It is. Search Slashdot (or anywhere else) for "net neutrality". Various activists are eager to force their own understanding of "fairness" and "neutrality" on the ISPs.
Those who wish to control you like to conflate 'criminal' with 'wrong','immoral','evil', etc...
Yeah, yeah... Just more excuses for piracy — using somebody else's creations without their consent. It feels good, so it must be Ok, right? Why pay, when you don't have to?..
It's a common misconception, especially in the USA.
It is because the laws reflect the population's opinion very closely in the USA, and — unlike in many other places in the world — have done so for a very long time. So generations have grown up over generations, who so no or little disparity between "illegal" and "wrong".
I find this feature of Americans to be rather pleasant — most of the time...
I also seem to remember that Russia had done the same about 4-5 years before.
No, a lot more recently. When Estonia last year move a monument to Soviet Soldier from the center of a city to the cemetery, Russians (who refuse to accept, that for most of their neighbors their occupation were worse than the Nazis') were very upset.
Both — the government and the people...
In today's China the same sentiment prevails — the Han nationalists are very upset and demand from their government far stronger actions against both the hapless Tibetans and the foreign critics of the Chinese...
And what they see right now is that Chinese Supremacy is being challenged by the "Western Government Propaganda Machine", which today means CNN.
While we remain split and agonizing over our foreign policy, Chinese (and Russian) publics' main qualm is that their governments are not aggressive enough.
If people simply know it's random, all terrorists have to do is send enough people at the same time and the chances are, one will get through.
Although random, they are unlikely to overlook correlation. In other words, once one suspect is detected, everything gets locked down and the algorithms change to the "increased alert" mode or some such.
See this for example — once a campus policeman had to shoot an attacker, there was a "campus lockdown" and students were only released directly to their parents (no doubt, an overreaction in itself, of course)...
Soldiers who break specific provisions of the laws of war lose the protections [...]
Is it your interpretation, that all foreign prisoners held by the US military are "soldiers" — and thus entitled to all the perks and benefits of the POW status, such as "monthly advance of pay" and "books, devotional articles, scientific equipment, examination papers, musical instruments, sports outfits and materials allowing prisoners of war to pursue their studies or their cultural activities" — until proven otherwise?
You try to imply that if people aren't prisoners of war, it's okay to torture them.
No, I am not. All I am saying is this: "US has not waterboarded prisoners of war". Contrary to the bogus assertions made by the person I was responding to. Perhaps you should learn to familiarize yourself with an argument before jumping to refute it...
Bikini Atoll, that everyone decided to change the name "Bikini" to "Freedom suit."
The term "bikini" had no other meaning back then. The suit you are referring to was so named because of the bomb-testing — a stroke of a marketing genious. I must admit, it is quite rare to find a slashdot-poster less informed than a musician:
Aim for the body rare, you'll see it on TV
The worst thing in 1954 was the Bikini
See the girl on the TV dressed in a Bikini
She doesn't think so but she's dressed for the H-Bomb
it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk.
Fair? What is this, some sort of sport for you? We are not in competition here — we want to be able to crush an opponent as quickly and painlessly, as possible.
My concern is that if the US were able to wage war with no risk of life at all, it might become quite a bit more despotic to other countries.
How many fellow Americans are you willing to sacrifice to alleviate this concern? Not to depose a (real) despot, not to win a war, just to alleviate a (bogus) concern?
Okay, you win, we waterboarded illegal combatants we captured during hostilities, you happy now? Does that make it better?
Yes, it does make it much better — because it confirms, that the person I initially responded to was wrong. We never waterboarded POWs.
And we are decidedly not the best guys available. The best guys available would have meant a real UN coalition.
After what did not do in Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, we are going to be the best available for quite a while. Yes, it would've been even better, if UN gave an explicit approval. No, it would've been (far) worse, to do nothing at all without their explicit approval.
A prisoner of war (POW, PoW, or PW) is a combatant who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict.
I really ought to read the whole article... In particular, the Qualifications section.
But the war ended in May of 2003. And the captured POWs were promptly released — entitled to equal pay of our own forces, they are quite a burden to keep locked up. It took a while for the insurgency to start — the killing-and-burning of the Americans in Fallujah happened in March 2004. Anyone captured around that time or later does not qualify for the POW status.
