If posting links to sites all over the political spectrum, including from both of the major consortiums that actually performed the reviews is not enough for you then I don't know what is.
Yes, under certain condition Gore could get more votes that Bush, but even under the best case scenario, Gore's biggest lead was 171 votes, but this included overvotes (in some counties) which are generally NOT legal votes. One of the other Gore victory counts included cases where one of the reviewers disagreed with the decision of voters intent. Removing the 334 disputed ballots from those counts and Bush again wins by over 200 votes.
Simply put, 2 of the 3 most widely accepted legal counting methods made Bush the winner and the one under which Gore may have won, is the least used of the three.
But none of that really matters because both of the major reviews agreed that under all conditions that were in place in 2000 Bush won. If Gore had possessed magical powers and could identify the exact counties and counting methods to request, then yes, he could possibly have squeaked by. But he doesn't so he didn't.
When the seperation of votes when 170K+ are in dispute, is less than 600, you can always find some methods of changing the totals in your favor.
As for the decisions of the Justices, do you not actually read what you type? 7 had issues with the Florida decisions (meaning at least 2 jumped traditional party lines to some degree) but somehow the two that jumped had integrity while the others on the 'Bush' side were all partisan hacks? Under that logic wouldn't that make the 2 who dissented from the beginning more partisan as even two of their like minded brethren saw some problems where they saw none?
Either way, as a Canadian looking from the outside in I have to say that the American election system is fubar'd. Having each State set up their own rules for Federal positions, and then each district within that State set up their own rules, and finally having each district under a particular parties control is just idiotic to say the least. That and not requiring some form of photo ID to vote. What's up with that.
Here, Elections Canada sets the federal standards and all the districts are set up by non-partisan employees of Elections Canada (yes the people can vote for a particular party but are not actively campaigning for them). Go in, check you name off a list (or fill in the necessary form if you're not on a list) and mark an X. Easy as that. That's why we don't have any issues with 'hanging chads' or 'butterfly ballots' etc. and our elections are generally completed on the same day (except where manual recounts are automatically trigger). I can't remember the last time any court became involved with an Election, after the fact. For elections, just as in most things in life, you should just follow the KISS ideology.
Could you find a more bias 'summary' site? It's called BUSHWATCH for crying out loud. Besides that, they fall into the same trap as many of these types of site by merely putting forward conjecture as fact without any more proof than their own opinions.
As for the disenfranchisement of voters through poorly created criminal lists try:
Common Dreams (reprinting a Palm Beach Post article)
John Lott (you can read the whole thing but his conclusion sections should do)
Essentially the criminal lists did little to affect the vote, and most calls of African American disenfranchisement (the Democrats backbone support) were actually due to a disproportionally high vote rejection rate in 'Black districts', not the lists. But as several reviews have shown, these were do to voter error in marking their ballots, not any particular attempt to actively disenfranchise them. And before you try to make a case that they used different style ballots in 'Black Districts' (which was the case in some areas) remember, those districts, being predominately Democrat, were run by Democratic election boards who designed those ballots.
There was a good site that summarizes all the various debates, but I can't seem to find it right now. If I do I'll reply with a link.
As for the Supremes roll in all this, it's pretty much a a moot point but if you want to dig further at least 7 justices saw some problem with the way the Florida Supreme Court had ordered the count to go forward, and at least 3 saw the December 12th deadline as an important part of their decision. They vast majority had issues with the lower courts rulings but each of the SCJs had a different idea as to what the solution should be.
Bush tried to get Governor Blanco to relenquish control for one simple reason, she has failed to follow almost any step in the LA emergency relief plan, and even those she did follow she was pushed into. All the while, the Feds get all the blame for a situation that the Constitution dictates they have no authority over. He declared LA and the surrounding States Federal disaster zones PRIOR to Katrina to open up the federal funds for the various governors use, which is about all he could do. He then had to ask her to request the Mayor order an evacuation prior to Katrina (something that their hurricane plan called for but they failed to do until 24 hours prior to landfall), and even then she failed to mobilize the National Guard and/or State police to assist the NOPD.
Even after discussing options to help speed up the relief refforts she requested 24 hours to consider them (according to statements made by NO Mayor Nagins) and then hired a former Clinton advisor to help her save face.
Members of the State government have made statements that she is refusing to give up control to prevent the Feds from being able to point fingers, not because she has a better plan than them. Simply put, she is putting politics infront of peoples lives.
It amazing how people call for more leadership from Bush with one breath (when he legally has no power to act) but when he attempts to actually do what he can, within the bounds of the law, he is accused of trying to just grab power.
