The thing about purely electric cars that you plug in to recharge is that instead of burning gas you are burning coal, since that's what most power plants burn to generate electricity for our cities. You just force the power plant to contaminate instead of you personally. You might have a nice fuzzy feeling, but you haven't really cleaned up the environment.
Plus when you burn gas, your inefficiency is just that of converting the gas to power. When you use an electric car you have the inefficiency of converting coal to power, the inefficiency due to power loss in transmission to your house, and then the inefficiency of storing the electricity in a battery (i.e., heats up as you store it).
I know gas is supposed to be the mother of all evils, but last time I checked it was cleaner than burning coal and when you consider all the inefficiences above I think gas is much cleaner than electric cars.
Let's talk about hydrogen cells and we'll be on to something, although I still think you need to contaminate in order to drive the process to create the hydrogen in the first place, don't you?
Let me come in, buy one or two songs for a buck (and give me my fair use rights to them), and maybe I'll be back in a couple months to spend more.
This is the only way that it will ever work from a consumer standpoint... assuming consumers are still willing to pay for music.
I, for one, am not. If the music industry had offered tracks for a buck a track about 3 or 4 years ago, sure, I would've bought. Especially if they had their entire music catalog from the last 50 years online. There's lots of music I would've liked to have had that was no longer in print anywhere in the world. Believe me, I tried finding it.
Now, their window has passed. All that music that was out of print I have long since found on Napster and, later, other P2P programs. My music library is complete. I got everything I want from the past and there is damn little I want from the present...
That said, music is now free. When there is an occasional song I hear and like, I grab it from P2P. End of story. I'm not going to subscribe to anything to get music. I'm not going to give up personal information, nor am I giving up a credit card number. I'm going to hop online, grab the music anonymously from someone I don't know and will never meet, and be listening to it within 5 minutes.
Again, the recording industry missed their window. They could've done things differently but they didn't. And they WILL go out of business as a direct result of that decision. Too bad.
But if (more likely when) M$ makes it a creeping "feature" of the software, and incorporates it into the upgrade treadmill and their licensing sca^Hscheme, people may eventually have no choice, if they wish to continue using M$Office.
That's the question. MS will be creating friction with the userbase. I don't think they are going to WIN any new customers with such a feature, and are definitely going to lose many. Starting with some security-conscious users, paranoid users, and most corporate entities that absolutely cannot have trade secrets residing on the servers of other companies. And not everyone has broadband that allows saving a 2MB Word document to a server thousands of miles away. Nor is everyone connected to the Internet when they are editing documents, said the business traveler at 35,000 feet.
I think Microsoft's downfall will not be crappy products or high fees. It will be their unbridled desire to grab more and more power. They will ultimately be rejected in favor of competing products that work as well and don't require giving up security or power to a large corporation.
As to OfficeXP activation, this is quite easily gotten around, if one really cares to bother.
Without patching DLLs? Without activating a bogus CD key? I don't want to modify DLLs (that leaves you open to a future Microsoft attack) and I dont' want to activate even a bogus CD Key...
That said, I no longer even wish to install Office XP, so it's all academic.
BTW be aware that OfficeXP *does* clobber some system files even when it's been told not to, and does *NOT* uninstall cleanly even on WinXP, even with a prior Restore point. As I've said many times before, M$Office is Windows' worst enemy.
I installed OfficeXP on a "disposable" system that I have scheduled for reformatting within a few weeks. It turns out, I don't even like the OfficeXP interface so even if I could install it without activating, I wouldn't.
I'm sticking with Office 2000 until I get OpenOffice working to my satisfaction.
If MS ever tries to FORCE people to contact them to "re-activate" their operating system whenever they make sufficient hardware changes, they can kiss their market goodbye. Consumer support for that would be zero.
How many people do you know who have UPGRADED to Windows XP? I don't mean buying a new laptop and having XP pre-loaded... How many have actually gone out and purchased it?
MS has paraded some big numbers for XP sales, yet I know no-one who has actually bought it. I would call that very low consumer acceptance.
And they've lost me as a customer to Office XP because of their product activation. I'll keep using Office 2000 until I'm comfortable with OpenOffice. So...
Great, and you've successfully filtered out 37 of 40 spam emails (92.5%), while Paul Graham's approach filters out 995 out of 1000 spam emails (99.5% approach) which is a significant improvement. What's the difference?
I *hang up* on the spammer. He doesn't get to finish his attack. And then I usually end up wasting more of the spammer's time as he tries again and again, which increases his cost of spamming.
Furthermore, your approach requires constant updating to catch more and more spam. Paul's approach takes care of this on it's own, as it allows for the "learning" of new words automatically, based upon statistical inference.
My approach allows me to hand-pick the words that will be triggers for spam rejection. His relies on statistics. I won't tell you what I think about statistics, but I trust myself to pick the "trigger words" much more than I trust statistics to decide what mails I will see and what I won't.
I understand your point, but the Worldcom/Enron analogy is not a very apt one. It is not that the shareholders of those companies knew about the misdeeds and shrugged their shoulders "not realizing they were wrong," rather, they did not know about the deeds at all. Had they known, they would have reacted negatively, it is safe to assume, since they actually did when the facts finally came out.
You might be right. There is a difference in the fact that the acts were not known. My analogy was more from the standpoint of knowledge of the evil--in the case of Enron/etc., the stockholders didn't know about the acts. In the case of spam, the receivers are aware of the act but don't fully comprehend its costs and, thus, its importance to them.
Actually, it's not a bad analogy. It could be said that the stockholders "knew" of the activity of the company (the income/expenses were declared, albeit wrongly) just as the receivers of spam know the activity, but wrongly believe there is no cost to them.
But perhaps the anaology isn't perfect...:)
However it is not reasonable to make that argument on behalf of someone who does not mind the spam.
Hmm, I think I'd disagree. There may be many uninformed people that don't know {insert evil chemical here} is bad for you, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be concerned about that chemical being in somebody ELSES water supply.
However it is not reasonable to make that argument on behalf of someone who does not mind the spam.
Yes it is, because we--as technical people who understand the economic, political, and technical issues involved--ARE in a position to know that it is bad, even if the layman hasn't taken the time to understand these issues. The fact that they don't mind it (yet) doesn't mean it isn't affecting them negatively.
If I believe that eating peanut M&M's will make you go to Hell, and you don't place any particular theological value on chocolate-covered legumes, does that give me the right to make them illegal on your behalf, even if you don't like the taste of them?
Two things: 1) I never suggested making spam ILLEGAL. It's tempting at times, but I'm hesitant to go down that slippery road. 2) Your analogy above is talking about a theoretical BELIEF. And I believe you are wrong.:) When it comes to spam, the economic and technical impact of spam is FACT.
Parent asked why we should try to convince the world that spam is bad. My reply is: "Because it IS bad." It swamps mail servers with useless traffic and that, indirectly, costs the end-user money. That's a technical and economic fact. And most spam is deceptive or illegal. That's a generalization, but a fairly accurate one.
So my point is that we aren't trying to turn users to our "anti-spam religion," we are informing them of the facts of the matter--and the facts pretty much speak for themselves. And, again, I have yet to find anyone who LIKES spam. I don't think I've even found anyone that was even neutral. So this might be an academic discussion....
but what you're missing is that the one thing that MySQL, perl, php all have in common is that they are NOT enterprise level database management systems.
That's EXACTLY the point. The point is that many of those that are currently "stuck" with buying enterprise level database systems don't need it. MySQL is perfect for them.
Do you really think that companies which need even 50 programmers for a project are going to be bothered about the cost of Oracle? People are far more expensive that the cost of the Oracle licenses.
Do you really think that 99% of the databases out there have 50 programmers working on them? Even 20? What about 10?
The point isn't that Oracle et all don't have any use. The point is that many organizations that currently use Oracle and DON'T have a huge team of programmers probably COULD get by on MySQL. And those are exactly the companies that WILL be bothered by Oracle licenses.
Again, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft can't make money if they only sell their database to the 1% of organizations that NEED those features. These companies can only make a profit if their databases are sold to some portion of the remaining 99% that don't really need all the features but, until now, really haven't had much of an alternative--except maybe Access.
but in cases where the recipients "don't even realize it's wrong", why should we inform this otherwise blissfully ignorant person that they have, in fact, been harmed by receiving junk email?
Because:
By the time these people realize that spam is bad, it may be too far gone to do anything about it.
Enron/Worldcom stockholders were getting ripped off, too, and I'm sure they would have wanted to know about it. Same with spam.
Letting spam continue to grow reduces the usefulness of email as a valuable form of communication. Email is one of the most useful functions of Internet and if it becomes useless in a flood of spam, it's a significant function which many others will not see the benefit in acquiring. Communication will be reduced.
Ignorance is bliss, as long as you remain ignorant. That doesn't mean you're not in for a crash-landing at the end--like Enron and Worldcom. You can only hide your head in the sand for so long.
In the case of spam, I think the article is misleading. I know many, many people--some technical, some not--and NO-ONE I've ever found likes to receive spam. The suggestion that some people that receive spam don't know it's undesirable is just plain stupid. It'd like saying that people don't mind receiving telemarketing calls during dinner because no-one told them it was bad.
but what about Korea? Most of the spam I get these days comes from Korean sources, selling Korean products to a Korean audience and all written in, yep, Korean.
So blacklist Korea. That's what I've done on my mail server. If anyone connects from Korea they are greeted with the message "550 Connection from Korea denied due to excessive spamming" and are promtply hung up on. They don't even get to say "HELO"...
Beyond that, I get lots of spam from other parts of Asia (China and Taiwan are the next two big sources for me)
Hint: Modify your sendmail to monitor incoming DATA. If more than, say, about 15% of the incoming DATA is high-ASCII, hang up. That's what I do. No
more unintelligible garbage email coming in.
air pollution are bad [no, wait, the world *did* agree on those two things and the US is holding them back, but I digress].
No, we did agree on the air pollution stuff. But we were opposed to exempting some of the biggest countries in the world. Countries that, just last week, were reported to be living under the Asian Brown Cloud that risks killing millions of Asians and proposes a risk to the global environment. And "they" wonder why the U.S. is opposed to exempting those countries from Kyoto pollution limits?
Everytime someone slobbers off about how MySQL is the greatest thing since sliced bread, what they really are doing is yelling "I AM IGNORANT! I AM A FOLLOWER!". I'm not kidding.
You might not be kidding, but you also don't know what you're talking about.
MySQL is the greatest thing since sliced bread for those that find that it DOES THE JOB. MySQL has done everything I need it to for my applications and does it fast. I run several websites using MySQL and it works great. I wouldn't even THINK of using SQL Server, Oracle, or any commercial software instead. In fact, the MyPhpAdmin intetrace is much BETTER than what I had to deal with when I worked with SQL Server 6.5--the last version of SQL Server I've had the misfortune to use.