That's not a reason to torture them, of course, but my claim stands...
So, by that definition, we have tortured prisoners of war.
That's not relevant — the poster I responded to made a very specific claim: that we waterboarded POWs. I'd like to see evidence of that. Do you have any? Does not seem like it...
We are not the good guys [...]
We are the best guys available... But that, too, is off-topic to the thread.
Political prisioners of a country in which another government is using armed forces to occupy qualify as prisoners of war.
No, actually, they would not. The definition is quite explicit and requires a number of things to qualify:
To be entitled to prisoner of war status, the captured service member must be a "lawful combatant" entitled to combatant's privilege--which gives them immunity for crimes constituting lawful acts of war, e.g., killing enemy troops. To qualify under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the combatant must have conducted military operations according to the laws and customs of war: be part of a chain of command and wear a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance", and bear arms openly. Thus, francs-tireurs, "terrorists", saboteurs, mercenaries and spies may be excluded.
It is up to the other party, whether it wants to classify others (such as those, whom you call "political prisoners") as POWs.
Point being, they lied about torture at Guantanamo [...]
You are changing the subject. The original post alleged, we waterboarded POWs. We did not. Next...
So, what you are saying is that you'd rather see the program fail with a completely bogus value you have no idea where it is coming from (which is whatever was on the stack at the time the variable was pushed) than a known invalid initialization value (e.g. -1) you pick and you set your variable to ?
This sort of error is easily caught with something like Purify or valgrind.
Also, if the warning was generated, you disabled it, and your program failed with a random result, that's a very good indicator, that you need to re-enable the warning and study the compiler's output and your program's flow once more.
But invalid initialization value is another way, but these are slightly inefficient and thus bad style. If you can't figure it out, or if the compiler is incorrectly warning you in one file, go ahead and use this method so as not to disable the warning for all other files in your project... Just put a comment next to the bogus initializer, explaining, why it is there — someone (possibly you) will be able to remove it eventually, when the code changes or compiler improves.
First of all because it is (slightly) inefficient. Second is because in most cases, the variable will get some other value later on in the function — and you'd like the compiler to tell you, if in some cases it may not get it.
Of COURSE they're going to want to extend this to your country as well.
And, as a matter of the same COURSE, we have already dispatched black helicopters to your location. You may wish to change into clean clothes real quick...
Build your code with -Wall -Werror (or your compiler's equivalent). Once you clean up all the crud, that pops up, crank it up with -W -Wno-unused-parameter -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith. Once there — add -Wreturn-type -Wcast-qual -Wswitch -Wshadow -Wcast-align and tighten up by removing the no in -Wno-unused-parameter. The -Wwrite-strings is essential, if you wish your code to be compiled with a C++ compiler some day (hint: the correct type for static strings is "const char *").
For truly clean code, add -Wchar-subscripts -Winline -Wnested-externs -Wredundant-decls.
The people, who wrote and maintain the compiler, are, most likely, several levels above you in understanding programming in general and C-programming in particular. Ignoring the advice their code generates is foolish on your part...
As a minimum, solved warnings will make your code more readable by reducing/eliminating the "Why is he doing this?" questions. More often than not, they point out bugs you would otherwise spend hours chasing with a debugger later.
And they make your code more portable. But if you don't understand, why a warning is generated — ask around. Don't just "shut it up". For example, initializing a variable at declaration is usually a no-no. If the compiler thinks, the variable may be used before being initialized, scrutinize your program's flow. If you can't figure out, it may some times be better to disable this one warning temporarily with -Wno-uninitialized to move on, instead of shutting it up for ever by a bogus "= 0" or some such...
The book may well say something about respecting warnings, but the review does not, which is a shame.
A prospering corporation may mean better service but it doesn't have to mean that. And I doubt many people are stockholders.
It certainly depends on the corporation. All I was saying, was that the difference between a corporation getting one's money and one's local government getting it is not at all clear cut — contrary to the repeated assertions of the person I was responding to.