People are dieing and all evidence points to the people in direct control (the Governor and to a much lesser degree the Mayor)of the situation being totally incompetant.
It's a perfect example of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
And the other affected areas don't look as bad, not because of political affiliation, but because their local and state governments have been helping and not impeding rescue efforts.
It's always fun to stir this particular pot every once in a while, so here goes.
Could you point out these two media consortiums please. Everyone I was able to read stated that under the 2 most prevailing counting methods Bush won, and a recount would have actually increased his lead (including the method that Gore was actually championing). Under 1 little used method Gore had a less than 800 vote lead (which of course would have required at least one more recount to confirm). Even Paul Krugman had to post a correction to his NYT article in which he made a similar claim to yours (the NYT being a partner in at least one of the Consortiums).
The only method I have seen that would may have given the election to Gore relatively cleanly included overvotes, which, while an interesting sidenote to history, are not valid votes anywhere in the country.
Of course that doesn't take into account the fact that a large number of voters in Republican areas were actually told A) Gore had won, and B) the polls were closed, an hour prior to the actual poll closing resulting in as many as 20,000 people being unable to vote (although I would go with a much more conservatve number like 5-7k just for arguments sake). And I'm not blaming this on any perceived MSMs bias, just the inability to look on a time zone map.
As for the excluding of minority votes, very few districts, and as far as I am aware none of the Democratic districts, actually used those lists to prevent anyone on them from voting, which in fact would mean actual felons, without a legal right to vote, were able to.
Either way, it's a moot point since all the Supremes actually did was rule that Florida election laws could not be modified during an election, resulting in the original deadline being enforced, as the law on the books required.
The Al Qaeda Training Manual retrieved from a raid in Manchester clearly states that all operatives, when ever giving a public voice, are to claim abuse at the hands of their captives. Several of the detaineees who have made those claims have also publically recanted. But of course, the word of a person captured attempting (or after having succeeded) in trying to kill civilians or military personel is to be trusted above all.
And technically, under the Geneva Convention, the prisoners are unlawful combatants meaning under international law the US were permitted to execute them on site (as was a regular occurence during the world wars). I was simply referring to the fact that they are being treated as POWs with respect to the fact that they are not being criminally charged and will be confined until the 'war' is over. Whether that will be when the WOT ends (which would probably mean life) or when fighting in the coutry they were working in officially ceases (at which point they will most likely be turned over the the ruling government). As I've already stated, as pseudo-POWs they may not have broken any laws in their home countries so may not be subject to criminal law there. If a Jamaican goes to Iraq to fight Americans has he broken any Jamaican law?
As for quality of life. From what I have seen from Iraqi reporters and bloggers who are there (as opposed to most international reporters who spend their time inside hotels in Bagdad and only report second hand stories), they seem to be doing better . Electricity production is already above what they had under Saddam, and since the coalition forces are bringing up such support systems accross the courtry and not just in a couple cities as Saddam did, many more Iraqis have access than ever before. Same goes for the hundreds of schools opened up post Saddam. So if you live in dowtown Bagdad, while things are improving they may still be slightly below what you had under Saddms rule (which was disproportionally good compared to the rest of Iraq), if you live almost anywhere else, things are almost guarenteed to be better.
I'm not sure I get what your "are you including Iraq within that group" questions even means but yes, I included (but don't limit the numbers to) the 7 million+ Iraqis who for the first time in generations were able to see more on their ballot besides: Saddam y/n. What about it?
And yes it is the same Iran. It's also the same Iran under which the only people able to run for public office under the current system have to be picked by the Mullahs first. Hardly a true democracy. Who do you think they are going to allow to run? A true reformer?
On the bias topic, guess which documentary company had a nice little film about the neo-con movement in the US in which the narrator said this: "This is a highly sensitive issue, the majority of neo-conservatives have been and remain Jewish... are strongly pro-Zionist and want to topple regimes in the Middle East to help Israel...". If you guessed the BBC you'd be smack on. And according to Honestreporting.com, of 17 Israel centered docs the BBC made in the past 4 years, 16 have portrayed them in a negative light. I've actually seen a couple of these and I can honestly say, of the ones I saw, they couldn't have been more biased if Michael Moore was making them.
Still on the Israeli front, in news broadcasts they've shown stock footage of injured palestinians being carried to hospital when discussing an attack in which the only thing hit was an empty building (something they forgot to mention). In other words, NO ONE was injured but they showed injured civilians anyway.
Prior to the recent elections in Britian, the BBC even went so far as to send hecklers to a Michael Howard conference (for a story about political hecking). I don't know about you, but I don't believe it is the job of the news department to make the news.
