I always worry about these ideas, they seem good in theory, but in reality you can just end up with a cane toad problem..i.e. when the algae has covered all the oceans we have no pollution...but also no fish....
anywho...maybe we can just set fire to the algae if it gets out of control...
The underlying problem is, people are willing to consider anything - except addressing the cause of the problem.
It's not an ad hominem to search for a suspect who commits a crime. The complete invalidity of the claims arising from the crime notwithstanding, it is illegal to break into a private network and steal data.
I'm actually having a bit of trouble getting worked up over it, since the differences between this and Wikileaks is kind of subtle.
Should we cheer leaks and revile hit jobs, when both are illegal and the net effect of both is getting information out to the public? It seems to me that this lies in a sort of moral grey area.
The fact that Germany wanted to pick a direct fight with the US
that's a contentious statement. I recall reading that the Germany hoped that the Tripartite Pact would deter the US from trying anything. There was no desire to pick a fight with the US. Once the US and Japan started fighting, Germany were in a dilemma whether to blow up the pact or have a state of war with the US.
I suspect the German leaders were hoping Japan would play tit-for-tat and declare war on the USSR. Would have helped them a lot at that time.
The north could have just let the southern states leave the union, but the north was not keen on having a resource rich, wealthy adversary nation right next to it that might align itself with Britian, France, and the native americans against the union. Of course there isn't just one reason for the US civil war, but this was the big deal.
The war started when the south attacked Fort Sumter. Probably something else would have happened if that hadn't, but the north didn't just invade the south to prevent the seccession.
The American Civil Was was about *more* than slavery, but it's ridiculous to say that it wasn't about slavery.
My U.S. History professor, who wrote a dissertation about the civil war, agrees but in a slightly different way. He said it was an economic war.
I think it was a broader cultural schism, basically the same thing the parent country worked out in their own civil war a couple of centuries earlier:
north = roundheads (modernity)
south = cavaliers (medievality)
Of course, our esteemed Founding Fathers set us up the bomb with the 3/5 compromise. They wanted a union more than they wanted to deal with the issue of slavery, so they left it for their great-grandchildren to solve.
And whose right were we protecting on those occasions that we knocked off or destabilized democratically elected governments to put some thuggish warlord into power?
The fact that people who happened to be born in the same 3.5 million square mile area as us did bad things decades ago does not mean that we should never do anything ever again.
I'm against most wars for purely practical reasons: they're expensive, rarely work, and they kill lots of people. But intervening in other countries to stop atrocities can be a good thing, when done right. Suggesting we should never do so simply because we don't have a good way of deciding where to intervene is foolish. To use the requisite car analogy: I can't come up with a definitive method to make sure I always buy the right car, but that doesn't mean I should never buy a car, just that I should try my best to get it right.
Where were we during all the genocides in sub-Saharan Africa over the past few decades?
We do in fact have a "good way of deciding" where to intervene. It just hasn't got anything to do with protecting people's lives or rights.
based on past history the germans should have gone to war with the french, the british or both by now. it's been almost 70 years since the last of their wars. a record over the last 1000 years
Of course, "Germany" hasn't existed but about a century and a half.
An interesting thing, some Allied general looked at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and remarked, "That's not a treaty, that's terms for a 20-year cease fire."
If Germans ever develop a revanchist attitude toward the territory they've now lost in *two* world wars, there will be trouble. But the risk is probably far lower, since the partition allowed time for a couple of generations to die off. The fuel for what happened in the '30s was a generation of unemployed veterans who felt screwed by the terms of the "armistice".
I expect them to "foreclose" on Greece any minute now. Maybe they're waiting until they can get a Greece/Spain/Italy/Portugal package deal...
I read some analysis that said the whole Euro crisis is because they accepted countries that had a long track record of not following the rules that the Union required, and that the reason for the "accept everybody" mentality was that the whole thing was driven by the post-Berlin-Wall German leaders to show everyone that they were going to be an integrated part of Europe and not start any more debilitating wars.
For those who say it isn't our business to protect the rights of others, that line of thinking was invalidated by WWII and previously in the Civil war.
So what's our policy for deciding which people's rights get protected?
Roll the dice, and if their country is important to our strategic economic interests we intervene, otherwise we don't?
And whose right were we protecting on those occasions that we knocked off or destabilized democratically elected governments to put some thuggish warlord into power?
Slashdot Mirror
but the americans are savages because people can have guns and we have a shooting incident sometimes
Naw, the Brittys think we're savages because we spell 'color' without a u.
up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start
care to elaborate?
Apparently some kind of masturbation joke.
If the user authenticates by performing some action, they can be coerced into performing that action.
Do you think having your piano teacher stand beside you slapping a rubber hose in her palm while you play makes it less likely for you to miss a note?
Replace 'character' with 'note' and it's clear subjects were tortured with Philip Glass for 80 hours and won't soon forget.
I notice the study didn't report on how many subjects jumped out the window afterward.
I know a chick named Donna Matrix who goes for the whole Medieval Lingerie thing.
Tends more toward leather and chainmail than lace. Probably due to the crude manufacturing technology of the times.
I always worry about these ideas, they seem good in theory, but in reality you can just end up with a cane toad problem..i.e. when the algae has covered all the oceans we have no pollution...but also no fish....
anywho...maybe we can just set fire to the algae if it gets out of control...