Some might think he spent or invested his money locally, but he may of actually sent a lot of money to relatives in Syria as remittances.
He, likely, does both. It would not worry me at all, if it weren't for the thought, that some of his money may end up helping people like Hezbollah or Hamas. Even if he does not send it to them, contributions to charities operating in the area lift the pressures off these terrorist organizations to provide their populace with services... Unfortunately, there is no way to dislodge an organization like those without real pain to the civilians, who vote for them and/or are controlled by them.
I try to push these thoughts away, when I visit a local Syrian-owned grocery shop — the owner is a fellow American after all — but it remains a concern...
Slashdot Mirror
The disconnect between my posting and your (mis)interpretation of it is just too large to try to correct...
Cute... No, thanks, doing pretty good...
It is. Search Slashdot (or anywhere else) for "net neutrality". Various activists are eager to force their own understanding of "fairness" and "neutrality" on the ISPs.
Yeah, yeah... Just more excuses for piracy — using somebody else's creations without their consent. It feels good, so it must be Ok, right? Why pay, when you don't have to?..
It is because the laws reflect the population's opinion very closely in the USA, and — unlike in many other places in the world — have done so for a very long time. So generations have grown up over generations, who so no or little disparity between "illegal" and "wrong".
I find this feature of Americans to be rather pleasant — most of the time...
No, a lot more recently. When Estonia last year move a monument to Soviet Soldier from the center of a city to the cemetery, Russians (who refuse to accept, that for most of their neighbors their occupation were worse than the Nazis') were very upset.
Both — the government and the people...
In today's China the same sentiment prevails — the Han nationalists are very upset and demand from their government far stronger actions against both the hapless Tibetans and the foreign critics of the Chinese...
While we remain split and agonizing over our foreign policy, Chinese (and Russian) publics' main qualm is that their governments are not aggressive enough.
I never claimed, that it did.
Although random, they are unlikely to overlook correlation. In other words, once one suspect is detected, everything gets locked down and the algorithms change to the "increased alert" mode or some such.
See this for example — once a campus policeman had to shoot an attacker, there was a "campus lockdown" and students were only released directly to their parents (no doubt, an overreaction in itself, of course)...
Is it your interpretation, that all foreign prisoners held by the US military are "soldiers" — and thus entitled to all the perks and benefits of the POW status, such as "monthly advance of pay" and "books, devotional articles, scientific equipment, examination papers, musical instruments, sports outfits and materials allowing prisoners of war to pursue their studies or their cultural activities" — until proven otherwise?
No, I am not. All I am saying is this: "US has not waterboarded prisoners of war". Contrary to the bogus assertions made by the person I was responding to. Perhaps you should learn to familiarize yourself with an argument before jumping to refute it...
Not for that, but to win a war.
And no, I never called Arab despotism a bogus concern. I called "America's despotism" a bogus concern. There is no "symmetry" here.
The term "bikini" had no other meaning back then. The suit you are referring to was so named because of the bomb-testing — a stroke of a marketing genious. I must admit, it is quite rare to find a slashdot-poster less informed than a musician:
by Gang of Four.Fair? What is this, some sort of sport for you? We are not in competition here — we want to be able to crush an opponent as quickly and painlessly, as possible.
How many fellow Americans are you willing to sacrifice to alleviate this concern? Not to depose a (real) despot, not to win a war, just to alleviate a (bogus) concern?
Yes, it does make it much better — because it confirms, that the person I initially responded to was wrong. We never waterboarded POWs.
After what did not do in Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, we are going to be the best available for quite a while. Yes, it would've been even better, if UN gave an explicit approval. No, it would've been (far) worse, to do nothing at all without their explicit approval.
Results 1 - 10 of about 243,000 for admirable CEO corporate.. (0.29 seconds)
Wow! Do you have numbers to back up the above assertion?
I really ought to read the whole article... In particular, the Qualifications section.
But the war ended in May of 2003. And the captured POWs were promptly released — entitled to equal pay of our own forces, they are quite a burden to keep locked up. It took a while for the insurgency to start — the killing-and-burning of the Americans in Fallujah happened in March 2004. Anyone captured around that time or later does not qualify for the POW status.
