Show me how the world (and more particularly Iraq) is better off. I agree that he is a monster, and that Iraq _should_ be better off without him, but look at the current situation for the average Iraqi citizen: no clean water, unreliable (at best) power supply, people still being tortured in Abu Graib (?sp), villages being accidently blown up by ill-directed smart bombs, the country is still being run by spivs in silk suits, etc. This does not look like an improvement to me.
There were (probably) two reasons Saddam wanted everyone to think he had WMDs. Firstly, he had to look like a strongman at home and locally (Iran, Syria, etc) so he could retain power. Secondly, he was probably hoping he could bluff the US into not attacking. You may remember his frantic backpedal when it became obvious he couldn't.
I also doubt that Bush and his merry band of criminals actually ever believed in WMDs or the connections between al Qaeda and Iraq - people like Rove and Rumsfeld have been advocating invasion of Iraq for about 20 years now.
I agree, however, that post-invasion options are limited. There is a haunting air of familiarity (Vietnam) about it all. I hope all the Americans who voted for Bush enjoy the reintroduction of Selective Service...
> For what Clinton did he was nearly impeached. For what Bush has done there's little if any talk...
You damn' commies are all the same. Getting an illicit blowjob (unless you're a Baptist preacher spending the church's money, of course) is _much_, _much_, _much_ worse than lying to Congress and to the people, starting an illegal pretaliatory war, torturing illegally-held POWs in contravention of the various Geneva Conventions, etc. Shit! Get with the program.
> Wasn't this fellow supposed to be the president of accountability?
What on earth is a Ford Canardly? The only car with a similar name in Australia is a Rolls Canardly, of which I have owned many in my youth (slogan: "It rolls down hills, but can 'ardly get up them"). Is this Ford of which you speak a similar kind of vehicle?
I can't imagine ever wanting to know enough about Windows to understand this except at a very high level. I hope my next contract (and all the others after that), like my last, are at UNIX sites.
Crikey - I followed that link and there seem to be about a dozen foreskins o' Jeebus - how many times did the poor little fucker get circumcised anyway?
> When the government supplies a service, individual taxpayers could probably do better in terms of price and quality by going to the private sector.
This is bullshit - I can provide several counterexamples.
Until recently, electrical power generation and distribution in South Australia was handled by a single state-owned authority. Now that the infrastructure has been raffled off to the private sector, we are having to choose our supplier (an unnecessary headfuck, and a nonsense, since the stuff still arrives over the same old wires). Electricity is now more expensive (regardless of the service provider) and supply is less reliable.
We also recently sold off our water supply to private enterpirse (our previous state government was a bunch of Thatcherite morons), and guess what? Water is now more expensive and (wait for it) the supply is less reliable, although it's nowhere near as bad as the electricity.
Australia's health system, which is still mostly public (although probably not for much longer), is considerably more efficient and cost-effective, with better patient outcomes, than that of the USA, which is, iirc, largely private.
I could go on at length, but I'm sure you get the picture. As soon as you let private companies get their snouts into the public trough, they just rob their customers blind.
According to my Langenscheidt's Concise German Dictionary, it means "evil; wicked; malevolent;..." which is sort-of bad, but not in the (quite accurate, when describing Bose speakers) sense of "crap no-one in her right mind would pay good money for".
> However, there is not a single physical artifact that is known to be associated with Jesus himself.
How can you say that? After all, there's a whole forest-worth of bits of the True Cross, and a veritable thicket of thorns from the True Crown of Thorns, and the Shroud of Turin (to mention just a few mediaeval forgeries).
This isn't (fuck! I just bled all over my keyboard. I shouldn't cook - more importantly, cut things up - when I'm pissed. And I've just used my last bandaid. Another pint of homebrew will help.) entirely true, but I understand what you mean, and I sort of agree. I went straight from high school to university in 1968 with a pretty good matriculation result. Unfortunately that didn't translate into acceptable performance at university, because I wasn't mature enough to take advantage of the place - basically, I spent so much time getting drunk and trying to get laid I failed bigtime (you could say I _was_ taking advantage of some of what university has to offer, I suppose...).
Twenty five years later, after learning some self-discipline as an army cartographer (long story), I went back to university and succeeded. I am absolutely convinced that, with very few exceptions, if you are interested in something _really_ difficult like, say, mathematics, you need formal instruction. Self-study just doesn't cut it for most of us.
Actually, Hitler had absolutely nothing to do with the Boy Scouts (although he stole the idea and "improved" it to form the Hitler Youth). The Scout movement was created by Baden Powell in the early 20th century, after his experience during the Boer War. (In case you wonder how I know this, I used to be a Scout, about 40 years ago, and they taught us a bit of history along with the knots.)