Many of the features that make the big commercial databases are bloat for many of us. I prefer not to use stored procedures--keep the data in the database and the program in the program. I don't like triggers, especially during the development process. I'd rather have a subroutine that does everything that needs to be done rather than rely on a database (and tie myself to it) to trigger certain actions. I'm not fond of database-enforced relationship constraints. I'd rather my code insert the right data than have the databse reject a transaction with an error because something went wrong.
Sure, if you are Citibank and have a dozen offices around the country that all write their own scripts that modify the same data underneath then you might need stored procedures, triggers, and constraints to make sure no-one messes up the data. But for 95% of the database applications, stored procedures, triggers, and even constraints are bloat. If I can SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE, MySQL serves my needs.
You also seem to be missing the point. The U.S. Government is already using MySQL successfully. It has never crashed (in the case cited by the article). Yahoo is already using it and is thinking about migrating the rest of the site to it. Last I checked, Yahoo is one of the highest-traffic site on the web. I don't think they'd make a decision like this without some real investigation. If MySQL is good enough to even be considered by Yahoo, it's definitely good enough for 99.9% of the websites out there--despite your well-informed, expert opinion. I personally believe Yahoo's decision has a little more weight than soem rant by an anonymous coward on Slashdot.
Oracle and SQL Server might have their place on 0.1% of the databse applications out there. But, believe me, they aren't going to be able to run a profitable business on that 0.1% of the database market. And the rest of the market CAN consider MySQL. Or, in the case of your relgion, PostgreSQL.
Spammers will try to work around filters, as they don't care that no one wants their crap. Further, filtering it doesn't solve the bandwidth situation, as the lines are still tied up with the bits running through the system until it hits the filter.
I've come up with a solution that works very, very well for me.
I've modified my sendmail server. In addition to having a 1000+ block list (it's amazing how many spammers DO use a fixed block of IPs and/or send mail from spammersite.com, etc.), my modifications to the sendmail server are essentially filters. When I get spam I *DO* read it: Or more accurately, I skim for stuff that NO-ONE would say in a real email. Our mail server is small with less than around 20 users, so that makes it easier. But, if I see the words "JUICY PUSSY", bam, that's in the filter. When I see the words "PRESTIGIOUS NON-ACCREDITED" (oxymoron), bam, that's in the filter.
So, just filters, right? Nothing new?
Perhaps, but the difference is that my sendmail is now AGGRESIVE. I don't receive their crap and then filter it. I filter it during the DATA phase of the SMTP connection. As *SOON* as any filterable text is recognized I immediately stop receiving data and issue a "550 No spam allowed here" and hang up. If they "call back" (they always do), I greet them with "550 No spam allowed her" and hang up before they even say HELO.
It works VERY well. I've reduced my spam from 40+ per day to about 2 or 3. And those 2 or 3 promtply get added to my filters.
I predict that Office will soon have an option (which will eventually become the only way it works) to save your documents only to a M$-owned server, "so you have the convenience of being able to access your work from anywhere". Right.
Although I'm sure MS would love to do that, it will never happen. Many people write very personal documents with Word. Many companies have trade secrets in Word. In the case of government and some contractors, top-secret information may be contained in them.
If MS ever tries to FORCE people to save their documents only on a central server, they can kiss their market goodbye. Corporate support for that would be zero.
The potential good side would be the potential for wiping out MS in a massive lawsuit if a) the central server ever got hacked and private/trade-secret info every was obtained by someone that shouldn't have it. b) if the server went down and, for some reason, there was no way to restore the backups. Either of these would have the potential to put MS out of business if every user of Word was affected.:)
That said, I just tried installing an Office XP that I was given as a gift. It's a legitimate store-bought copy, but I am not able to use it. I refuse to "activate" it. So I'll be uninstalling Office XP and I'll be downloading Open Office tonight.:)
Mod up! The AC is completely right. If companies are going to "own" everything you think of while you work for them, they should also have to "own" the responsibility for whatever BAD ideas you think of or deploy while working for them.
The fact that I think Ferraries are to expensive for me doesn't mean I have some right to break into their factory and take one either way.
No, but I'd support your right to look at an existing Ferrari and build your own. The factory would still have their Ferrari, I'd have a Ferrari, and the factory didn't lose any money because there was no way I was going to buy one if I couldn't do it myself.:)
His basic point, which has some validity, seems to me to be that regionalizing the internet would, in a way, make it more democratic.
No, it doesn't make it more democratic--it makes it more controlable, both for foreign governments as well as the U.S.
Right now it's hard to control any part of the Internet because it is completely internetworked. The U.S. can't control it because much of it isn't in the U.S. Likewise, France can't control it because much of the intra-France traffic might go via the UK, Canada, or the U.S.
By regionalizing the networks what you DO do is make it much easier for the regional government(s) to exercise strong control over their section of the network.
I much prefer the current situation where no-one, not even the U.S., has any significant control. If I weren't American, perhaps I could see the use for countries to establish additional backbones that bypass the U.S. (or any other single country) so that their Internet connection isn't held hostage by the U.S. Government. But it would behoove them to make sure those backbones are connected to other third parties precisely so that their local governments have a harder time controlling them.
Let's see, the U.S. dollar is the international standard, so they create the Euro. The U.S. goes to Mars in the 70s, decades later the Europeans go. The U.S. created GPS, now the Europeans want to waste money on Galileo. The U.S. created the Internet, now the Europeans want to waste money on their own internal Internet. Considering how many Europeans look down on the U.S. and Americans, it seems they spend an awful lot of time and money trying to catch up and duplicate what's already been done. They ought to try doing something innovative.
Therefore I think you make a pretty good case against the mertis of capitalism as a whole.
That's not true. The case can easily be made that by standing up for morality he is protecting his own investment in the company. Also, since he is a national hero it is not unlikely that he will find another well-paid job even if it's just to project an image of morality. Fact is, what he did might be against his best interest in the short term but could work out for the best in the long-term.
The thought that capitalism has to be at odds with morality or that capitalism is evil is based on a skewed view of it. Yes, people can do bad things to advance their own position, but that's true not just with capitalism.
In the long term, both people and companies will generally do better by acting ethically and honestly. There are exceptions, of course, but the exceptions are usually shooting stars that get filthy rich and then either crash and burn or go to jail, or both. You can't build long-term success on deceit or corruption.
Martha Stewart was doing great until she made a stupid, greedy insider-trading decision. Now she's under investigation and the value of her company has dropped like 67%. This is a case of capitalism itself punishing someone that abused it, even if she doesn't go to jail.
While I agree that every power in world history has eventually collapsed, and I agree that the U.S. will someday have to do the same, I do not share your fatalistic view of government corruption and it being the cause of the *eventual* downfall of the U.S.
If you've only lived in the United States you have no idea what corruption is. I remember having a similar view of U.S. politics until I moved to Mexico. I've lived here for nearly 7 years. Believe me, most Americans--and possibly even you--have no idea what corruption is.
If a politician "listens" to determine what "the people" want, but only one side is "talking," he is going to tend to favor the ones doing the talking if, for no other reason, than he hasn't even heard the others. If the politician can also get some money to assist in his reelection campaign from the side that's talking and the rest of the people don't seem to care, why not take it?
Every citizen has the power and RESPONSIBILITY to decide the future of the United States. Don't blame businesses--or individuals--in trying to get laws passed that benefit them. Don't blame politicians from listening to those that are "talking" and receiving money from those that are giving if their constituents don't seem to care. BLAME THE CITIZENS THAT AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION.
Don't try to explain the sins of Microsoft to the masses. They will think you are eccentric, a geek, and worried about silly stuff when more important "real problems exist." Rather, the trick is getting people to watch their politicians in general. If people truly would CARE what their representative and senators are doing, believe me, everything else would fall in line.
Corruption is not the problem in the United States. Voter apathy is. If the U.S. is becoming a slave to corporations, we have noone to blame but ourselves.
I agree. If the spammer is allowed to shoot his load and logoff with the QUIT command via SMTP, he's already won.
I modified my SENDMAIL a few months ago to do some checks on the incoming connections. As the DATA is streaming in, my modification constantly checks for tell-tail signs of spam. There are many of them. When my sendmail detects any of these signs, it *immediately* spews out a "500" error (dosn't wait for them to finish their DATA session) and hangs up.
Inevitably the spammer thinks it was a connection problem and tries again. It's fun looking at my log and seeing a spammer try all day long do deliver his BS. In the case of open relays being the machine that tries all day to deliver, perhaps that'll wake the admin up to fix his open relay.
I've been busy with some paying contracts, but once I'm done I'm going to much improve the logic. If a single site produces more than 1 spam message in a certain amount of time, temporarily ban that address so they get a 500 error as soon as they issue a HELO. Better yet, I want to filter certain known spam addresses so they aren't even accepted by the accept() function.
Anyway, it has worked great. My spam count has gone down to about 2 or 3 per day from 40+. At the same time, when I'm depressed or stressed, I can take a look at my maillog and be instantly cheered up seeing all the futile attempts of spammers to deliver their BS.
And how would you pay this oh so generous nickle without giving any personal information?
I have no clue. That's part of the problem, not just making the music available but also finding a way to people to pay for it as anonymously and easily as paying with cash at a record store. My relationship with a store begins and ends with the transaction and they don't know who I was unless I paid with a credit card. That kind of anonymity and ease is required to make any online offering competitive.
At the very least you'd have to give a PayPal account, or some other online bill paying account
I agree, some kind of online micropayment system is necessary and still doesn't exist. I believe there was some kind of "Cybercash" thing years before PayPal. I believe they had solved the anonymity problem, though I may be incorrect.
A quarter per song is more than fair and I think a lot of people would be willing to buy tracks for a quarter, or maybe a dollar rather than STEAL them using p2p networks. Maybe not enough, but many people would.
I don't think a quarter per song is fair. As best I can tell, the bandwidth for a 4MB MP3 would be cost no more than about $0.004. 4/10th of a penny. And that is paying hosting bandwidth rates, which they'd obviously get huge volume discounts on. Even at 4/10th of a penny, and assuming they pay the rest of the penny to cover their servers, that's still 80% profit assuming they charge 5 cents. If they charge 25 cents, that's about 96% profit! Sure, it's a better deal than the consumer gets now, but 96% profit is still a rip-off.
And let me say again: I completely believe music is now FREE. If I pay 5 cents per song, I'm paying for the convenience of getting anything I want from one single place with a reliable download. I'm not paying for the music itself.
Yep. Music is free now. That's the reality. This idea would have worked pre-Napster but they missed the boat, and the boat is long gone.
I might be willing to pay a NICKEL for a song and ONLY if I don't have to share personal information, my credit card number, or my email.
