean Dynasty in 165BC, after being conquered by Alexander the Great. Claims that the current-day Palestinians are the decendants of the Philistines are provably false, as shown by historical records around the time of Jesus, which indicate that there weren't any Philistines left in the area.
The simple fact is that most of Palestine was an empty wasteland until the end of the 19th century. If you don't believe me, read Mark Twain's travel log, "Innocents Abroad." You can also read Carl Marx's travel log from roughly the same time. Or, if you'd like, provide me with contrary evidence from another contemporary source. You can't, because they don't exist, but I like to see antisemites try. Watching them think is funny.
Anyway, Jews from Europe started returning to their ancient homeland, BUYING the land from locals, for often outrageous prices. At the same time, Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon came to Palestine to work in the factories and farms being established by the Jews. Notice, both groups arrived at the same time.
Sure, there were Arabs in the area ahead of time (the family of the current Palestinian representative in Jerusalem has been in Jerusalem since Crusader days), but there were also Jews there, too. Sfad, Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Hebron have had continuous Jewish populations for literally thousands of years.
In any event, anti-Jewish feelings began erupting among the Arabs, leading to the pogrom in Hebron in 1929 (where the British evacuated the Jewish families from Hebron, leaving it Judenrein for the first time in over 3000 years) and the attacks in Jerusalem from 1936 to 1939.
The period from WWII until the founding of Israel is pretty well documented. Read a reputable history book and learn something about it. The Jews accepted the UN partition plan; the Arabs didn't. The Arab states called on the Arabs living in Palestine to evacuate, so the Arab armies could kill the Jews and not accidently kill Arabs. They also spread rumors that the Jews were going to kill any Arabs they found. Unfortunately for the Arabs, against all odds, the Jews won. The land that had been under UN mandate that did not become Israeli territory was OCCUPIED by Egypt and Jordan. So, if anything, the occupiers were Arab countries. You can also note that Egypt and Jordan did NOT establish a Palistinian state on these land, or even invest in any infrastructure. They let the Arabs (who they told to run away from their homes) rot.
When Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 (in a war started when Israel was threatened by large Syrian and Egyptian armies being massed on the borders, and after Egypt cut off an international waterway to Israeli traffic, which is considered an act of war under international law), Israel captured land that was completely disputed. Egypt and Jordan (the previous "owners" of the land) had captured them in war, and had no legal rights to the land. The UN had apparently abandoned all claim to the land. England, which had been the previous owner of the land, gave it to the UN and washed their hands of it. So we have some territory THAT NO ONE OWNED. How Israel could be considered to be occupiers when Egypt and Jordan weren't is beyond me.
There is still the small matter of the mass expulsion of Jews from Arab lands after the formation of the state of Israel. Where were they supposed to go? When are they going to be compensated for their loss of property? It seems to me that the obvious solution is the exchange of populations; Jews for Arabs. It was done in Cyprus (and the guy in charge of that plan was given a Nobel Peace Prize). It was done in India/Pakistan. It was done with Germans in many parts of Europe after WW II. Yet somehow, Israel is supposed to absorb both the Jews thrown out of Arab lands, plus Arabs who ran away from their own homes, and the Jews who were thrown out of their homes in Arab countries aren't entitled to compensation while the Arabs who ran away from their own homes are entitled to compensation. Seems rather screwy to me. But the rules that apply for the rest of the world just never seem to apply for Israel.
It would be much easier if the "anti-Zionists" just admitted that they hate Jews and want to exterminate them. Then we can stop pretending this is about anything else other than raw, stupid hatred. But since the Holocaust made it unfashionable to say you hate Jews, people instead say they hate "Zionism," as if there is a difference. Zionism is the believe that Jews, like every other ethnic group on the planet, have the right to live in their homeland. If it's not allowed for Jews to live in what is undisputably their place of origin, what right do Kosovars have to Kosovo or Serbs for Serbia or the Irish for Ireland? Be consistent already.
Sorry to interrupt your stupidity with facts. You can now return to your hate-filled existence.
-jon
* terrorism has, in the past, accomplished political goals
Terrorism is NOT in the eye of the beholder. There is a very simple definition of terrorism. It is attacking civilian targets for political gains. I am not aware of a single incident in the US Revolution where US troops killed British non-combatants in an attempt to oust the Brits.
Other freedom movements have done the same; I don't know of any examples of Indians killing British citizens to free the Subcontinent. The vast majority of the US Civil Rights movement was peaceful (which is amazing considering how ill-treated Blacks had been. Palestinians should take note.)
The PLO/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Hizbollah/PFLP/etc. seem to specialize in killing civilians, or using their own civilians (especially children) as cover for snipers. They claim that since all Israelis can be drafted, they're all military targets. Therefore, none of their acts are terrorism. Then, through an amazing act of sophistry, they declare that they have no military of their own, so any Israeli attack that kills Palestinians is an attack on civilians. With the Palestinians being brown-ish and poor and the Israelis being white-ish and rich, the Left worldwide decides that clearly, the richer, whiter group of people must be in the wrong. And we get the absurd idea that all violence is terrorism.
It's time to put this canard to bed, once and for all.
-jon
-jon
Blowing up the toilet would have killed Reid and probably no one else.
-jon
To be fair to Gore (who is a dope-smoking, tree-hugging pseudo-intellectual), he is NOT a skirt chaser or a draft dodger. Unlike GWB, he went to 'Nam, even though Gore's father was an anti-war US Senator, and he could have easily avoided the draft with a stay in the National Guard (like GWB did).
You might be thinkiing of Clinton, who did draft-dodge (if going to grad school counts as draft dodging), smoke dope, hug trees, and chase skirts (but was the son of travelling salesman, not a US Senator). Criticize Gore for what he did, not what his predecessor did.
-jon
Now that they've got a monopoly, they take more time to do releases and hire better people. But there are still problems with their code base. Interestingly, their Mac products (which have been re-written from the ground up since 1995 or so) are very high quality. Makes you wonder what they'd do if they could trash all their old code and start fresh. I bet MS would produce some high quality stuff. And I say this as someone who is NOT an MS fan.
To be fair, it's not just MS. Guy Kawasaki, long-time Apple evangelist, once made a speech where he said "don't be afraid to be crappy." He was encouraging people to release fast, release often. While there are ways to do release-early-and-often and produce high-quality results, virtually no dot-coms actually follow these steps. Combine that with the amazingly unqualified people who call themselves "software engineers," and the criminally incompetent people who pass themselves off as "software project and program managers", and you get disasters.
-jon
I wouldn't use Japan as evidence of anything good,in economic models.
-jon
Count the programmers at the average dot-com who actually have degrees in CS. Then count the number of people working in federal research labs who have MSs or PhDs.
When you're working on mission-critical systems, where "mission critical" means "lots of people will die if you fuck up", the stakes are higher and people understand that. Dot-commers tend to do highly slapdash work because they figure they'll just sell the bug fixes as an upgrade.
-jon
Dumb Ass.
-jon