I don't know about the brain surgery, although I think the pre-columbian Americans used to do a bit of it.
It's interesting that everyone seems to be focussing on requirements creep (granted it's _really_ fucking annoying), whereas TFA explicitly states that the biggest risk factor is a poor choice of methodology (eg, force-fitting every project to extreme programming, or OO, or whatever the currently fashionable methodology might be). This relates quite well to what's in Robert Glass's "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering" (recently reviewed on Slashdot, but I'm too lazy to look up the reference). I'm not completely convinced myself, but I believe that selecting the methodology before _any_ other work starts can cause problems.
I've just finished reading Don Watson's "Dictionary of Weasel Words", recently published in Australia (I don't know whether it's available in the rest of the world, but there's an associated website, www.weaselwords.com.au). It's a merciless assault on the misuse of language by marketeers, managers, politicians and other such weasels. His definition of solution includes a quote from Hudson Human Capital Consultants: "... our consultants are able to deliver the entire end-to-end solution for employers with the minimum of fuss."
On unix this is so, however I have a dim memory (from about 15 years ago) that AOS/VS (a Data General operating system) had ACLs which distinguished between write access and delete access, and I'd guess that other operating systems which support ACLs would also make the same sort of distinction. Perhaps someone will be able to enlighten (or correct) me.
I've worked with a couple of MCSEs who weren't morons. Of course, they were Solaris sysadmins who'd got the MCSE as a requirement for some job or other they'd been involved in, but still...
One of them said he'd had _enormous_ trouble with the MCSE tests, until he figured out the "correct" answers to the questions wasn't the right answer that'd actually solve the problem, it was the answer you'd been taught on the MCSE course.
Client states: Iraq under Saddam (he was America's boy, originally), Iran under the Shah, Panama under Norriega, Vietnam under Diem, Cuba under Battista, Haiti under the Duvalliers, and now the current bloke (whoever he is),... the list goes on and on.
Like all analogies, this one is imperfect. I dare say most Romans couldn't see the problem (which was right under their collective noses) right up until the last moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Show me how the world (and more particularly Iraq) is better off. I agree that he is a monster, and that Iraq _should_ be better off without him, but look at the current situation for the average Iraqi citizen: no clean water, unreliable (at best) power supply, people still being tortured in Abu Graib (?sp), villages being accidently blown up by ill-directed smart bombs, the country is still being run by spivs in silk suits, etc. This does not look like an improvement to me.
There were (probably) two reasons Saddam wanted everyone to think he had WMDs. Firstly, he had to look like a strongman at home and locally (Iran, Syria, etc) so he could retain power. Secondly, he was probably hoping he could bluff the US into not attacking. You may remember his frantic backpedal when it became obvious he couldn't.
...
I also doubt that Bush and his merry band of criminals actually ever believed in WMDs or the connections between al Qaeda and Iraq - people like Rove and Rumsfeld have been advocating invasion of Iraq for about 20 years now.
I agree, however, that post-invasion options are limited. There is a haunting air of familiarity (Vietnam) about it all. I hope all the Americans who voted for Bush enjoy the reintroduction of Selective Service
$1.80 a gallon? That's so cheap! In Australia we're paying about $A5/gall (I'd guess just under $US4).
Stop whinging.
> For what Clinton did he was nearly impeached. For what Bush has done there's little if any talk ...
You damn' commies are all the same. Getting an illicit blowjob (unless you're a Baptist preacher spending the church's money, of course) is _much_, _much_, _much_ worse than lying to Congress and to the people, starting an illegal pretaliatory war, torturing illegally-held POWs in contravention of the various Geneva Conventions, etc. Shit! Get with the program.
> Wasn't this fellow supposed to be the president of accountability?
I'm sure Dubyah can count, up to three anyway.
Well ... he _might_ have meant it was a mute point (he should've kept quiet about it, or something) ...
What on earth is a Ford Canardly? The only car with a similar name in Australia is a Rolls Canardly, of which I have owned many in my youth (slogan: "It rolls down hills, but can 'ardly get up them"). Is this Ford of which you speak a similar kind of vehicle?
I can't imagine ever wanting to know enough about Windows to understand this except at a very high level. I hope my next contract (and all the others after that), like my last, are at UNIX sites.
What are you talking about? There is no god.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Crikey - I followed that link and there seem to be about a dozen foreskins o' Jeebus - how many times did the poor little fucker get circumcised anyway?
This behaviour strikes me as being _seriously_ disfunctional.
> When the government supplies a service, individual taxpayers could probably do better in terms of price and quality by going to the private sector.
This is bullshit - I can provide several counterexamples.