If it costs more than about 5 cents and/or I have to identify myself, sorry, I'm getting my music from P2P where my CC info is secure, I remain anonymous, and I can get the song in a few minutes rather than having to sign-up with some large corporate spam generator, ehr, website.
if the big guys pony up with the cashola, it sets a precedent for international ISPs: you act as a cartel, you can extort money out of big portals to allow your users access.
EXACTLY what I was going to say.
The purpose of the Internet is to provide access to information to whatever the user happens to enter into their browser address line. No-one is going to pay local ISPs to provide the service they exist to provide. As you said, not just because it doesn't make sense, but because it sets precedent.
Imagine if this was happening the other way around -- that AOL started dropping access to those sites (international or local) that didn't pay to not be in the filter list. That's corporate censorship; we'd go nuts complaining about that.
It's also not going to happen because there are ways to get around it. Indian users could go through anonymizers, proxys, or tunnel through sites overseas explicitly set-up to allow them to get around the ISP filters. Essentially, there's no way to effectively do it, although they will piss off their customers trying.
I'd say the dot com bust is catching up with some ISPs in India and they're looking for some extra cash. This kind of idea also may give you an idea of the problems of trying to outsource programming projects to countries such as India--this is exactly why every company that I know of that has tried to outsource to India has ended up spending a wad of cash and getting nothing in return.
Re: Pearl Harbor It's possible he didn't consider the damage that would be caused; he's a politician not a military expert. On the other hand, if his advisors who should have know the potential for damage didn't tell him, then it's their fault.
I think it's far more likely from an objective review of the facts and based on logic that they were simply surprised at Pearl Harbor. We thought we were negotiating a peace. Any conspiracy theory related to Pearl Harbor, as is the case with 9/11, seems to require us to believe that people that grew up patriotic Americans somehow stop caring about their fellow Americans and their country when they obtain power in their country, allowing it to be attacked and fellow citizens killed. While it's fun for conspiracy theories, I don't think it's very probable.
didn't you detect a constant theme in his books that the public never knows the whole truth? His books are largely the source of my mistrust
Of course we don't know everything. But one thing is to not know everything and quite another to suggest that any American president had prior knowledge of an attack and did nothing, or actually wanted it to happen.
Also, keep in mind that Tom Clancy is fiction. Sure, it's fun stuff and I love his work and the movies (with Harrison Ford) are great. But remember to keep fact and fiction separate, regardless of how believable the fiction may seem.
Hopefully the causes of terrorism will be long gone by then.
They won't be. There will always be someone somewhere that isn't happy with something. The "reasons" may change, but don't expect the world to be a peaceful utopia in 50 years with everyone just getting along.
But you may have to concede that you cannot wrap yourself up in cotton wool all the time. The world can be a dangerous place, throwing money at it will not change much.
I agree that no-one can ever be completely safe. But I disagree that "throwing money" at a problem can't reduce the risks. Money won't make us safer, but the technology that money can buy CAN make it safer. Not 100% safe and it won't defend against every attack, but at least it provides one less way to attack us. I'm in favor of that.
So, you get your missile shield, are you going to build a huge wall around the country and make sure nukes (etc) don't get in that way?
Yes. Well, not literally. But I *AM* in favor of implementing technology so that every container on every ship and truck that enter the country pass through some kind of device that would detect nuclear material. I believe that could be accomplished with technology and focusing U.S. Customs solely on the purpose of detecting unwanted goods coming in rather than looking for goods to tax. I.e., Customs should be a PROTECTION agency to keep out unwanted goods--it should not be a fiscal agency with aims of collecting import tarrifs.
Again, I fail to see the worth of this system.
It's value is in that it eliminates one more way to attack the United States. No-one is going to launch a direct military assault on the continental U.S. If we have a missile defense, that method of attack goes away. If Customs passes all incoming goods through some kind of raditiation detection equipment then that route is closed off.
No, we can't be 100% safe. But we can take steps to significantly reduce the possibility of attacks.
Terrorists don't count; every country has had problems with them at some point.
Terrorists do count as long as there are countries supporting them or looking the other way. In fact, in a world where the U.S. is so strong it is not far-fetched to believe that countries will actually "deploy" terrorists to do through terror what they could never do with a direct military attack.
There are other and better ways to defend yourself from real threats, not made-up-threats.
Again, refer to my comment (which you agreed to) regarding who might have missiles in 50 years? All threats are real. If we can think of them, so can someone else. If we have no defense against a threat, that's the best threat to exploit.
Re: Saddam knows that. He should have known that in 1992 when a half million allies were arrayed on his border You: He probably thought we were bluffing.Prior to the Gulf war, nothing like that had happened, nations do not usually get involved in other peoples wars.
What? Thought we were bluffing? Nations don't usually get involved in other peoples' wars? How about France helping the U.S. against England? How about U.S. helping various European countries in WWI and WWII? What about the U.S. in Korea and Vietnam?
And with 500,000 troops you really think he thought we were bluffing? I don't think so. He was either too stubborn/proud to retreat or actually was stupid enough to think he could win. Either way is dangerous and so is playing military "chicken" or "poker" because you think the other side is bluffing...
Re: Israel/Arabs If it wasn't for the oil, I think we would leave them to it. If they want to kill each other, let them.
No, because history has shown that when we let other countries do that we eventually are the ones that have to come in and finish it. There was no oil in Europe that warranted our carrying whether the Nazis took over Europe and/or killed everyone.
what makes the Israelis so deserving of protection? Guilt over their unfortunate history?
What makes South Korea deserving of protection? What made Europe deserving of protection during the cold war? What makes Japan worthy of protection after they were our enemies?
For better or for worse, Israel was created by the United Nations over 50 years ago. The world agrees they have a right to exist. The United States defends that right. It is valid to ask "why" we are allies with Israel, but it's no more absurd than asking why we are allies with anyone else.
Plus if we just leave Israel to fend for itself there WILL be a bloodbath in the Middle East and it WILL grow to a regional conflict and then to a world war. Believe me, I'd rather support Israel than let the region spiral into war.
Neither side is "right", so why back either?
See above.
Me: There is no inherent reason to believe that if we stopped supporting certain governments and they were toppled "by the people" they would be any more honest. You: So the troops and US made weapons, planes, landmines are only there for show?
No, they are there to defend the governments from being toppled by a radical population that would most likely attack Israel and plunge the region and world into war.
It has NOTHING to do from keeping riches from the masses. It has everything to do with keeping an irresponsible and radical mass of people from taking the reigns of government and starting a regional/world war.
Why should that be a factor? You're willing to screw over an entire nation worth of mostly innocent people to help another nation?
I'm willing to restrain (not screw over) a nation to keep it from attacking a neighbor--especially when the result of such an attack would almost certainly be a world war.
But Israels are white, the others are black, so that makes it easy for us.
The Arabs I've seen are no more "black" than your average Israeli or American.
Again, what makes Israel immune to this logic? They are provoking other nations as I type this.
Who are they provoking? Have they lobbed warheads into Baghdad because they were in a conflict with Syria? Have they launched terrorists to blow themselves up in the middle of Egypt?
They've started their own wars. Maybe if they also were responsible and not trigger-happy, we wouldn't be in this mess.
They've only started a war in, what, 1967 or so? And that was to take the "high lands" because their neighbors kept lobbing bombs at them from above.
But, at least the poor can afford TV and alcohol, so they'll be alright.
Yeah... in the Arab countries we're talking about that might not have enough money for either, but it doesn't matter since neither are permitted.
He has publicly said the Saudi issue is his primary beef with the Americans.
Feel free to believe him if you want. If our troops were there in preparation to assist them in attacking Israel I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Our presence there is not the problem. Our support of Israel is.
Me: Basically, we have the money. You: No you don't. The stock markets have crashed.The airline industry has lost out big time. 8 million of your people live in poverty. I can think of better ways to spend the money.
Guess what? Our stock markets have "crashed", our airline industry is hurting, we have 8 million (3%??) of our population in poverty... and we STILL have money. We go through tough times like anyone, but that doesn't mean we're now a poor nation incapable of spending money on its defense.
Me: f we don't "police the world" then WWI and WWII has shown us that countries will attack each other, regional war will break out, and we eventually have to step in and fix it--at great cost to our own people. You: Excuse me, I think you'll find the Russians did a large part of that, at an even larger cost to their people.
The RUSSIANS were DEFENDING THEMSELVES. They were being attacked by the Nazis. We went in to clean things up even though we weren't under direct attack by the Nazis.
I'm not belitting the Russian effort, but it's completely understandable. They were being attacked, they defended themselves. But for the U.S. to be at peace with everyone but Japan and open a second front in Europe and storm the beach at Normandy (my grandfather was there!) to liberate someone elses country? That's a different story.
While we respect and appreciate the help the US provided, don't think for one minute it was like Saving Private Ryan.
My grandfather was in the first wave on Omaha Beach. Virtually all of his fellow soldiers were killed that day. I don't know what part of "Saving Private Ryan" you are criticizing, but the sacrifice made by the landing troops on Omaha Beach is quite accurate, from what I've been told. We actually have a German Luger (sp?) that my grandpa picked up that day...
Take the spyplane in China issue. How would you feel if the Chinese were flying spyplaces 24/7 of the coast of Florida?
I wouldn't like it, but if they were outside our territorial limits I would recognize their right to do it.
Are you so naïve to believe that everyone in control of your country is honest?
No. But you have taken the inherent belief in their dishonesty to levels only justified if you buy into unproven conspiracy theories that somehow must believe that as soon as a normal patriotic American gets into positions of power he immediately forgets himself, his beliefes, and becomes a lying, blood-thirsty, warmongering dictator.
I believe that that point of view is just as silly as believing everyone that leads the U.S. is completely honest.
Re: Nukes in Japan in WWII Again, many say that it was completely unessessary and the war was already over.
Many say that, many say it would have cost millions of lives. Take your pick.
The Russians were due to enter the war the same week and if they had, post-war Japans spoils would have to been shared.
I believe we had been waiting for the Russians to enter for some time. We dropped the bomb, the Russians figured the war was over, and I believe that's when they declared war on Japan. Perhaps we dropped the bomb so as not to share with Russia, or perhaps the Russians declared war because they figured the U.S. had already won and they (Russia) had nothing to lose.
There would be a Tokyo wall, just like in Berlin. I'm not saying that that's what I believe, but it's a popular theory.
The Russians did nothing to help us with the Japan front throughout the entire war. I believe they lost 20 million people in WWII? I find it far more believable that they were not in a position to help us and, even if they had, we were on our own in the Pacific for 4 years. Their help would have been too little too late.
What makes you think we know the whole truth of any of these events? You are basing your knowledge on what you know. Consider this; you may not know the whole story. I certainly don't, but I'm not willing to believe anything I'm told without some analysis of my own.
I know I don't know everything. And I went through a phase where I believed in conspiracy theories. You usually grow out of it by about 25 or 30 years old, though.