And you're more likely to see a more glowing obit of President Reagan on the Democrats website than the
Just a small point about the "independent international agencies". I wouldn't put too much weight into their opinions of Gitmo since, in the case of Amnesty International (the most recent 'independant' group to speak out) their own executive director has admitted to their having little actual knowledge as to any abuse there and has basicly stated their 'gulag' accusations were more of a PR stunt.
Of the nearly 400 separate media visits (with over 1,000 journalists)and 181+ congressional representatives who have visited GITMO (including last weeks visit by a bi-partisan congressional group), I have yet to see any reporting anything that rises to the level of 'torture' or even any serious complaints by the prisoners (unless you include the 5 cases where Korans were mishandled).
As for the lack of trials, as most detainees are considered more on the grounds of prisoners of war and not criminals they cannot therefore be given a criminal trial. On the other hand each detainee has been given a military hearing to determine their status which resulted in several (at least 38) being released. Of course of those 38, about a dozen have be either recaptured or killed during further acts of violence on their part.
On the Iraq front, the latest casulty report's I've seen put 'civilian' deaths around 26,000. Even going from the conservative numbers of how many people Saddam made dissapear in an average year (25,000), there are more people alive today in Iraq than would have been at this time under Saddams rule.
As for the spread of democracy, where have you been hiding your head lately. More countries than ever have begun allowing their people (or in some cases more of their people) to elect or be elected as representatives. While many are only for local positions, others such as Kuwait (unless you missed them allowing women the right to vote and them appointing the first ever female cabinet minister) are much more substantial. Even a recent poll of Iranians show that 74% believe that the US presence in Iraq will help them move from a theocracy to a full fledged democracy.
You may wish to sit there and spout off about how the US is single handedly destroying the world but the facts just do not back you up. And don't try accusing me just standing up for my country. I do not now, nor have I ever lived in the United States.
On a final note, using the BBC as an example of international reporting was a poor choice. They have so much trouble with bias reporting in Iraq that their Chairman was forced to resign not too long ago.
Re:We need to fight back
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State of the Union
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Here's a interesting page detailing a leftist view of the war that doesn't start with "Bush is pure evil". While I am definitely a Conservative, despite the source, I think this is one of the best defences for the war (and from a Marxist no less).
It does a pretty good job both pointing out the hypocrisy of many on the left as well as giving some very strong reasons why Iraq was a good idea.
Personally, I have no trouble with someone disagreeing with me on what they believe is the better solution to a problem. On the other hand when they refuse to even see a problem or refuse to look at alternatives solely because of their emotions, then I have a problem. You may try to put the President into the latter group but can you honestly point to anyone on the left who was offering alternatives that you couldn't find in a cheap fortune cookie. Platitudes are not alternatives.
Well, time to begin the weekend and get out of here. Everyone enjoy the Superbowl. And if you don't like football, enjoy the commercials.
P.S. I haven't really looked at anything else on the above site, besides this one page, so I won't even try to defend anything else on it.
Re:Cool! Just like form AutoComplete
on
Google Suggest
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· Score: 1
It's a good way to kill off 20+ minutes, filtering though the clone results to try and find one legitimate one. Of course then I always want to find at least one more to corroborate the first.
I wonder if a voluntary moderation system, similar to here, might work. Something that requires human interaction not just algoritms and not just by the person doing the initial search. A registered user performs a search, enters a quick reason for the search "all-in-one printer reviews and comparisons" and then other users rate the results.
Or something to eliminate repetative text strings automatically, not just by re-searching with a -"review and compare prices". My guess is if the same 10 word string shows up in 20,000 of the 50,000 results, they're probably clones and 1 is enough.
Well time to head home and do some real work.
Re:Cool! Just like form AutoComplete
on
Google Suggest
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· Score: 1
It's good for a lot more than just typos.
For example, I'm looking for a printer for my parents for Christmas and when entering in the HP printer prefix "psc " I get a listing of all the different models and the number of hits for each.
You do realize that the use of credit to make a purchase is not a right but an option vendors allow you to have. Would you prefer that instead of a credit card they only accepted cash, forcing thousands of people to carry large sums of money on them.
VISA paid for a contract with the Olympics to only accept their card. Other companies do this all the time. COSTCO only accepts American Express. Does that make me complain and get an AE card? No. I just use cash instead. No one can force you to get a credit card against your will and you can still use hard currency if you don't want a VISA.
I do have a problem if VISA reps came up to you and took away your MasterCard while on Olympics grounds but just not allowing you to use it is just business.