Until recently, electrical power generation and distribution in South Australia was handled by a single state-owned authority. Now that the infrastructure has been raffled off to the private sector, we are having to choose our supplier (an unnecessary headfuck, and a nonsense, since the stuff still arrives over the same old wires). Electricity is now more expensive (regardless of the service provider) and supply is less reliable.
We also recently sold off our water supply to private enterpirse (our previous state government was a bunch of Thatcherite morons), and guess what? Water is now more expensive and (wait for it) the supply is less reliable, although it's nowhere near as bad as the electricity.
Australia's health system, which is still mostly public (although probably not for much longer), is considerably more efficient and cost-effective, with better patient outcomes, than that of the USA, which is, iirc, largely private.
I could go on at length, but I'm sure you get the picture. As soon as you let private companies get their snouts into the public trough, they just rob their customers blind.
According to my Langenscheidt's Concise German Dictionary, it means "evil; wicked; malevolent; ..." which is sort-of bad, but not in the (quite accurate, when describing Bose speakers) sense of "crap no-one in her right mind would pay good money for".
> However, there is not a single physical artifact that is known to be associated with Jesus himself.
How can you say that? After all, there's a whole forest-worth of bits of the True Cross, and a veritable thicket of thorns from the True Crown of Thorns, and the Shroud of Turin (to mention just a few mediaeval forgeries).
> College education is not better.
...).
This isn't (fuck! I just bled all over my keyboard. I shouldn't cook - more importantly, cut things up - when I'm pissed. And I've just used my last bandaid. Another pint of homebrew will help.) entirely true, but I understand what you mean, and I sort of agree. I went straight from high school to university in 1968 with a pretty good matriculation result. Unfortunately that didn't translate into acceptable performance at university, because I wasn't mature enough to take advantage of the place - basically, I spent so much time getting drunk and trying to get laid I failed bigtime (you could say I _was_ taking advantage of some of what university has to offer, I suppose
Twenty five years later, after learning some self-discipline as an army cartographer (long story), I went back to university and succeeded. I am absolutely convinced that, with very few exceptions, if you are interested in something _really_ difficult like, say, mathematics, you need formal instruction. Self-study just doesn't cut it for most of us.
It's from a Star Trek movie (I forget which one) - my children made me watch it.
Why bother? The compiler catches most of them ...
I'll be quite content if I'm still alive and not suffering from senile dementia in 2038 - I certainly won't still be working.
Actually, Hitler had absolutely nothing to do with the Boy Scouts (although he stole the idea and "improved" it to form the Hitler Youth). The Scout movement was created by Baden Powell in the early 20th century, after his experience during the Boer War. (In case you wonder how I know this, I used to be a Scout, about 40 years ago, and they taught us a bit of history along with the knots.)
I don't know about the brain surgery, although I think the pre-columbian Americans used to do a bit of it.
It's interesting that everyone seems to be focussing on requirements creep (granted it's _really_ fucking annoying), whereas TFA explicitly states that the biggest risk factor is a poor choice of methodology (eg, force-fitting every project to extreme programming, or OO, or whatever the currently fashionable methodology might be). This relates quite well to what's in Robert Glass's "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering" (recently reviewed on Slashdot, but I'm too lazy to look up the reference). I'm not completely convinced myself, but I believe that selecting the methodology before _any_ other work starts can cause problems.
... never works.
I've just finished reading Don Watson's "Dictionary of Weasel Words", recently published in Australia (I don't know whether it's available in the rest of the world, but there's an associated website, www.weaselwords.com.au). It's a merciless assault on the misuse of language by marketeers, managers, politicians and other such weasels. His definition of solution includes a quote from Hudson Human Capital Consultants: "... our consultants are able to deliver the entire end-to-end solution for employers with the minimum of fuss."
You'd probably enjoy it as much as I did.
On unix this is so, however I have a dim memory (from about 15 years ago) that AOS/VS (a Data General operating system) had ACLs which distinguished between write access and delete access, and I'd guess that other operating systems which support ACLs would also make the same sort of distinction. Perhaps someone will be able to enlighten (or correct) me.
I've worked with a couple of MCSEs who weren't morons. Of course, they were Solaris sysadmins who'd got the MCSE as a requirement for some job or other they'd been involved in, but still ...
One of them said he'd had _enormous_ trouble with the MCSE tests, until he figured out the "correct" answers to the questions wasn't the right answer that'd actually solve the problem, it was the answer you'd been taught on the MCSE course.
Client states: Iraq under Saddam (he was America's boy, originally), Iran under the Shah, Panama under Norriega, Vietnam under Diem, Cuba under Battista, Haiti under the Duvalliers, and now the current bloke (whoever he is), ... the list goes on and on.
Like all analogies, this one is imperfect. I dare say most Romans couldn't see the problem (which was right under their collective noses) right up until the last moment.