If you read international news on a daily basis, everything that happens is quite predictable based on public knowledge. If I see a terrorist attack against Israel, I can predict Israel will strike back within a day or two. Now you can suggest that they are evil and are decimating the Palestinians because they are evil and that the U.S. wants to kill off the Palestinians so we can get their oil, and that's why we support Israel. Perhaps you are even right. But everything is easily predictable by just reading the news.
I guess what I'm saying is that if everything is understandable based on the what's happening in the world, there's little reason to believe that conspiracy theories are necessary to explain what can be completely explained by day-to-day politics.
Anyways, I can see you are very patriotic, so I may be touching a nerve putting the US down.
Yes, I am patriotic but I love these kinds of debates. I am 100% American but have lived in Mexico for the last 6+ years, so I do have some experience "outside the box."
I apologise again for this, but you should be wary of being so patriotic that you cannot acknowledge the bad bits.
Believe me, my patriotism doesn't cause me to not acknowledge the bad bits. We've done bad things, mostly via the CIA. But while we and our leaders aren't saints, I cannot accept that virtually every action the U.S. engages in is driven by some dark, evil secret due to some conflict of interest of someone high-up in government. I just don't buy that.
Your leaders are just like me. Opinionated assholes that often defy logic!!;-)
I'll agree they can be opinionated assholes, but I truly do NOT believe they defy logic. As I said, I can see the logic of EVERYONE involved (not just the U.S.) just by reading the news.
They are, in essence, flipping the bird at every single citizen of every country they operate in
Britney Spears flipped off the cameras in Mexico last Friday. Then she bailed after "singing" (or lipsyncing) 4 songs in her last concert and left! Combine that with $200 concert tickets, high-priced CDs, and it's really no wonder the recording industry is going down the tubes. Piracy is the LEAST of their worries when their artists are flipping off the public and abandoning concerts.
No, I don't like Britney. But I'm beginning to enjoy her fall into history.:)
It's rumoured that Eisenhower provoked them intentionally to start the war, which was against US public option at the time.
You believe it's more probable that an American President intentionally provoked an enemy and let them attack and destroy much of the Pacific Fleet to allow him to get into a war that the U.S. was then unprepared to enter due to that attack? Or could it be that the reason we "provoked" them was because we could not morally agree with their expansionist plans that would come at the cost of independent nations throughout Southeast Asia?
He is a proven liar, yet no one cares? Why is that?
Hmmm, perhaps because Clinton set the precedent?:)
Defending yourself is one thing, but to advocate a practically useless defence shield
If it's useless, why would it cause an arms race or give us first-strike capability?
Moreover, when has a missile ever been launched from a rouge state on another in a form that would be stopped by a missile shield?
Hasn't happened yet, thank God. I'd rather "think outside the box" and anticipate what might happen in the future. Right now only a small number of countries have ballistic missile capabilities but the technology is only about 50 years ago. Who do you think will have the technology in 50 years? It's not really all that complicated, the rest of the world just needs time. Without trying to resort to cliches, remember the line from "The Sum of All Fears": "I'm not afraid of the guy with a thousand nuclear warheads, I'm afraid of the guy with one."
Who is going to attack the US? Who would be so stupid?
Consult the history books, please.
No nation state for sure.
Complacency has always gotten us into trouble. We were complacent at the beginning of WWI. We cleaned up there. We were complacent in WWII until we got bombed at Pearl Harbor. If the American public really thought we were going to be threatened do you think they would have withheld their support to enter the war? Many people (including you) may not see any risk and think building missile defense is silly--just like many people thought WWII was "Europe's War" and thought it useless to get into it.
It's easy to be compacent. Even moreso when we're talking about the most powerful country on earth. But that also makes us the biggest target and history has shown that complacency is a fatal error.
If Saddam or anyone else was going to launch a attack on the US, they would know that they stood no chance.
WE know that. It's less certain whether or not Saddam knows that. He should have known that in 1992 when a half million allies were arrayed on his border waiting to anhilate his military in a question of days and use the southern portion of the country as a "field test" of new and wonderful weapons? Whether he did it out of pride or did it in belief of being able to win is irrelevant--the fact is there always will be SOMEONE crazy and stubborn enough to look logic in the face and try to ignore it.
Anyway, terrorists don't have ballistic missile systems.
No, not yet. As far as we know.:) Hopefully we'll have a missile defense before Bin Laden is able to build, buy, or steal even an obsolete missile--perhaps from the former Soviet Union.
The US annoyed them first, but your media won't tell you that, they prefer the "attacking freedom and democracy" story.
We annoyed them first? Perhaps our annoyance (stationing troops in the region) was provoked by THEIR annoyance of not being able to exist without threatening Israel and each other, thereby threatening a regional conflict that would easily expand.
It's easy to blame everything on the U.S. But you can't ignore that the U.S. has reasons for what it does--and it's NOT just for our oil supply. You have to look at the history a little deeper.
By supporting corrupt governments, especially in the Middle East, an enormous amount of hatred as built up.
The governments are going to be corrupt whether we support them or not. There is no inherent reason to believe that if we stopped supporting certain governments and they were toppled "by the people" they would be any more honest.
We support many questionable governments in the region because, regardless of how questionable they may be, they are actually less likely to attack Israel than the alternative.
If the public in many of those Middle Eastern countries were to show they were RESPONSIBLE and not trigger-happy ready to start a regional (and thereafter world) war in regards to Israel, perhaps the U.S. would be more apt to let democracy run its course. Democracy requires responsibility and, as bad as it sounds, the populations of many of those Middle Eastern countries have not shown they are ready to accept that responsibility.
By all rights, the country (one nation under whatever god) owns that oil, yet only a handful of people will ever see it, most of them unaccountable to the public.
How is that different than in the United States?
Some of these counties are extremely poor, and how do you think they react to seeing US troops about, guarding their national property from them while they live in poverty?
As has been said, we import only about 8% of our oil from Saudia Arabia. We could get by without it, especially if we turned on Alaska and reactivated Texas.
We're not defending the oil FROM the populations of the host countries. We're defending the (corrupt?) government from their population that, were they to topple the government, would most likely make attacking Israel one of their first moves. And then we have to defend Israel.
History (WWI, WWII) has shown us that it is cheaper in the long run to stick our nose in internal affairs of other countries to avoid having to clean up a big mess later. Tough luck.
It's the presence of these troops in Saudi that drives Bin Laden
No it's not. It's the existance of Israel. If we leave the Middle East all that will happen is that all their efforts will be freed up to topple Israel. They just realized they can't topple Israel as long as the U.S. supports it. Leaving Saudia Arabia would not placate Bin Laden one bit.
They want to control their own resources; they want freedom and democracy. Not tyranny.
That may be on their list. But first and foremost they want to destroy Israel. And that's why we don't leave.
"The most probable type of missile attack" maybe. But look at how likely is that event going to happen. Basically, it's not.
If there is a 1 in 100 chance that someone is going to nuke a city and it just so happens that I have a 2 trillion dollar budget available, I might not be considered crazy investing a few ten billion dollars to reduce that risk to 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000.
Basically, we have the money. If we can reduce the risk of nuclear missile attack from 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000, I think that's better use of 60 billion dollars than most of the other things the government would spend 60 billion on.
No. You are starting another pointless arms race.
You already said it won't work, so why would it create a new arms race? Either you think it will work (in which case we should definitely build it!) and are afraid of an arms race, or you think it won't work and therefore shouldn't now be citing the risk of an arms race as a reason not to research it.
By having a missile shield, that makes a pre-emptive strike possible for the US to start and win a nuclear war.
We already have a pre-emptive strike capability against absolutely the whole world except Russia. And we might actually have that capability against Russia.
But a missile defense will only defend us from small attacks. In those cases, we definitely already have a first-strike capability so the missile defense doesn't give us anything other than a defense.
Other countries will see this shield and will also desire similar systems to protect themselves.
And I hope they do. If these are DEFENSIVE systems designed to defend against the risk of a nuclear attack, I think that's great. I hope India and Pakistan both deploy it so they can both eventually get rid of their now-obsolete nukes. Hopefully the same applies to everyone else, too. If such a system sufficiently evolved, even the U.S. would have no need for a huge arsenal of ICBMs.
So billions and billions of dollars are redirected from the public purse in to the coffers of the arms industry.
Which creates other technology at the same time which is consumed by the public. Meanwhile, the "arms industry" buys from the public as do their employees.
Don't worry, it isn't a black hole where all the money goes into the pockets of fat cats never to be seen again.
Bush & Buddies are happy, the people lose services and pay more taxes.
Actually, Bush reduced the taxes that had been previously raised by Clinton. Your argument doesn't make any sense.
You just don't get it, do you? It's that attitude that leads to these problems!
And our attitude is justified based on history. If we don't "police the world" then WWI and WWII has shown us that countries will attack each other, regional war will break out, and we eventually have to step in and fix it--at great cost to our own people.
You want the U.S. out of everyone's business? Then every country ought to show that they can act mature without the U.S. providing worldwide stability.
There is talk of invading Iraq because they have "weapons of mass destruction". So do you. They have chemical/biological weapons? So do you, in fact, you developed most of them.
We have them as a deterrent and have shown restraint and responsibility in using them. Saddam doesn't have as much as we do, but what did he do? He lobbed them over at Israel which had nothing to do with the Gulf War with the only hope of provoking a response and creating an Arab vs. Israel conflict.
If you can't see the inherent difference in risk between certain countries possessing these weapons and others possessing them, I'm sorry. That probably goes a long way in explaining your point of view.
Who is the only country to drop one in anger?
In anger? Anger would have been to launch a few at Afghanistan a day or two after 9/11. The attack on Japan was a calculated strategic decision that most likely saved the lives of millions of Americans AND Japanese.
Ironically, if that hadn't happened and the world hadn't seen the horrors one nuke could cause, there would have probably been a nuclear war by now
There ya go. Not only did we probably save millions of lives in WWII by using nukes, we may have saved hundreds of millions in subsequent nuclear wars that were avoided. Considering we did it "out of anger" it looks like it worked out pretty damn well, didn't it?
What makes you holier than thou?
Holier? Not at all. But more responsible. Face it, after WWII we could have dominated the world. Now that the USSR has fallen, we could do it now. We don't. How many powers in history when given the option of total conquest did not take it? The U.S. has shown itself to be the most restrained superpower in the history of the world.
but you have no right to invade a country just because they have the capability to attack you.
Because they have the capability? No. But if we have reasonable justification to believe that that such an attack is imminent then we are certainly justified in taking preemptive action.
I don't have any problem with France, England, the former Soviet Union, Mexico, Canada, India, South Africa, etc. having the CAPABILITY to attack us because we have no reason to believe an attack will be forthcoming. But like the Japanese taught us at Pearl Harbor and as Bin Laden taught us on 9/11, if we believe an attack is imminent then damn right we ought to strike preemptively.