I have several friends with businesses who even without a specific contract do not accept certain cards. They don't like their rates and/or there payment schedules. In this case the Olympic organization does that but also gets paid (or a special discounted rate) which I say good for them.
I guess it all depends on the atmosphere in which you see it.
I saw this in the theater on the second night it was out (I live in Ottawa where it was made). I went with some friends who know most of the people involved with it and when you're sitting 5 seats from the writer and most of the cast it makes it a lot more interesting.
Anyways, after it was over we all just stood around and talked with everyone involved. It made it seem a lot more like going over to a friends house to watch some videos and just made the whole thing a lot of fun.
Now I'm not nominating anyone involved for an Oscar but it was fun to watch.
- Straif
P.S. It's also a little interesting when 'Jesus' is also the ticket taker. =)
While I have not yet received any warnings about my bandwidth usage I have heard about other people here in Ottawa that have gotten some nasty emails and even one who had their account temporarily disabled supposedly due to high usage.
I have no idea how much they were downloading or from where but it got me wondering about if the source matters.
I routinely download 5+GB/day from the Rogers newsservers and have never had a warning. I usually only stop downloading when I'm refreshing the lists and start up again.
I also do some uploading (approx 2-5 GB per month) to a couple of friends computers who are mostly outside the rogers network.
when I told this to a Bell rep who came to my door he told me to keep Rogers since Bell Hi-Speed would definately limit me. 2GB a month I think was his number.
I've been patiently awaiting my letter from Rogers to stop but it has never arrived. If they added a new tier of totally unlimited for a few more dollars a month I would be willing to join up to pay my fair share but it does not look like thats going to happen any tmie soon.
Either way, I don't know how they are determining who is abusing their systems since I'm sure by any standards I would be on that list. It could just be a scare tactic hoping the few people they contact will spread their experience through word of mouth. Maybe their just hoping this will cause people to slow down without them having to go through too much trouble.
The RIAA is sending you a file that has different than EXPECTED contents but it is not in any way an invalid/illegal file. They can name their blank file anything they want, it's your problem for downloading it.
And this is without a doubt different from spam. You receive spam when it is sent to your server not your machine. Just because you don't hit "receive" for a few days at home does not mean there aren't 3000 pieces of spam filling up your email account. Do you think you ISP casres that you did or didn't open your email client.
Downloads on the other hand are only sent when you request them. The fact you get something you weren't expecting is your own damn fault. If you want to get illegal warez/mps/vids accept the fact that the RIAA will try to make you life a living hell.
Not to be too picky but the reason I didn't love Spiderman like so many others was due to the differences in the story from the comics.
Genetically engineered spider vs radioactive one. This is just jumping on the genetic bandwagon (admittedly like everything prior to the nineties was blamed on radioactivity) and just opens the door to the someone creating hundred of "spidermen" instead of only having the original because the situation that created him is easily duplicated.
Organic web shooters vs man-made. Come on! That was the whole reason Peter Parker was such a great hero. While he had special powers, he also had the scientific know how to make up different webbing formulas to fight specific foes. This Peter Parker has it all handed to him.
Of course the Toby internal monologues also had some affect on me not loving the movie, but thats a discussion for another post.
You can blame all my prior rantings on this damn flu I've had for the past week and the fact I'm just trying to kill time at work.
To exploit this you aren't just going to send a document and say "can you please open this and add two spaces to the first line and return it". You can easily find hundreds of ways to get a least a few people to send you an altered doc.
At my office we routinely get useless surveys about everything from contract negotiations to whats for lunch in the cafeteria. While some involve filling out an online form, many are still just attached.doc files that you have to do exactly what this describes.
I'm usually not bored enough to actually take the time to fill these out but I'm sure you can get a few responses.
Ever since Rogers switched from the @home network to their own servers all performance has been halved, at best.
I've had Rogers since it was first introduced and I can tell you the service has never been worse.
I remember the days of 350KB/s dl'ing but now I'd be lucky to hit 100. Upload has finally climbed back up to around 50KB/s but only in spikes and not usually for very long. Their DNS's are up and down constantly and their news server isn't even worth connecting to. To add insult to injury, they also took away my static IP and forced everyone to switch to dynamic.
I'm currently paying about $35CAD/ month (due to other discounts from having certain Rogers cable packages) but with the instability and degredation of the service I'm barly willing to keep paying that. Now they want to charge more!
Since I probably average about 5 gigs a week in dl's and 1-2 in ul I suppose I would be closer to the $80 bracket than the $20 one and I would be willing to pay it if they could guarentee service.
All I can say is if they go to this new pricing system they better improve their acount crediting system because unlike now, I will be calling them every time my connection goes down.