That's not a reason to torture them, of course, but my claim stands...
That's not relevant — the poster I responded to made a very specific claim: that we waterboarded POWs. I'd like to see evidence of that. Do you have any? Does not seem like it...
We are the best guys available... But that, too, is off-topic to the thread.
No, we have not. The term existed for many decades and still means the same thing.
Which of the people you listed was a P.O.W.?.. And who among them was waterboarded? Thanks!
No, actually, they would not. The definition is quite explicit and requires a number of things to qualify:
It is up to the other party, whether it wants to classify others (such as those, whom you call "political prisoners") as POWs.
You are changing the subject. The original post alleged, we waterboarded POWs. We did not. Next...
No P.O.W. was waterboarded, as a matter of fact. If you have evidence to the contrary, please, post it here. Otherwise, post a retraction. Thank you.
This sort of error is easily caught with something like Purify or valgrind.
Also, if the warning was generated, you disabled it, and your program failed with a random result, that's a very good indicator, that you need to re-enable the warning and study the compiler's output and your program's flow once more.
But invalid initialization value is another way, but these are slightly inefficient and thus bad style. If you can't figure it out, or if the compiler is incorrectly warning you in one file, go ahead and use this method so as not to disable the warning for all other files in your project... Just put a comment next to the bogus initializer, explaining, why it is there — someone (possibly you) will be able to remove it eventually, when the code changes or compiler improves.
First of all because it is (slightly) inefficient. Second is because in most cases, the variable will get some other value later on in the function — and you'd like the compiler to tell you, if in some cases it may not get it.
That's what -W is :-)
For more — add the flags by hand. I listed quite a few — borrowed from FreeBSD's BDECFLAGS (collected by Bruce Evans).
Dave, this is fascinating, but rather unrelated to my post. I don't know, why you chose to post a follow-up, rather than start a thread of your own.
Interestingly, 42 is not listed in /usr/include/sysexits.h on neither Solaris, nor FreeBSD, nor Linux...
And, as a matter of the same COURSE, we have already dispatched black helicopters to your location. You may wish to change into clean clothes real quick...
Build your code with -Wall -Werror (or your compiler's equivalent). Once you clean up all the crud, that pops up, crank it up with -W -Wno-unused-parameter -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith. Once there — add -Wreturn-type -Wcast-qual -Wswitch -Wshadow -Wcast-align and tighten up by removing the no in -Wno-unused-parameter. The -Wwrite-strings is essential, if you wish your code to be compiled with a C++ compiler some day (hint: the correct type for static strings is " const char *").
For truly clean code, add -Wchar-subscripts -Winline -Wnested-externs -Wredundant-decls.
The people, who wrote and maintain the compiler, are, most likely, several levels above you in understanding programming in general and C-programming in particular. Ignoring the advice their code generates is foolish on your part...
As a minimum, solved warnings will make your code more readable by reducing/eliminating the "Why is he doing this?" questions. More often than not, they point out bugs you would otherwise spend hours chasing with a debugger later.
And they make your code more portable. But if you don't understand, why a warning is generated — ask around. Don't just "shut it up". For example, initializing a variable at declaration is usually a no-no. If the compiler thinks, the variable may be used before being initialized, scrutinize your program's flow. If you can't figure out, it may some times be better to disable this one warning temporarily with -Wno-uninitialized to move on, instead of shutting it up for ever by a bogus "= 0" or some such...
The book may well say something about respecting warnings, but the review does not, which is a shame.
It certainly depends on the corporation. All I was saying, was that the difference between a corporation getting one's money and one's local government getting it is not at all clear cut — contrary to the repeated assertions of the person I was responding to.
He, likely, does both. It would not worry me at all, if it weren't for the thought, that some of his money may end up helping people like Hezbollah or Hamas. Even if he does not send it to them, contributions to charities operating in the area lift the pressures off these terrorist organizations to provide their populace with services... Unfortunately, there is no way to dislodge an organization like those without real pain to the civilians, who vote for them and/or are controlled by them.
I try to push these thoughts away, when I visit a local Syrian-owned grocery shop — the owner is a fellow American after all — but it remains a concern...