Like the "war" in Afganistan, which was being planned prior to 9/11.
I've read about that. Mostly in left-leaning liberal publications. Not much in the way of evidence for a "WAR" in Afghanistan. At best we would've looked the other way... Then again, Afghanistan was only recognized by three countries in the world. The Taliban was, in fact, the result of toppling the previous government. They were holding Westerners (not just Americans) on bogus charges and terrorizing their own people. Heck, even if 9/11 hadn't happened there was as much a case for a humanitarian "war" there as there has been in other "humanitarian" conflicts.
Hopefully I've made a few people think about the other side of the story.
I really doubt you have. You are full of opinions, granted, but don't offer much in terms of facts to back-up what is mostly liberal conspiracy theory.
Peace can only follow understanding.
You mean if we understand Bin Laden he won't attack us? If they understand us they won't be offended that we have troops in their countries? That if the Arabs understand Israel that they will let it exist? Nice academic/utopian world you are talking about.
In the real world, the world has been most stable in the last 50 years. That stability was created by the balance of POWER between the U.S. and the USSR. Now it is created by the POWER of the U.S.
I'm all for understanding and getting along whenever possible. But there will always be someone who wants power or wants their way the "old fashioned" way. You are mistaken if you believe that countries in the 21st century are inherently more averse to war than in the past. The reason you feel that way is because of your experience in the last 50 years--but again, that general stability has been brought by the threat of FORCE, not due to any enlightened understanding in recent years.
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The thing about purely electric cars that you plug in to recharge is that instead of burning gas you are burning coal, since that's what most power plants burn to generate electricity for our cities. You just force the power plant to contaminate instead of you personally. You might have a nice fuzzy feeling, but you haven't really cleaned up the environment.
Plus when you burn gas, your inefficiency is just that of converting the gas to power. When you use an electric car you have the inefficiency of converting coal to power, the inefficiency due to power loss in transmission to your house, and then the inefficiency of storing the electricity in a battery (i.e., heats up as you store it).
I know gas is supposed to be the mother of all evils, but last time I checked it was cleaner than burning coal and when you consider all the inefficiences above I think gas is much cleaner than electric cars.
Let's talk about hydrogen cells and we'll be on to something, although I still think you need to contaminate in order to drive the process to create the hydrogen in the first place, don't you?
This is the only way that it will ever work from a consumer standpoint... assuming consumers are still willing to pay for music.
I, for one, am not. If the music industry had offered tracks for a buck a track about 3 or 4 years ago, sure, I would've bought. Especially if they had their entire music catalog from the last 50 years online. There's lots of music I would've liked to have had that was no longer in print anywhere in the world. Believe me, I tried finding it.
Now, their window has passed. All that music that was out of print I have long since found on Napster and, later, other P2P programs. My music library is complete. I got everything I want from the past and there is damn little I want from the present...
That said, music is now free. When there is an occasional song I hear and like, I grab it from P2P. End of story. I'm not going to subscribe to anything to get music. I'm not going to give up personal information, nor am I giving up a credit card number. I'm going to hop online, grab the music anonymously from someone I don't know and will never meet, and be listening to it within 5 minutes.
Again, the recording industry missed their window. They could've done things differently but they didn't. And they WILL go out of business as a direct result of that decision. Too bad.
That's the question. MS will be creating friction with the userbase. I don't think they are going to WIN any new customers with such a feature, and are definitely going to lose many. Starting with some security-conscious users, paranoid users, and most corporate entities that absolutely cannot have trade secrets residing on the servers of other companies. And not everyone has broadband that allows saving a 2MB Word document to a server thousands of miles away. Nor is everyone connected to the Internet when they are editing documents, said the business traveler at 35,000 feet.
I think Microsoft's downfall will not be crappy products or high fees. It will be their unbridled desire to grab more and more power. They will ultimately be rejected in favor of competing products that work as well and don't require giving up security or power to a large corporation.
As to OfficeXP activation, this is quite easily gotten around, if one really cares to bother.
Without patching DLLs? Without activating a bogus CD key? I don't want to modify DLLs (that leaves you open to a future Microsoft attack) and I dont' want to activate even a bogus CD Key...
That said, I no longer even wish to install Office XP, so it's all academic.
BTW be aware that OfficeXP *does* clobber some system files even when it's been told not to, and does *NOT* uninstall cleanly even on WinXP, even with a prior Restore point. As I've said many times before, M$Office is Windows' worst enemy.
I installed OfficeXP on a "disposable" system that I have scheduled for reformatting within a few weeks. It turns out, I don't even like the OfficeXP interface so even if I could install it without activating, I wouldn't.
I'm sticking with Office 2000 until I get OpenOffice working to my satisfaction.
How many people do you know who have UPGRADED to Windows XP? I don't mean buying a new laptop and having XP pre-loaded... How many have actually gone out and purchased it?
MS has paraded some big numbers for XP sales, yet I know no-one who has actually bought it. I would call that very low consumer acceptance.
And they've lost me as a customer to Office XP because of their product activation. I'll keep using Office 2000 until I'm comfortable with OpenOffice. So...
I *hang up* on the spammer. He doesn't get to finish his attack. And then I usually end up wasting more of the spammer's time as he tries again and again, which increases his cost of spamming.
Furthermore, your approach requires constant updating to catch more and more spam. Paul's approach takes care of this on it's own, as it allows for the "learning" of new words automatically, based upon statistical inference.
My approach allows me to hand-pick the words that will be triggers for spam rejection. His relies on statistics. I won't tell you what I think about statistics, but I trust myself to pick the "trigger words" much more than I trust statistics to decide what mails I will see and what I won't.
You might be right. There is a difference in the fact that the acts were not known. My analogy was more from the standpoint of knowledge of the evil--in the case of Enron/etc., the stockholders didn't know about the acts. In the case of spam, the receivers are aware of the act but don't fully comprehend its costs and, thus, its importance to them.
Actually, it's not a bad analogy. It could be said that the stockholders "knew" of the activity of the company (the income/expenses were declared, albeit wrongly) just as the receivers of spam know the activity, but wrongly believe there is no cost to them.
But perhaps the anaology isn't perfect... :)
However it is not reasonable to make that argument on behalf of someone who does not mind the spam.
Hmm, I think I'd disagree. There may be many uninformed people that don't know {insert evil chemical here} is bad for you, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be concerned about that chemical being in somebody ELSES water supply.
However it is not reasonable to make that argument on behalf of someone who does not mind the spam.
Yes it is, because we--as technical people who understand the economic, political, and technical issues involved--ARE in a position to know that it is bad, even if the layman hasn't taken the time to understand these issues. The fact that they don't mind it (yet) doesn't mean it isn't affecting them negatively.
If I believe that eating peanut M&M's will make you go to Hell, and you don't place any particular theological value on chocolate-covered legumes, does that give me the right to make them illegal on your behalf, even if you don't like the taste of them?
Two things: 1) I never suggested making spam ILLEGAL. It's tempting at times, but I'm hesitant to go down that slippery road. 2) Your analogy above is talking about a theoretical BELIEF. And I believe you are wrong. :) When it comes to spam, the economic and technical impact of spam is FACT.
Parent asked why we should try to convince the world that spam is bad. My reply is: "Because it IS bad." It swamps mail servers with useless traffic and that, indirectly, costs the end-user money. That's a technical and economic fact. And most spam is deceptive or illegal. That's a generalization, but a fairly accurate one.
So my point is that we aren't trying to turn users to our "anti-spam religion," we are informing them of the facts of the matter--and the facts pretty much speak for themselves. And, again, I have yet to find anyone who LIKES spam. I don't think I've even found anyone that was even neutral. So this might be an academic discussion....
That's EXACTLY the point. The point is that many of those that are currently "stuck" with buying enterprise level database systems don't need it. MySQL is perfect for them.
Do you really think that companies which need even 50 programmers for a project are going to be bothered about the cost of Oracle? People are far more expensive that the cost of the Oracle licenses.
Do you really think that 99% of the databases out there have 50 programmers working on them? Even 20? What about 10?
The point isn't that Oracle et all don't have any use. The point is that many organizations that currently use Oracle and DON'T have a huge team of programmers probably COULD get by on MySQL. And those are exactly the companies that WILL be bothered by Oracle licenses.
Again, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft can't make money if they only sell their database to the 1% of organizations that NEED those features. These companies can only make a profit if their databases are sold to some portion of the remaining 99% that don't really need all the features but, until now, really haven't had much of an alternative--except maybe Access.
Because:
- By the time these people realize that spam is bad, it may be too far gone to do anything about it.
- Enron/Worldcom stockholders were getting ripped off, too, and I'm sure they would have wanted to know about it. Same with spam.
- Letting spam continue to grow reduces the usefulness of email as a valuable form of communication. Email is one of the most useful functions of Internet and if it becomes useless in a flood of spam, it's a significant function which many others will not see the benefit in acquiring. Communication will be reduced.
Ignorance is bliss, as long as you remain ignorant. That doesn't mean you're not in for a crash-landing at the end--like Enron and Worldcom. You can only hide your head in the sand for so long.In the case of spam, I think the article is misleading. I know many, many people--some technical, some not--and NO-ONE I've ever found likes to receive spam. The suggestion that some people that receive spam don't know it's undesirable is just plain stupid. It'd like saying that people don't mind receiving telemarketing calls during dinner because no-one told them it was bad.
So blacklist Korea. That's what I've done on my mail server. If anyone connects from Korea they are greeted with the message "550 Connection from Korea denied due to excessive spamming" and are promtply hung up on. They don't even get to say "HELO"...
Beyond that, I get lots of spam from other parts of Asia (China and Taiwan are the next two big sources for me)
Hint: Modify your sendmail to monitor incoming DATA. If more than, say, about 15% of the incoming DATA is high-ASCII, hang up. That's what I do. No more unintelligible garbage email coming in.
air pollution are bad [no, wait, the world *did* agree on those two things and the US is holding them back, but I digress].
No, we did agree on the air pollution stuff. But we were opposed to exempting some of the biggest countries in the world. Countries that, just last week, were reported to be living under the Asian Brown Cloud that risks killing millions of Asians and proposes a risk to the global environment. And "they" wonder why the U.S. is opposed to exempting those countries from Kyoto pollution limits?
You might not be kidding, but you also don't know what you're talking about.
MySQL is the greatest thing since sliced bread for those that find that it DOES THE JOB. MySQL has done everything I need it to for my applications and does it fast. I run several websites using MySQL and it works great. I wouldn't even THINK of using SQL Server, Oracle, or any commercial software instead. In fact, the MyPhpAdmin intetrace is much BETTER than what I had to deal with when I worked with SQL Server 6.5--the last version of SQL Server I've had the misfortune to use.