The only reason the Chinese consider it "their" territory is because they refuse to recognize widely accepted international borders.
As for the planes. Anyone who thinks that an Aeries II surveilence plane with a top speed of 402 mph and the manuverability of a brick could intentionally or even by it's own actions hit a F-8 fighter jet (top speed 1355 mph) is just plain nuts. That would be like, oh say, blaming a Japanese fishing boat for being hit by a surfacing US nuclear submarine.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, under certain condition Gore could get more votes that Bush, but even under the best case scenario, Gore's biggest lead was 171 votes, but this included overvotes (in some counties) which are generally NOT legal votes. One of the other Gore victory counts included cases where one of the reviewers disagreed with the decision of voters intent. Removing the 334 disputed ballots from those counts and Bush again wins by over 200 votes.
Simply put, 2 of the 3 most widely accepted legal counting methods made Bush the winner and the one under which Gore may have won, is the least used of the three.
But none of that really matters because both of the major reviews agreed that under all conditions that were in place in 2000 Bush won. If Gore had possessed magical powers and could identify the exact counties and counting methods to request, then yes, he could possibly have squeaked by. But he doesn't so he didn't.
When the seperation of votes when 170K+ are in dispute, is less than 600, you can always find some methods of changing the totals in your favor.
As for the decisions of the Justices, do you not actually read what you type? 7 had issues with the Florida decisions (meaning at least 2 jumped traditional party lines to some degree) but somehow the two that jumped had integrity while the others on the 'Bush' side were all partisan hacks? Under that logic wouldn't that make the 2 who dissented from the beginning more partisan as even two of their like minded brethren saw some problems where they saw none?
Either way, as a Canadian looking from the outside in I have to say that the American election system is fubar'd. Having each State set up their own rules for Federal positions, and then each district within that State set up their own rules, and finally having each district under a particular parties control is just idiotic to say the least. That and not requiring some form of photo ID to vote. What's up with that.
Here, Elections Canada sets the federal standards and all the districts are set up by non-partisan employees of Elections Canada (yes the people can vote for a particular party but are not actively campaigning for them). Go in, check you name off a list (or fill in the necessary form if you're not on a list) and mark an X. Easy as that. That's why we don't have any issues with 'hanging chads' or 'butterfly ballots' etc. and our elections are generally completed on the same day (except where manual recounts are automatically trigger). I can't remember the last time any court became involved with an Election, after the fact. For elections, just as in most things in life, you should just follow the KISS ideology.
Have you tried CNN.COM or The Palm Beach Post or Newsmax or The Washington Post or how about USA Today.
In case you think any of those are too Bush friendly try out the New York Times.
Outside of media sources there is also the Wiki entry.
As for the panhandle disenfranchisement try:
Newsmax again.
Or the US Senate investigation.
As for the disenfranchisement of voters through poorly created criminal lists try:
Common Dreams (reprinting a Palm Beach Post article)
John Lott (you can read the whole thing but his conclusion sections should do)
Essentially the criminal lists did little to affect the vote, and most calls of African American disenfranchisement (the Democrats backbone support) were actually due to a disproportionally high vote rejection rate in 'Black districts', not the lists. But as several reviews have shown, these were do to voter error in marking their ballots, not any particular attempt to actively disenfranchise them. And before you try to make a case that they used different style ballots in 'Black Districts' (which was the case in some areas) remember, those districts, being predominately Democrat, were run by Democratic election boards who designed those ballots.
There was a good site that summarizes all the various debates, but I can't seem to find it right now. If I do I'll reply with a link. As for the Supremes roll in all this, it's pretty much a a moot point but if you want to dig further at least 7 justices saw some problem with the way the Florida Supreme Court had ordered the count to go forward, and at least 3 saw the December 12th deadline as an important part of their decision. They vast majority had issues with the lower courts rulings but each of the SCJs had a different idea as to what the solution should be.
Bush tried to get Governor Blanco to relenquish control for one simple reason, she has failed to follow almost any step in the LA emergency relief plan, and even those she did follow she was pushed into. All the while, the Feds get all the blame for a situation that the Constitution dictates they have no authority over. He declared LA and the surrounding States Federal disaster zones PRIOR to Katrina to open up the federal funds for the various governors use, which is about all he could do. He then had to ask her to request the Mayor order an evacuation prior to Katrina (something that their hurricane plan called for but they failed to do until 24 hours prior to landfall), and even then she failed to mobilize the National Guard and/or State police to assist the NOPD.
Even after discussing options to help speed up the relief refforts she requested 24 hours to consider them (according to statements made by NO Mayor Nagins) and then hired a former Clinton advisor to help her save face.