The underlying problem is, people are willing to consider anything - except addressing the cause of the problem.
Did you miss the part about "looking ropey"? That's String Theory on Steroids.
Trolling on Usenet and sites like Slashdot is about provoking people who are otherwise engaged in reasoned, rational, discussions into flaming.
Actually it's about pushing people's buttons, and it works best on people who take themselves waaay too seriously.
You troll people who are inclined to jerk their knees, not those who are inclined toward reasoned, rational discussions.
He said "more than ten". Might have been as many as... eleven.
As in Kent Brockman's "How can I prove we're live?"
when there are currently a record number of scientific journals being retracted for doing exactly the same thing.
Pray tell, what percentage of articles (not "journals") supportive of global warming have been retracted?
(And if you plot the rate vs. time, do you get a hockeystick?)
It's not an ad hominem to search for a suspect who commits a crime. The complete invalidity of the claims arising from the crime notwithstanding, it is illegal to break into a private network and steal data.
I'm actually having a bit of trouble getting worked up over it, since the differences between this and Wikileaks is kind of subtle.
Should we cheer leaks and revile hit jobs, when both are illegal and the net effect of both is getting information out to the public? It seems to me that this lies in a sort of moral grey area.
that's a contentious statement. I recall reading that the Germany hoped that the Tripartite Pact would deter the US from trying anything. There was no desire to pick a fight with the US. Once the US and Japan started fighting, Germany were in a dilemma whether to blow up the pact or have a state of war with the US.
I suspect the German leaders were hoping Japan would play tit-for-tat and declare war on the USSR. Would have helped them a lot at that time.
The north could have just let the southern states leave the union, but the north was not keen on having a resource rich, wealthy adversary nation right next to it that might align itself with Britian, France, and the native americans against the union. Of course there isn't just one reason for the US civil war, but this was the big deal.
The war started when the south attacked Fort Sumter. Probably something else would have happened if that hadn't, but the north didn't just invade the south to prevent the seccession.
Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen"
Ah, who says you can't learn anything interesting by reading Slashdot.
You mean the one with the dog on top?
Oddly, the dog in the story goes on top of a donkey rather than an elephant.
What happens when Psychohistory predicts that Psychohistory won't work?
My U.S. History professor, who wrote a dissertation about the civil war, agrees but in a slightly different way. He said it was an economic war.
I think it was a broader cultural schism, basically the same thing the parent country worked out in their own civil war a couple of centuries earlier:
north = roundheads (modernity)
south = cavaliers (medievality)
Of course, our esteemed Founding Fathers set us up the bomb with the 3/5 compromise. They wanted a union more than they wanted to deal with the issue of slavery, so they left it for their great-grandchildren to solve.
And whose right were we protecting on those occasions that we knocked off or destabilized democratically elected governments to put some thuggish warlord into power?
The fact that people who happened to be born in the same 3.5 million square mile area as us did bad things decades ago does not mean that we should never do anything ever again.
I'm against most wars for purely practical reasons: they're expensive, rarely work, and they kill lots of people. But intervening in other countries to stop atrocities can be a good thing, when done right. Suggesting we should never do so simply because we don't have a good way of deciding where to intervene is foolish. To use the requisite car analogy: I can't come up with a definitive method to make sure I always buy the right car, but that doesn't mean I should never buy a car, just that I should try my best to get it right.
Where were we during all the genocides in sub-Saharan Africa over the past few decades?
We do in fact have a "good way of deciding" where to intervene. It just hasn't got anything to do with protecting people's lives or rights.
based on past history the germans should have gone to war with the french, the british or both by now. it's been almost 70 years since the last of their wars. a record over the last 1000 years
Of course, "Germany" hasn't existed but about a century and a half.
An interesting thing, some Allied general looked at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and remarked, "That's not a treaty, that's terms for a 20-year cease fire."
If Germans ever develop a revanchist attitude toward the territory they've now lost in *two* world wars, there will be trouble. But the risk is probably far lower, since the partition allowed time for a couple of generations to die off. The fuel for what happened in the '30s was a generation of unemployed veterans who felt screwed by the terms of the "armistice".
I expect them to "foreclose" on Greece any minute now. Maybe they're waiting until they can get a Greece/Spain/Italy/Portugal package deal...
I read some analysis that said the whole Euro crisis is because they accepted countries that had a long track record of not following the rules that the Union required, and that the reason for the "accept everybody" mentality was that the whole thing was driven by the post-Berlin-Wall German leaders to show everyone that they were going to be an integrated part of Europe and not start any more debilitating wars.
Or, more likely, assign probabilities for where and when.
That was the point of "psychohistory." The idea was you can't predict the individuals, just the mass/net effect over time.
Of course, if all you can predict is probabilities you quickly diverge from reality.
The analogy between this and psychohistory is ridiculous.
For those who say it isn't our business to protect the rights of others, that line of thinking was invalidated by WWII and previously in the Civil war.
So what's our policy for deciding which people's rights get protected?
Roll the dice, and if their country is important to our strategic economic interests we intervene, otherwise we don't?
And whose right were we protecting on those occasions that we knocked off or destabilized democratically elected governments to put some thuggish warlord into power?
He weren't broke during WWII and the Civil War was not about slavery.
The American Civil Was was about *more* than slavery, but it's ridiculous to say that it wasn't about slavery.
They should start turning a profit in about -22 years.
Invented by Jar-Jar?