Many of the features that make the big commercial databases are bloat for many of us. I prefer not to use stored procedures--keep the data in the database and the program in the program. I don't like triggers, especially during the development process. I'd rather have a subroutine that does everything that needs to be done rather than rely on a database (and tie myself to it) to trigger certain actions. I'm not fond of database-enforced relationship constraints. I'd rather my code insert the right data than have the databse reject a transaction with an error because something went wrong.
Sure, if you are Citibank and have a dozen offices around the country that all write their own scripts that modify the same data underneath then you might need stored procedures, triggers, and constraints to make sure no-one messes up the data. But for 95% of the database applications, stored procedures, triggers, and even constraints are bloat. If I can SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE, MySQL serves my needs.
You also seem to be missing the point. The U.S. Government is already using MySQL successfully. It has never crashed (in the case cited by the article). Yahoo is already using it and is thinking about migrating the rest of the site to it. Last I checked, Yahoo is one of the highest-traffic site on the web. I don't think they'd make a decision like this without some real investigation. If MySQL is good enough to even be considered by Yahoo, it's definitely good enough for 99.9% of the websites out there--despite your well-informed, expert opinion. I personally believe Yahoo's decision has a little more weight than soem rant by an anonymous coward on Slashdot.
Oracle and SQL Server might have their place on 0.1% of the databse applications out there. But, believe me, they aren't going to be able to run a profitable business on that 0.1% of the database market. And the rest of the market CAN consider MySQL. Or, in the case of your relgion, PostgreSQL.
I've come up with a solution that works very, very well for me.
I've modified my sendmail server. In addition to having a 1000+ block list (it's amazing how many spammers DO use a fixed block of IPs and/or send mail from spammersite.com, etc.), my modifications to the sendmail server are essentially filters. When I get spam I *DO* read it: Or more accurately, I skim for stuff that NO-ONE would say in a real email. Our mail server is small with less than around 20 users, so that makes it easier. But, if I see the words "JUICY PUSSY", bam, that's in the filter. When I see the words "PRESTIGIOUS NON-ACCREDITED" (oxymoron), bam, that's in the filter.
So, just filters, right? Nothing new?
Perhaps, but the difference is that my sendmail is now AGGRESIVE. I don't receive their crap and then filter it. I filter it during the DATA phase of the SMTP connection. As *SOON* as any filterable text is recognized I immediately stop receiving data and issue a "550 No spam allowed here" and hang up. If they "call back" (they always do), I greet them with "550 No spam allowed her" and hang up before they even say HELO.
It works VERY well. I've reduced my spam from 40+ per day to about 2 or 3. And those 2 or 3 promtply get added to my filters.
Although I'm sure MS would love to do that, it will never happen. Many people write very personal documents with Word. Many companies have trade secrets in Word. In the case of government and some contractors, top-secret information may be contained in them.
If MS ever tries to FORCE people to save their documents only on a central server, they can kiss their market goodbye. Corporate support for that would be zero.
The potential good side would be the potential for wiping out MS in a massive lawsuit if a) the central server ever got hacked and private/trade-secret info every was obtained by someone that shouldn't have it. b) if the server went down and, for some reason, there was no way to restore the backups. Either of these would have the potential to put MS out of business if every user of Word was affected. :)
That said, I just tried installing an Office XP that I was given as a gift. It's a legitimate store-bought copy, but I am not able to use it. I refuse to "activate" it. So I'll be uninstalling Office XP and I'll be downloading Open Office tonight. :)
You can't have it both ways.
No, but I'd support your right to look at an existing Ferrari and build your own. The factory would still have their Ferrari, I'd have a Ferrari, and the factory didn't lose any money because there was no way I was going to buy one if I couldn't do it myself. :)
No, it doesn't make it more democratic--it makes it more controlable, both for foreign governments as well as the U.S.
Right now it's hard to control any part of the Internet because it is completely internetworked. The U.S. can't control it because much of it isn't in the U.S. Likewise, France can't control it because much of the intra-France traffic might go via the UK, Canada, or the U.S.
By regionalizing the networks what you DO do is make it much easier for the regional government(s) to exercise strong control over their section of the network.
I much prefer the current situation where no-one, not even the U.S., has any significant control. If I weren't American, perhaps I could see the use for countries to establish additional backbones that bypass the U.S. (or any other single country) so that their Internet connection isn't held hostage by the U.S. Government. But it would behoove them to make sure those backbones are connected to other third parties precisely so that their local governments have a harder time controlling them.
Let's see, the U.S. dollar is the international standard, so they create the Euro. The U.S. goes to Mars in the 70s, decades later the Europeans go. The U.S. created GPS, now the Europeans want to waste money on Galileo. The U.S. created the Internet, now the Europeans want to waste money on their own internal Internet. Considering how many Europeans look down on the U.S. and Americans, it seems they spend an awful lot of time and money trying to catch up and duplicate what's already been done. They ought to try doing something innovative.
That's not true. The case can easily be made that by standing up for morality he is protecting his own investment in the company. Also, since he is a national hero it is not unlikely that he will find another well-paid job even if it's just to project an image of morality. Fact is, what he did might be against his best interest in the short term but could work out for the best in the long-term.
The thought that capitalism has to be at odds with morality or that capitalism is evil is based on a skewed view of it. Yes, people can do bad things to advance their own position, but that's true not just with capitalism.
In the long term, both people and companies will generally do better by acting ethically and honestly. There are exceptions, of course, but the exceptions are usually shooting stars that get filthy rich and then either crash and burn or go to jail, or both. You can't build long-term success on deceit or corruption.
Martha Stewart was doing great until she made a stupid, greedy insider-trading decision. Now she's under investigation and the value of her company has dropped like 67%. This is a case of capitalism itself punishing someone that abused it, even if she doesn't go to jail.
If you've only lived in the United States you have no idea what corruption is. I remember having a similar view of U.S. politics until I moved to Mexico. I've lived here for nearly 7 years. Believe me, most Americans--and possibly even you--have no idea what corruption is.
If a politician "listens" to determine what "the people" want, but only one side is "talking," he is going to tend to favor the ones doing the talking if, for no other reason, than he hasn't even heard the others. If the politician can also get some money to assist in his reelection campaign from the side that's talking and the rest of the people don't seem to care, why not take it?
Every citizen has the power and RESPONSIBILITY to decide the future of the United States. Don't blame businesses--or individuals--in trying to get laws passed that benefit them. Don't blame politicians from listening to those that are "talking" and receiving money from those that are giving if their constituents don't seem to care. BLAME THE CITIZENS THAT AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION.
Don't try to explain the sins of Microsoft to the masses. They will think you are eccentric, a geek, and worried about silly stuff when more important "real problems exist." Rather, the trick is getting people to watch their politicians in general. If people truly would CARE what their representative and senators are doing, believe me, everything else would fall in line.
Corruption is not the problem in the United States. Voter apathy is. If the U.S. is becoming a slave to corporations, we have noone to blame but ourselves.
I modified my SENDMAIL a few months ago to do some checks on the incoming connections. As the DATA is streaming in, my modification constantly checks for tell-tail signs of spam. There are many of them. When my sendmail detects any of these signs, it *immediately* spews out a "500" error (dosn't wait for them to finish their DATA session) and hangs up.
Inevitably the spammer thinks it was a connection problem and tries again. It's fun looking at my log and seeing a spammer try all day long do deliver his BS. In the case of open relays being the machine that tries all day to deliver, perhaps that'll wake the admin up to fix his open relay.
I've been busy with some paying contracts, but once I'm done I'm going to much improve the logic. If a single site produces more than 1 spam message in a certain amount of time, temporarily ban that address so they get a 500 error as soon as they issue a HELO. Better yet, I want to filter certain known spam addresses so they aren't even accepted by the accept() function.
Anyway, it has worked great. My spam count has gone down to about 2 or 3 per day from 40+. At the same time, when I'm depressed or stressed, I can take a look at my maillog and be instantly cheered up seeing all the futile attempts of spammers to deliver their BS.
I have no clue. That's part of the problem, not just making the music available but also finding a way to people to pay for it as anonymously and easily as paying with cash at a record store. My relationship with a store begins and ends with the transaction and they don't know who I was unless I paid with a credit card. That kind of anonymity and ease is required to make any online offering competitive.
At the very least you'd have to give a PayPal account, or some other online bill paying account
I agree, some kind of online micropayment system is necessary and still doesn't exist. I believe there was some kind of "Cybercash" thing years before PayPal. I believe they had solved the anonymity problem, though I may be incorrect.
A quarter per song is more than fair and I think a lot of people would be willing to buy tracks for a quarter, or maybe a dollar rather than STEAL them using p2p networks. Maybe not enough, but many people would.
I don't think a quarter per song is fair. As best I can tell, the bandwidth for a 4MB MP3 would be cost no more than about $0.004. 4/10th of a penny. And that is paying hosting bandwidth rates, which they'd obviously get huge volume discounts on. Even at 4/10th of a penny, and assuming they pay the rest of the penny to cover their servers, that's still 80% profit assuming they charge 5 cents. If they charge 25 cents, that's about 96% profit! Sure, it's a better deal than the consumer gets now, but 96% profit is still a rip-off.
And let me say again: I completely believe music is now FREE. If I pay 5 cents per song, I'm paying for the convenience of getting anything I want from one single place with a reliable download. I'm not paying for the music itself.
I might be willing to pay a NICKEL for a song and ONLY if I don't have to share personal information, my credit card number, or my email. If it costs more than about 5 cents and/or I have to identify myself, sorry, I'm getting my music from P2P where my CC info is secure, I remain anonymous, and I can get the song in a few minutes rather than having to sign-up with some large corporate spam generator, ehr, website.
EXACTLY what I was going to say.
The purpose of the Internet is to provide access to information to whatever the user happens to enter into their browser address line. No-one is going to pay local ISPs to provide the service they exist to provide. As you said, not just because it doesn't make sense, but because it sets precedent.
Imagine if this was happening the other way around -- that AOL started dropping access to those sites (international or local) that didn't pay to not be in the filter list. That's corporate censorship; we'd go nuts complaining about that.
It's also not going to happen because there are ways to get around it. Indian users could go through anonymizers, proxys, or tunnel through sites overseas explicitly set-up to allow them to get around the ISP filters. Essentially, there's no way to effectively do it, although they will piss off their customers trying.
I'd say the dot com bust is catching up with some ISPs in India and they're looking for some extra cash. This kind of idea also may give you an idea of the problems of trying to outsource programming projects to countries such as India--this is exactly why every company that I know of that has tried to outsource to India has ended up spending a wad of cash and getting nothing in return.
It's possible he didn't consider the damage that would be caused; he's a politician not a military expert. On the other hand, if his advisors who should have know the potential for damage didn't tell him, then it's their fault.
