> Calling a large majority a "large plurality" seems little disingenous. Since when is a number over half a plurality?
If you will re-read my post carefully, you'll see that the term refers to the difference between those who supported the war at the peak of support and those who still support it after the bills have started coming in. Unless I'm mistaken, that fraction of the population is a plurality rather than a majority.
> The only thing they seem to be guilty of is having a decent sysadmin/webmaster that prevents the wasting of bandwidth by eliminating several 404s caused by aggressive search engines making guesses.
Too bad the White House didn't also have someone to handle aggressive intelligence analysts making guesses...
> Scientific American has a brief article (only two paragraphs) sumarizing research from a recently released longevity study done on worms. The worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, have been known to live 124 days, "the equivalent of a human reaching his 500th birthday."
So... what's the conversion factor between "worm days" and "dog years"?
> I recommend downgrading all versions of Soldier to the basic "naked man with stick" functionality which was immensely popular and robust for a good portion of the version history of Soldier.
They considered that, but had to scrap the plan when someone pointed out that "Butt Naked Brigade" was already trademarked.
> For the record, I voted for Gore. I'm glad Bush won. I'll vote for Bush again. Why? Because he had the gutts to obliterate enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I cannot say I have the same faith in Gore if put in that situation.
Bush has made us more enemies than he has obliterated.
> Has anyone noticed that troops in Afghanistan haven't been killed lately? No. Why? Because the media only cares about making things into a train wreck.
Have you noticed that the Taliban is getting re-organized in Afghanistan, and that there are actually more pitched battles there now than there were a year ago?
> If there was any real evidence of wrongdoing in the 2000 election, you can bet your life that there would be quite a few public investigations of the fact at the time, especially by the Democrat party (and in Congress too).
Nobody denies that the State of Florida counted lots of votes from overseas military stations which were not received by the legal deadline and/or which did not meet various other legal requirements.
The fact that the Democrats were too gutless to contest those votes does not mean that nothing was amiss.
> Of course it would have been too late to change the final results, but if there was a shred of truth to that, the media would eat it up and the Bush whitehouse would be even more disliked than the Nixon administration in its late months.
After 9/11 the media gave Goober a free pass on damn near everything, right up until the Iraq adventure. For the most part, he's still getting a free pass.
> > American people should have some say in a situation like went on in Iraq.
> They do, it's called voting, not to mention public opinion polls, which were near 70% for the invasion when the US invaded.
As I recall it, the last poll before the shooting started showed 60% support with a UN resolution in support of the invasion, but only 40% otherwise.
When the shooting started the "support our troops" meme merged with the "my country right or wrong" meme, and then you got overwhelming popular support.
...until the bills started coming in. A large plurality of US citizens don't seem to mind fighting wars of aggression, so long as they don't have to pay the bill.
But why would Goober care what the polls showed? We already know that his staff "helpfully" screens the news for him, and the Secret Service show similar enthusiasm to ensure that no protesters are in sight when the presidential motorcade passes by.
> There hasn't been a real declared war since WWII. You can't "declare war on terrorists" and be done with it either, wars are supposed to be declared on countries when you go to fight them.
Also, US wars have to be declared by the Congress rather than by the White House... or at least that's the way it worked back when the Constitution still meant something.
> There are some screen shots missing from that site, namely the error message saying "a non-drm enabled media file has been detected and removed from your computer"
They tried, honest, but the DRM wouldn't let them catch it in a screenshot.
> Does this not go against what open source is all about? It's open code given without the extremes of ownership like water/copy/trade-marks.
No, all GPL'd code is supposed to be copyrighted. The GPL just grants the user certain rights that are not normally available under copyright law.
Look at the headers in the source for some of the GPL'd programs on your system, or visit the FSF Web site and see what is recommended for those headers.
> The NSA's job is to make secure codes for government use, and break other people's codes. So they licensed someone else's code, but why are they announcing it for intra-government use? The obvious question is, Can't they roll their own?
Probably just means that they've discovered how to crack it, so now they want everyone else to use it.
> Trolls can try to make hay with that if they like, but I say it's just the obviously right way to handle the problem, so it's no shock that MS did it the same way.
No, the shock is that MS did something the obviously right way.
> It sounds like Ballmer is saying people who don't work for a good, market-loving American company can't write good code
Presumably his notion of "good code" is "code that makes money for a good, market-loving American company's stockholders", so his statements are at least self-consistent within the Ballmer Zone.
But maybe you were interested in reality instead of the BZ...
> At my high school there's a trash can and recycling bin in nearly every room. After school lets out, the janitor comes around and dumps both into his trash bin.
That's why they call it recycle. You see, at the cereal factory they fork the output and put half in ordinary boxes and half in boxes marked "organic". Your janitors are just merging the streams back to the common source. Round and round it all goes...
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> Calling a large majority a "large plurality" seems little disingenous. Since when is a number over half a plurality?
If you will re-read my post carefully, you'll see that the term refers to the difference between those who supported the war at the peak of support and those who still support it after the bills have started coming in. Unless I'm mistaken, that fraction of the population is a plurality rather than a majority.
> The only thing they seem to be guilty of is having a decent sysadmin/webmaster that prevents the wasting of bandwidth by eliminating several 404s caused by aggressive search engines making guesses.
Too bad the White House didn't also have someone to handle aggressive intelligence analysts making guesses...
> Scientific American has a brief article (only two paragraphs) sumarizing research from a recently released longevity study done on worms. The worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, have been known to live 124 days, "the equivalent of a human reaching his 500th birthday."