Members of the State government have made statements that she is refusing to give up control to prevent the Feds from being able to point fingers, not because she has a better plan than them. Simply put, she is putting politics infront of peoples lives.
It amazing how people call for more leadership from Bush with one breath (when he legally has no power to act) but when he attempts to actually do what he can, within the bounds of the law, he is accused of trying to just grab power.
People are dieing and all evidence points to the people in direct control (the Governor and to a much lesser degree the Mayor)of the situation being totally incompetant.
It's a perfect example of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
And the other affected areas don't look as bad, not because of political affiliation, but because their local and state governments have been helping and not impeding rescue efforts.
Could you point out these two media consortiums please. Everyone I was able to read stated that under the 2 most prevailing counting methods Bush won, and a recount would have actually increased his lead (including the method that Gore was actually championing). Under 1 little used method Gore had a less than 800 vote lead (which of course would have required at least one more recount to confirm). Even Paul Krugman had to post a correction to his NYT article in which he made a similar claim to yours (the NYT being a partner in at least one of the Consortiums).
The only method I have seen that would may have given the election to Gore relatively cleanly included overvotes, which, while an interesting sidenote to history, are not valid votes anywhere in the country.
Of course that doesn't take into account the fact that a large number of voters in Republican areas were actually told A) Gore had won, and B) the polls were closed, an hour prior to the actual poll closing resulting in as many as 20,000 people being unable to vote (although I would go with a much more conservatve number like 5-7k just for arguments sake). And I'm not blaming this on any perceived MSMs bias, just the inability to look on a time zone map.
As for the excluding of minority votes, very few districts, and as far as I am aware none of the Democratic districts, actually used those lists to prevent anyone on them from voting, which in fact would mean actual felons, without a legal right to vote, were able to.
Either way, it's a moot point since all the Supremes actually did was rule that Florida election laws could not be modified during an election, resulting in the original deadline being enforced, as the law on the books required.
And technically, under the Geneva Convention, the prisoners are unlawful combatants meaning under international law the US were permitted to execute them on site (as was a regular occurence during the world wars). I was simply referring to the fact that they are being treated as POWs with respect to the fact that they are not being criminally charged and will be confined until the 'war' is over. Whether that will be when the WOT ends (which would probably mean life) or when fighting in the coutry they were working in officially ceases (at which point they will most likely be turned over the the ruling government). As I've already stated, as pseudo-POWs they may not have broken any laws in their home countries so may not be subject to criminal law there. If a Jamaican goes to Iraq to fight Americans has he broken any Jamaican law?
As for quality of life. From what I have seen from Iraqi reporters and bloggers who are there (as opposed to most international reporters who spend their time inside hotels in Bagdad and only report second hand stories), they seem to be doing better . Electricity production is already above what they had under Saddam, and since the coalition forces are bringing up such support systems accross the courtry and not just in a couple cities as Saddam did, many more Iraqis have access than ever before. Same goes for the hundreds of schools opened up post Saddam. So if you live in dowtown Bagdad, while things are improving they may still be slightly below what you had under Saddms rule (which was disproportionally good compared to the rest of Iraq), if you live almost anywhere else, things are almost guarenteed to be better.
I'm not sure I get what your "are you including Iraq within that group" questions even means but yes, I included (but don't limit the numbers to) the 7 million+ Iraqis who for the first time in generations were able to see more on their ballot besides: Saddam y/n. What about it?
And yes it is the same Iran. It's also the same Iran under which the only people able to run for public office under the current system have to be picked by the Mullahs first. Hardly a true democracy. Who do you think they are going to allow to run? A true reformer?
On the bias topic, guess which documentary company had a nice little film about the neo-con movement in the US in which the narrator said this: "This is a highly sensitive issue, the majority of neo-conservatives have been and remain Jewish ... are strongly pro-Zionist and want to topple regimes in the Middle East to help Israel...". If you guessed the BBC you'd be smack on. And according to Honestreporting.com, of 17 Israel centered docs the BBC made in the past 4 years, 16 have portrayed them in a negative light. I've actually seen a couple of these and I can honestly say, of the ones I saw, they couldn't have been more biased if Michael Moore was making them.
Still on the Israeli front, in news broadcasts they've shown stock footage of injured palestinians being carried to hospital when discussing an attack in which the only thing hit was an empty building (something they forgot to mention). In other words, NO ONE was injured but they showed injured civilians anyway.
Prior to the recent elections in Britian, the BBC even went so far as to send hecklers to a Michael Howard conference (for a story about political hecking). I don't know about you, but I don't believe it is the job of the news department to make the news.