I think it's far more likely from an objective review of the facts and based on logic that they were simply surprised at Pearl Harbor. We thought we were negotiating a peace. Any conspiracy theory related to Pearl Harbor, as is the case with 9/11, seems to require us to believe that people that grew up patriotic Americans somehow stop caring about their fellow Americans and their country when they obtain power in their country, allowing it to be attacked and fellow citizens killed. While it's fun for conspiracy theories, I don't think it's very probable.
didn't you detect a constant theme in his books that the public never knows the whole truth? His books are largely the source of my mistrust
Of course we don't know everything. But one thing is to not know everything and quite another to suggest that any American president had prior knowledge of an attack and did nothing, or actually wanted it to happen.
Also, keep in mind that Tom Clancy is fiction. Sure, it's fun stuff and I love his work and the movies (with Harrison Ford) are great. But remember to keep fact and fiction separate, regardless of how believable the fiction may seem.
Hopefully the causes of terrorism will be long gone by then.
They won't be. There will always be someone somewhere that isn't happy with something. The "reasons" may change, but don't expect the world to be a peaceful utopia in 50 years with everyone just getting along.
But you may have to concede that you cannot wrap yourself up in cotton wool all the time. The world can be a dangerous place, throwing money at it will not change much.
I agree that no-one can ever be completely safe. But I disagree that "throwing money" at a problem can't reduce the risks. Money won't make us safer, but the technology that money can buy CAN make it safer. Not 100% safe and it won't defend against every attack, but at least it provides one less way to attack us. I'm in favor of that.
So, you get your missile shield, are you going to build a huge wall around the country and make sure nukes (etc) don't get in that way?
Yes. Well, not literally. But I *AM* in favor of implementing technology so that every container on every ship and truck that enter the country pass through some kind of device that would detect nuclear material. I believe that could be accomplished with technology and focusing U.S. Customs solely on the purpose of detecting unwanted goods coming in rather than looking for goods to tax. I.e., Customs should be a PROTECTION agency to keep out unwanted goods--it should not be a fiscal agency with aims of collecting import tarrifs.
Again, I fail to see the worth of this system.
It's value is in that it eliminates one more way to attack the United States. No-one is going to launch a direct military assault on the continental U.S. If we have a missile defense, that method of attack goes away. If Customs passes all incoming goods through some kind of raditiation detection equipment then that route is closed off.
No, we can't be 100% safe. But we can take steps to significantly reduce the possibility of attacks.
Terrorists don't count; every country has had problems with them at some point.
Terrorists do count as long as there are countries supporting them or looking the other way. In fact, in a world where the U.S. is so strong it is not far-fetched to believe that countries will actually "deploy" terrorists to do through terror what they could never do with a direct military attack.
There are other and better ways to defend yourself from real threats, not made-up-threats.
Again, refer to my comment (which you agreed to) regarding who might have missiles in 50 years? All threats are real. If we can think of them, so can someone else. If we have no defense against a threat, that's the best threat to exploit.
Re: Saddam knows that. He should have known that in 1992 when a half million allies were arrayed on his border
You: He probably thought we were bluffing.Prior to the Gulf war, nothing like that had happened, nations do not usually get involved in other peoples wars.
What? Thought we were bluffing? Nations don't usually get involved in other peoples' wars? How about France helping the U.S. against England? How about U.S. helping various European countries in WWI and WWII? What about the U.S. in Korea and Vietnam?
And with 500,000 troops you really think he thought we were bluffing? I don't think so. He was either too stubborn/proud to retreat or actually was stupid enough to think he could win. Either way is dangerous and so is playing military "chicken" or "poker" because you think the other side is bluffing...
Re: Israel/Arabs
If it wasn't for the oil, I think we would leave them to it. If they want to kill each other, let them.
No, because history has shown that when we let other countries do that we eventually are the ones that have to come in and finish it. There was no oil in Europe that warranted our carrying whether the Nazis took over Europe and/or killed everyone.
what makes the Israelis so deserving of protection? Guilt over their unfortunate history?
What makes South Korea deserving of protection? What made Europe deserving of protection during the cold war? What makes Japan worthy of protection after they were our enemies?
For better or for worse, Israel was created by the United Nations over 50 years ago. The world agrees they have a right to exist. The United States defends that right. It is valid to ask "why" we are allies with Israel, but it's no more absurd than asking why we are allies with anyone else.
Plus if we just leave Israel to fend for itself there WILL be a bloodbath in the Middle East and it WILL grow to a regional conflict and then to a world war. Believe me, I'd rather support Israel than let the region spiral into war.
Neither side is "right", so why back either?
See above.
Me: There is no inherent reason to believe that if we stopped supporting certain governments and they were toppled "by the people" they would be any more honest.
You: So the troops and US made weapons, planes, landmines are only there for show?
No, they are there to defend the governments from being toppled by a radical population that would most likely attack Israel and plunge the region and world into war.
It has NOTHING to do from keeping riches from the masses. It has everything to do with keeping an irresponsible and radical mass of people from taking the reigns of government and starting a regional/world war.
Why should that be a factor? You're willing to screw over an entire nation worth of mostly innocent people to help another nation?
I'm willing to restrain (not screw over) a nation to keep it from attacking a neighbor--especially when the result of such an attack would almost certainly be a world war.
But Israels are white, the others are black, so that makes it easy for us.
The Arabs I've seen are no more "black" than your average Israeli or American.
Again, what makes Israel immune to this logic? They are provoking other nations as I type this.
Who are they provoking? Have they lobbed warheads into Baghdad because they were in a conflict with Syria? Have they launched terrorists to blow themselves up in the middle of Egypt?
They've started their own wars. Maybe if they also were responsible and not trigger-happy, we wouldn't be in this mess.
They've only started a war in, what, 1967 or so? And that was to take the "high lands" because their neighbors kept lobbing bombs at them from above.
But, at least the poor can afford TV and alcohol, so they'll be alright.
Yeah... in the Arab countries we're talking about that might not have enough money for either, but it doesn't matter since neither are permitted.
He has publicly said the Saudi issue is his primary beef with the Americans.
Feel free to believe him if you want. If our troops were there in preparation to assist them in attacking Israel I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Our presence there is not the problem. Our support of Israel is.
Me: Basically, we have the money.
You: No you don't. The stock markets have crashed.The airline industry has lost out big time. 8 million of your people live in poverty. I can think of better ways to spend the money.
Guess what? Our stock markets have "crashed", our airline industry is hurting, we have 8 million (3%??) of our population in poverty... and we STILL have money. We go through tough times like anyone, but that doesn't mean we're now a poor nation incapable of spending money on its defense.
Me: f we don't "police the world" then WWI and WWII has shown us that countries will attack each other, regional war will break out, and we eventually have to step in and fix it--at great cost to our own people.
You: Excuse me, I think you'll find the Russians did a large part of that, at an even larger cost to their people.
The RUSSIANS were DEFENDING THEMSELVES. They were being attacked by the Nazis. We went in to clean things up even though we weren't under direct attack by the Nazis.
I'm not belitting the Russian effort, but it's completely understandable. They were being attacked, they defended themselves. But for the U.S. to be at peace with everyone but Japan and open a second front in Europe and storm the beach at Normandy (my grandfather was there!) to liberate someone elses country? That's a different story.
While we respect and appreciate the help the US provided, don't think for one minute it was like Saving Private Ryan.
My grandfather was in the first wave on Omaha Beach. Virtually all of his fellow soldiers were killed that day. I don't know what part of "Saving Private Ryan" you are criticizing, but the sacrifice made by the landing troops on Omaha Beach is quite accurate, from what I've been told. We actually have a German Luger (sp?) that my grandpa picked up that day...
Take the spyplane in China issue. How would you feel if the Chinese were flying spyplaces 24/7 of the coast of Florida?
I wouldn't like it, but if they were outside our territorial limits I would recognize their right to do it.
Are you so naïve to believe that everyone in control of your country is honest?
No. But you have taken the inherent belief in their dishonesty to levels only justified if you buy into unproven conspiracy theories that somehow must believe that as soon as a normal patriotic American gets into positions of power he immediately forgets himself, his beliefes, and becomes a lying, blood-thirsty, warmongering dictator.
I believe that that point of view is just as silly as believing everyone that leads the U.S. is completely honest.
Re: Nukes in Japan in WWII
Again, many say that it was completely unessessary and the war was already over.
Many say that, many say it would have cost millions of lives. Take your pick.
The Russians were due to enter the war the same week and if they had, post-war Japans spoils would have to been shared.
I believe we had been waiting for the Russians to enter for some time. We dropped the bomb, the Russians figured the war was over, and I believe that's when they declared war on Japan. Perhaps we dropped the bomb so as not to share with Russia, or perhaps the Russians declared war because they figured the U.S. had already won and they (Russia) had nothing to lose.
There would be a Tokyo wall, just like in Berlin. I'm not saying that that's what I believe, but it's a popular theory.
The Russians did nothing to help us with the Japan front throughout the entire war. I believe they lost 20 million people in WWII? I find it far more believable that they were not in a position to help us and, even if they had, we were on our own in the Pacific for 4 years. Their help would have been too little too late.
What makes you think we know the whole truth of any of these events? You are basing your knowledge on what you know. Consider this; you may not know the whole story. I certainly don't, but I'm not willing to believe anything I'm told without some analysis of my own.
I know I don't know everything. And I went through a phase where I believed in conspiracy theories. You usually grow out of it by about 25 or 30 years old, though.
If you read international news on a daily basis, everything that happens is quite predictable based on public knowledge. If I see a terrorist attack against Israel, I can predict Israel will strike back within a day or two. Now you can suggest that they are evil and are decimating the Palestinians because they are evil and that the U.S. wants to kill off the Palestinians so we can get their oil, and that's why we support Israel. Perhaps you are even right. But everything is easily predictable by just reading the news.
I guess what I'm saying is that if everything is understandable based on the what's happening in the world, there's little reason to believe that conspiracy theories are necessary to explain what can be completely explained by day-to-day politics.
Anyways, I can see you are very patriotic, so I may be touching a nerve putting the US down.
Yes, I am patriotic but I love these kinds of debates. I am 100% American but have lived in Mexico for the last 6+ years, so I do have some experience "outside the box."
I apologise again for this, but you should be wary of being so patriotic that you cannot acknowledge the bad bits.
Believe me, my patriotism doesn't cause me to not acknowledge the bad bits. We've done bad things, mostly via the CIA. But while we and our leaders aren't saints, I cannot accept that virtually every action the U.S. engages in is driven by some dark, evil secret due to some conflict of interest of someone high-up in government. I just don't buy that.
Your leaders are just like me. Opinionated assholes that often defy logic!! ;-)
I'll agree they can be opinionated assholes, but I truly do NOT believe they defy logic. As I said, I can see the logic of EVERYONE involved (not just the U.S.) just by reading the news.