So... what's the conversion factor between "worm days" and "dog years"?
> > So why didn't he establish democracy in Kuwait, since we already occupied the country?
> You can't equate Kuwait with Iraq in terms of human rights abuses.
IOW, "to foster democracy in a dangerous, arse-backward region" didn't really have anything to do with it, right?
> Pssst. Don't freak out on me now pal, but guess what OS our Aegis cruisers run?
And how often have they had to fire in combat since that decision?
> I recommend downgrading all versions of Soldier to the basic "naked man with stick" functionality which was immensely popular and robust for a good portion of the version history of Soldier.
They considered that, but had to scrap the plan when someone pointed out that "Butt Naked Brigade" was already trademarked.
> For the record, I voted for Gore. I'm glad Bush won. I'll vote for Bush again. Why? Because he had the gutts to obliterate enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I cannot say I have the same faith in Gore if put in that situation.
Bush has made us more enemies than he has obliterated.
> Has anyone noticed that troops in Afghanistan haven't been killed lately? No. Why? Because the media only cares about making things into a train wreck.
Have you noticed that the Taliban is getting re-organized in Afghanistan, and that there are actually more pitched battles there now than there were a year ago?
> If there was any real evidence of wrongdoing in the 2000 election, you can bet your life that there would be quite a few public investigations of the fact at the time, especially by the Democrat party (and in Congress too).
Nobody denies that the State of Florida counted lots of votes from overseas military stations which were not received by the legal deadline and/or which did not meet various other legal requirements.
The fact that the Democrats were too gutless to contest those votes does not mean that nothing was amiss.
> Of course it would have been too late to change the final results, but if there was a shred of truth to that, the media would eat it up and the Bush whitehouse would be even more disliked than the Nixon administration in its late months.
After 9/11 the media gave Goober a free pass on damn near everything, right up until the Iraq adventure. For the most part, he's still getting a free pass.
> links to terror (see: ansar al-islam);
You refer, of course, to the group that thrived under the protection of the US no-fly zone after 1991...
> to foster democracy in a dangerous, arse-backward region.
So why didn't he establish democracy in Kuwait, since we already occupied the country?
The war was predicated on nothing but boogeymen and false pretexts.
> > American people should have some say in a situation like went on in Iraq.
> They do, it's called voting, not to mention public opinion polls, which were near 70% for the invasion when the US invaded.
As I recall it, the last poll before the shooting started showed 60% support with a UN resolution in support of the invasion, but only 40% otherwise.
When the shooting started the "support our troops" meme merged with the "my country right or wrong" meme, and then you got overwhelming popular support.
But why would Goober care what the polls showed? We already know that his staff "helpfully" screens the news for him, and the Secret Service show similar enthusiasm to ensure that no protesters are in sight when the presidential motorcade passes by.
> CYA! Hell, screw you, CMA!
Call me a reactionary, but I'm sticking with RGB, thank you very much.
> There hasn't been a real declared war since WWII. You can't "declare war on terrorists" and be done with it either, wars are supposed to be declared on countries when you go to fight them.
Also, US wars have to be declared by the Congress rather than by the White House... or at least that's the way it worked back when the Constitution still meant something.
Plants, faugh. I don't burn anything but the finest dinos in my Hummer.
> I don't see the point of this post. We will never run out of oil. Why?
Because we can't use up all the oil until we've used up half the oil, and we can't use up half the oil until we've used up one quarter of it, and
> There are some screen shots missing from that site, namely the error message saying "a non-drm enabled media file has been detected and removed from your computer"
They tried, honest, but the DRM wouldn't let them catch it in a screenshot.
> I don't mind eye-candy if it doesn't bog down the system and waste space.
No problem... by the time this comes out you'll have a computer four times as fast as the one you have now.
Then read your e-mail to find out how to upgrade it to a longhorn.
> Does this not go against what open source is all about? It's open code given without the extremes of ownership like water/copy/trade-marks.
No, all GPL'd code is supposed to be copyrighted. The GPL just grants the user certain rights that are not normally available under copyright law.
Look at the headers in the source for some of the GPL'd programs on your system, or visit the FSF Web site and see what is recommended for those headers.
> <reference src="Muppet Treasure Island">
Oh, the movies you have to know in order to follow the discussions on Slashdot! The Matrix, Spiderman, LotR,
> The NSA's job is to make secure codes for government use, and break other people's codes. So they licensed someone else's code, but why are they announcing it for intra-government use? The obvious question is, Can't they roll their own?
Probably just means that they've discovered how to crack it, so now they want everyone else to use it.
> Trolls can try to make hay with that if they like, but I say it's just the obviously right way to handle the problem, so it's no shock that MS did it the same way.
No, the shock is that MS did something the obviously right way.
> It sounds like Ballmer is saying people who don't work for a good, market-loving American company can't write good code
Presumably his notion of "good code" is "code that makes money for a good, market-loving American company's stockholders", so his statements are at least self-consistent within the Ballmer Zone.
But maybe you were interested in reality instead of the BZ...
Think how many hot dates you'll get when the girls find out why everyone calls you "Sparky".
> At my high school there's a trash can and recycling bin in nearly every room. After school lets out, the janitor comes around and dumps both into his trash bin.
That's why they call it recycle. You see, at the cereal factory they fork the output and put half in ordinary boxes and half in boxes marked "organic". Your janitors are just merging the streams back to the common source. Round and round it all goes...