And you're more likely to see a more glowing obit of President Reagan on the Democrats website than the
Of the nearly 400 separate media visits (with over 1,000 journalists)and 181+ congressional representatives who have visited GITMO (including last weeks visit by a bi-partisan congressional group), I have yet to see any reporting anything that rises to the level of 'torture' or even any serious complaints by the prisoners (unless you include the 5 cases where Korans were mishandled).
As for the lack of trials, as most detainees are considered more on the grounds of prisoners of war and not criminals they cannot therefore be given a criminal trial. On the other hand each detainee has been given a military hearing to determine their status which resulted in several (at least 38) being released. Of course of those 38, about a dozen have be either recaptured or killed during further acts of violence on their part.
On the Iraq front, the latest casulty report's I've seen put 'civilian' deaths around 26,000. Even going from the conservative numbers of how many people Saddam made dissapear in an average year (25,000), there are more people alive today in Iraq than would have been at this time under Saddams rule.
As for the spread of democracy, where have you been hiding your head lately. More countries than ever have begun allowing their people (or in some cases more of their people) to elect or be elected as representatives. While many are only for local positions, others such as Kuwait (unless you missed them allowing women the right to vote and them appointing the first ever female cabinet minister) are much more substantial. Even a recent poll of Iranians show that 74% believe that the US presence in Iraq will help them move from a theocracy to a full fledged democracy.
You may wish to sit there and spout off about how the US is single handedly destroying the world but the facts just do not back you up. And don't try accusing me just standing up for my country. I do not now, nor have I ever lived in the United States.
On a final note, using the BBC as an example of international reporting was a poor choice. They have so much trouble with bias reporting in Iraq that their Chairman was forced to resign not too long ago.
Here's a interesting page detailing a leftist view of the war that doesn't start with "Bush is pure evil". While I am definitely a Conservative, despite the source, I think this is one of the best defences for the war (and from a Marxist no less).
http://www.marxist.org.uk/htm_docs/comm12.htm
It does a pretty good job both pointing out the hypocrisy of many on the left as well as giving some very strong reasons why Iraq was a good idea.
Personally, I have no trouble with someone disagreeing with me on what they believe is the better solution to a problem. On the other hand when they refuse to even see a problem or refuse to look at alternatives solely because of their emotions, then I have a problem.
You may try to put the President into the latter group but can you honestly point to anyone on the left who was offering alternatives that you couldn't find in a cheap fortune cookie. Platitudes are not alternatives.
Well, time to begin the weekend and get out of here. Everyone enjoy the Superbowl. And if you don't like football, enjoy the commercials.
P.S. I haven't really looked at anything else on the above site, besides this one page, so I won't even try to defend anything else on it.
It's a good way to kill off 20+ minutes, filtering though the clone results to try and find one legitimate one.
Of course then I always want to find at least one more to corroborate the first.
I wonder if a voluntary moderation system, similar to here, might work. Something that requires human interaction not just algoritms and not just by the person doing the initial search.
A registered user performs a search, enters a quick reason for the search "all-in-one printer reviews and comparisons" and then other users rate the results.
Or something to eliminate repetative text strings automatically, not just by re-searching with a -"review and compare prices".
My guess is if the same 10 word string shows up in 20,000 of the 50,000 results, they're probably clones and 1 is enough.
Well time to head home and do some real work.
It's good for a lot more than just typos.
For example, I'm looking for a printer for my parents for Christmas and when entering in the HP printer prefix "psc " I get a listing of all the different models and the number of hits for each.
Makes looking for good reviews a little easier.
You do realize that the use of credit to make a purchase is not a right but an option vendors allow you to have. Would you prefer that instead of a credit card they only accepted cash, forcing thousands of people to carry large sums of money on them.
VISA paid for a contract with the Olympics to only accept their card. Other companies do this all the time. COSTCO only accepts American Express. Does that make me complain and get an AE card? No. I just use cash instead. No one can force you to get a credit card against your will and you can still use hard currency if you don't want a VISA.
I do have a problem if VISA reps came up to you and took away your MasterCard while on Olympics grounds but just not allowing you to use it is just business.
I have several friends with businesses who even without a specific contract do not accept certain cards. They don't like their rates and/or there payment schedules. In this case the Olympic organization does that but also gets paid (or a special discounted rate) which I say good for them.
I guess it all depends on the atmosphere in which you see it.
I saw this in the theater on the second night it was out (I live in Ottawa where it was made). I went with some friends who know most of the people involved with it and when you're sitting 5 seats from the writer and most of the cast it makes it a lot more interesting.