Britney Spears flipped off the cameras in Mexico last Friday. Then she bailed after "singing" (or lipsyncing) 4 songs in her last concert and left! Combine that with $200 concert tickets, high-priced CDs, and it's really no wonder the recording industry is going down the tubes. Piracy is the LEAST of their worries when their artists are flipping off the public and abandoning concerts.
No, I don't like Britney. But I'm beginning to enjoy her fall into history. :)
You believe it's more probable that an American President intentionally provoked an enemy and let them attack and destroy much of the Pacific Fleet to allow him to get into a war that the U.S. was then unprepared to enter due to that attack? Or could it be that the reason we "provoked" them was because we could not morally agree with their expansionist plans that would come at the cost of independent nations throughout Southeast Asia?
He is a proven liar, yet no one cares? Why is that?
Hmmm, perhaps because Clinton set the precedent? :)
Defending yourself is one thing, but to advocate a practically useless defence shield
If it's useless, why would it cause an arms race or give us first-strike capability?
Moreover, when has a missile ever been launched from a rouge state on another in a form that would be stopped by a missile shield?
Hasn't happened yet, thank God. I'd rather "think outside the box" and anticipate what might happen in the future. Right now only a small number of countries have ballistic missile capabilities but the technology is only about 50 years ago. Who do you think will have the technology in 50 years? It's not really all that complicated, the rest of the world just needs time. Without trying to resort to cliches, remember the line from "The Sum of All Fears": "I'm not afraid of the guy with a thousand nuclear warheads, I'm afraid of the guy with one."
Who is going to attack the US? Who would be so stupid?
Consult the history books, please.
No nation state for sure.
Complacency has always gotten us into trouble. We were complacent at the beginning of WWI. We cleaned up there. We were complacent in WWII until we got bombed at Pearl Harbor. If the American public really thought we were going to be threatened do you think they would have withheld their support to enter the war? Many people (including you) may not see any risk and think building missile defense is silly--just like many people thought WWII was "Europe's War" and thought it useless to get into it.
It's easy to be compacent. Even moreso when we're talking about the most powerful country on earth. But that also makes us the biggest target and history has shown that complacency is a fatal error.
If Saddam or anyone else was going to launch a attack on the US, they would know that they stood no chance.
WE know that. It's less certain whether or not Saddam knows that. He should have known that in 1992 when a half million allies were arrayed on his border waiting to anhilate his military in a question of days and use the southern portion of the country as a "field test" of new and wonderful weapons? Whether he did it out of pride or did it in belief of being able to win is irrelevant--the fact is there always will be SOMEONE crazy and stubborn enough to look logic in the face and try to ignore it.
Anyway, terrorists don't have ballistic missile systems.
No, not yet. As far as we know. :) Hopefully we'll have a missile defense before Bin Laden is able to build, buy, or steal even an obsolete missile--perhaps from the former Soviet Union.
The US annoyed them first, but your media won't tell you that, they prefer the "attacking freedom and democracy" story.
We annoyed them first? Perhaps our annoyance (stationing troops in the region) was provoked by THEIR annoyance of not being able to exist without threatening Israel and each other, thereby threatening a regional conflict that would easily expand.
It's easy to blame everything on the U.S. But you can't ignore that the U.S. has reasons for what it does--and it's NOT just for our oil supply. You have to look at the history a little deeper.
By supporting corrupt governments, especially in the Middle East, an enormous amount of hatred as built up.
The governments are going to be corrupt whether we support them or not. There is no inherent reason to believe that if we stopped supporting certain governments and they were toppled "by the people" they would be any more honest.
We support many questionable governments in the region because, regardless of how questionable they may be, they are actually less likely to attack Israel than the alternative.
If the public in many of those Middle Eastern countries were to show they were RESPONSIBLE and not trigger-happy ready to start a regional (and thereafter world) war in regards to Israel, perhaps the U.S. would be more apt to let democracy run its course. Democracy requires responsibility and, as bad as it sounds, the populations of many of those Middle Eastern countries have not shown they are ready to accept that responsibility.
By all rights, the country (one nation under whatever god) owns that oil, yet only a handful of people will ever see it, most of them unaccountable to the public.
How is that different than in the United States?
Some of these counties are extremely poor, and how do you think they react to seeing US troops about, guarding their national property from them while they live in poverty?
As has been said, we import only about 8% of our oil from Saudia Arabia. We could get by without it, especially if we turned on Alaska and reactivated Texas.
We're not defending the oil FROM the populations of the host countries. We're defending the (corrupt?) government from their population that, were they to topple the government, would most likely make attacking Israel one of their first moves. And then we have to defend Israel.
History (WWI, WWII) has shown us that it is cheaper in the long run to stick our nose in internal affairs of other countries to avoid having to clean up a big mess later. Tough luck.
It's the presence of these troops in Saudi that drives Bin Laden
No it's not. It's the existance of Israel. If we leave the Middle East all that will happen is that all their efforts will be freed up to topple Israel. They just realized they can't topple Israel as long as the U.S. supports it. Leaving Saudia Arabia would not placate Bin Laden one bit.
They want to control their own resources; they want freedom and democracy. Not tyranny.
That may be on their list. But first and foremost they want to destroy Israel. And that's why we don't leave.
"The most probable type of missile attack" maybe. But look at how likely is that event going to happen. Basically, it's not.
If there is a 1 in 100 chance that someone is going to nuke a city and it just so happens that I have a 2 trillion dollar budget available, I might not be considered crazy investing a few ten billion dollars to reduce that risk to 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000.
Basically, we have the money. If we can reduce the risk of nuclear missile attack from 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000, I think that's better use of 60 billion dollars than most of the other things the government would spend 60 billion on.
No. You are starting another pointless arms race.
You already said it won't work, so why would it create a new arms race? Either you think it will work (in which case we should definitely build it!) and are afraid of an arms race, or you think it won't work and therefore shouldn't now be citing the risk of an arms race as a reason not to research it.
By having a missile shield, that makes a pre-emptive strike possible for the US to start and win a nuclear war.
We already have a pre-emptive strike capability against absolutely the whole world except Russia. And we might actually have that capability against Russia.
But a missile defense will only defend us from small attacks. In those cases, we definitely already have a first-strike capability so the missile defense doesn't give us anything other than a defense.
Other countries will see this shield and will also desire similar systems to protect themselves.
And I hope they do. If these are DEFENSIVE systems designed to defend against the risk of a nuclear attack, I think that's great. I hope India and Pakistan both deploy it so they can both eventually get rid of their now-obsolete nukes. Hopefully the same applies to everyone else, too. If such a system sufficiently evolved, even the U.S. would have no need for a huge arsenal of ICBMs.
So billions and billions of dollars are redirected from the public purse in to the coffers of the arms industry.
Which creates other technology at the same time which is consumed by the public. Meanwhile, the "arms industry" buys from the public as do their employees.
Don't worry, it isn't a black hole where all the money goes into the pockets of fat cats never to be seen again.
Bush & Buddies are happy, the people lose services and pay more taxes.
Actually, Bush reduced the taxes that had been previously raised by Clinton. Your argument doesn't make any sense.
You just don't get it, do you? It's that attitude that leads to these problems!
And our attitude is justified based on history. If we don't "police the world" then WWI and WWII has shown us that countries will attack each other, regional war will break out, and we eventually have to step in and fix it--at great cost to our own people.
You want the U.S. out of everyone's business? Then every country ought to show that they can act mature without the U.S. providing worldwide stability.
There is talk of invading Iraq because they have "weapons of mass destruction". So do you. They have chemical/biological weapons? So do you, in fact, you developed most of them.
We have them as a deterrent and have shown restraint and responsibility in using them. Saddam doesn't have as much as we do, but what did he do? He lobbed them over at Israel which had nothing to do with the Gulf War with the only hope of provoking a response and creating an Arab vs. Israel conflict.
If you can't see the inherent difference in risk between certain countries possessing these weapons and others possessing them, I'm sorry. That probably goes a long way in explaining your point of view.
Who is the only country to drop one in anger?
In anger? Anger would have been to launch a few at Afghanistan a day or two after 9/11. The attack on Japan was a calculated strategic decision that most likely saved the lives of millions of Americans AND Japanese.
Ironically, if that hadn't happened and the world hadn't seen the horrors one nuke could cause, there would have probably been a nuclear war by now
There ya go. Not only did we probably save millions of lives in WWII by using nukes, we may have saved hundreds of millions in subsequent nuclear wars that were avoided. Considering we did it "out of anger" it looks like it worked out pretty damn well, didn't it?
What makes you holier than thou?
Holier? Not at all. But more responsible. Face it, after WWII we could have dominated the world. Now that the USSR has fallen, we could do it now. We don't. How many powers in history when given the option of total conquest did not take it? The U.S. has shown itself to be the most restrained superpower in the history of the world.
but you have no right to invade a country just because they have the capability to attack you.
Because they have the capability? No. But if we have reasonable justification to believe that that such an attack is imminent then we are certainly justified in taking preemptive action.
I don't have any problem with France, England, the former Soviet Union, Mexico, Canada, India, South Africa, etc. having the CAPABILITY to attack us because we have no reason to believe an attack will be forthcoming. But like the Japanese taught us at Pearl Harbor and as Bin Laden taught us on 9/11, if we believe an attack is imminent then damn right we ought to strike preemptively.
Like the "war" in Afganistan, which was being planned prior to 9/11.
I've read about that. Mostly in left-leaning liberal publications. Not much in the way of evidence for a "WAR" in Afghanistan. At best we would've looked the other way... Then again, Afghanistan was only recognized by three countries in the world. The Taliban was, in fact, the result of toppling the previous government. They were holding Westerners (not just Americans) on bogus charges and terrorizing their own people. Heck, even if 9/11 hadn't happened there was as much a case for a humanitarian "war" there as there has been in other "humanitarian" conflicts.
Hopefully I've made a few people think about the other side of the story.
I really doubt you have. You are full of opinions, granted, but don't offer much in terms of facts to back-up what is mostly liberal conspiracy theory.
Peace can only follow understanding.
You mean if we understand Bin Laden he won't attack us? If they understand us they won't be offended that we have troops in their countries? That if the Arabs understand Israel that they will let it exist? Nice academic/utopian world you are talking about.
In the real world, the world has been most stable in the last 50 years. That stability was created by the balance of POWER between the U.S. and the USSR. Now it is created by the POWER of the U.S.
I'm all for understanding and getting along whenever possible. But there will always be someone who wants power or wants their way the "old fashioned" way. You are mistaken if you believe that countries in the 21st century are inherently more averse to war than in the past. The reason you feel that way is because of your experience in the last 50 years--but again, that general stability has been brought by the threat of FORCE, not due to any enlightened understanding in recent years.