Anyways, after it was over we all just stood around and talked with everyone involved. It made it seem a lot more like going over to a friends house to watch some videos and just made the whole thing a lot of fun.
Now I'm not nominating anyone involved for an Oscar but it was fun to watch.
- Straif
P.S. It's also a little interesting when 'Jesus' is also the ticket taker. =)
While I have not yet received any warnings about my bandwidth usage I have heard about other people here in Ottawa that have gotten some nasty emails and even one who had their account temporarily disabled supposedly due to high usage.
I have no idea how much they were downloading or from where but it got me wondering about if the source matters.
I routinely download 5+GB/day from the Rogers newsservers and have never had a warning. I usually only stop downloading when I'm refreshing the lists and start up again.
I also do some uploading (approx 2-5 GB per month) to a couple of friends computers who are mostly outside the rogers network.
when I told this to a Bell rep who came to my door he told me to keep Rogers since Bell Hi-Speed would definately limit me. 2GB a month I think was his number.
I've been patiently awaiting my letter from Rogers to stop but it has never arrived. If they added a new tier of totally unlimited for a few more dollars a month I would be willing to join up to pay my fair share but it does not look like thats going to happen any tmie soon.
Either way, I don't know how they are determining who is abusing their systems since I'm sure by any standards I would be on that list. It could just be a scare tactic hoping the few people they contact will spread their experience through word of mouth. Maybe their just hoping this will cause people to slow down without them having to go through too much trouble.
The RIAA is sending you a file that has different than EXPECTED contents but it is not in any way an invalid/illegal file. They can name their blank file anything they want, it's your problem for downloading it.
And this is without a doubt different from spam. You receive spam when it is sent to your server not your machine. Just because you don't hit "receive" for a few days at home does not mean there aren't 3000 pieces of spam filling up your email account. Do you think you ISP casres that you did or didn't open your email client.
Downloads on the other hand are only sent when you request them. The fact you get something you weren't expecting is your own damn fault. If you want to get illegal warez/mps/vids accept the fact that the RIAA will try to make you life a living hell.
Not to be too picky but the reason I didn't love Spiderman like so many others was due to the differences in the story from the comics.
Genetically engineered spider vs radioactive one. This is just jumping on the genetic bandwagon (admittedly like everything prior to the nineties was blamed on radioactivity) and just opens the door to the someone creating hundred of "spidermen" instead of only having the original because the situation that created him is easily duplicated.
Organic web shooters vs man-made. Come on! That was the whole reason Peter Parker was such a great hero. While he had special powers, he also had the scientific know how to make up different webbing formulas to fight specific foes. This Peter Parker has it all handed to him.
Of course the Toby internal monologues also had some affect on me not loving the movie, but thats a discussion for another post.
You can blame all my prior rantings on this damn flu I've had for the past week and the fact I'm just trying to kill time at work.
To exploit this you aren't just going to send a document and say "can you please open this and add two spaces to the first line and return it". You can easily find hundreds of ways to get a least a few people to send you an altered doc.
.doc files that you have to do exactly what this describes.
At my office we routinely get useless surveys about everything from contract negotiations to whats for lunch in the cafeteria. While some involve filling out an online form, many are still just attached
I'm usually not bored enough to actually take the time to fill these out but I'm sure you can get a few responses.
Ever since Rogers switched from the @home network to their own servers all performance has been halved, at best.
I've had Rogers since it was first introduced and I can tell you the service has never been worse.
I remember the days of 350KB/s dl'ing but now I'd be lucky to hit 100. Upload has finally climbed back up to around 50KB/s but only in spikes and not usually for very long. Their DNS's are up and down constantly and their news server isn't even worth connecting to. To add insult to injury, they also took away my static IP and forced everyone to switch to dynamic.
I'm currently paying about $35CAD/ month (due to other discounts from having certain Rogers cable packages) but with the instability and degredation of the service I'm barly willing to keep paying that. Now they want to charge more!
Since I probably average about 5 gigs a week in dl's and 1-2 in ul I suppose I would be closer to the $80 bracket than the $20 one and I would be willing to pay it if they could guarentee service.
All I can say is if they go to this new pricing system they better improve their acount crediting system because unlike now, I will be calling them every time my connection goes down.
The only reason the Chinese consider it "their" territory is because they refuse to recognize widely accepted international borders.
As for the planes. Anyone who thinks that an Aeries II surveilence plane with a top speed of 402 mph and the manuverability of a brick could intentionally or even by it's own actions hit a F-8 fighter jet (top speed 1355 mph) is just plain nuts. That would be like, oh say, blaming a Japanese fishing boat for being hit by a surfacing US nuclear submarine.