I think what disturbs me about the submitter is the implication that lack of government or large organization action implies we don't "care" as a country about these problems.
Thats a flawed argument. Yes we care, its just we care more about the individuals right to make their or decisions. Talk about a loaded political submission. I thought this was "news for nerds" not "manifestos for the nanny state".
Google can drive up a private driveway and take a picture, but the public can't photograph inside a public museum? If google is going to go about playing big brother, the least they could do is work on establishing precedent for the rest of us.
Funny, It has to be the marketing and the UI, because the hardware is not so hot.
My company is evaluating moving over to mac book pros. We have put 25 of them into use and are tracking their rate of hardware failure against the 200 Dell Latitudes we have in play. Guess what- the mac books experience hardware failures 6x as often. Its not like there is one mac mac book pro either, MOST of them have had issues, including replacements.
I would never use an inspiron but the Latitude's are more reliable (hardware) then the mac book pros.
Actually no the insurgents did not win in any of the examples I cited.
(1) In Ireland England has won outright. They suppressed the violence and the political process is taking place. (2) In India the British held the nation firmly for over 100 years before deciding it was best to leave due to a series of peaceful protests in India and war fatigue from WWII. (3) Again in the middle east the British left due to war fatigue from WWII. (4) The French were able to totally suppress the insurgents in Algiers and violence dissipated for a couple of years. When in came back in a different form outside of the cities, the French left due to internal politics and lack of money (again due to WWII).
My point is this, its utterly impossible for a political process to take hold when you have insurgents blowing up civilians. If you look at a place like Iraq, one can't really argue that the current violence will cease if the U.S. leaves. Most of the killing going on right now is basically tribal. So as the current occupying power (not a position I like btw) what is the moral thing to do? Use clean handed tactics that are totally ineffectual, or use tactics from dirty playbooks that are proven to work? The morale high ground is already long gone, and I would argue that we have a moral obligation as long as we are there to try and reduce the number of civilians kill by factional bombing even if it means using the dirty play book.
To me, the most moral thing to do (at this point now that we are there) is take the most direct route to eliminating the civilian slaughter and allowing a political process to take hold. The British have demonstrated how to do this in the middle east and else where. It isn't pretty but it works. Of course this is not what I would ultimatly advocate that the U.S. should do; I think we should follow self interest 100% and pull out tomorrow, but thats a separate issue for another time.
This is really kind of absurd. The article is all alarmist creating the impression that the U.S. is on some moral limb with its counter insurgency tactics. This is hogwash. Whats REALLY funny is that the U.S. has always been hesitant to really commit to the kind of counter insurgency tactics that actual work and keeps trying to fight insurgencies with normal battlefield tactics. This book is just an attempt to implement in the special forces what many other governments have already successfully done against insurgencies.
For example-
(1) England. England practically wrote this play book. They used it to great effect in Ireland, India and amusingly the middle east. They suppressed the media, lied, arrested on mere flimsy suspicion, bribed and bombed. Guess what- it worked. They were very successful at suppressing insurgencies in many many countries.
(2) India. They learned very well from their former colonial masters and have one of the best counter insurgency operations in history running in Kashmir and a few other provinces. Totally dirty. Totally works.
(3) The French in Algeria. The French successfully beat down an insurgency in Algiers that was particularly brutal (bombed many many civilian locations) using all of the tactics cited in the article above. Unfortunatly they went one step too far and engaged in some pretty nasty torture. While they were able to pacify the city their was media outrage at home. The insurgents started operations again in the country-side and the broke French government just decided to leave.
There are a lot of other examples. However consider this, the British have been far more unsuccessful in their areas of operations in Iraq then the U.S.. On the one hand they are far less arrogant, and far more respectful in some ways to the locals then the U.S.. On the hand they are employing all of the dirty tricks they learned from hundreds of years of successful direct colonialism.
Insurgencies fight dirty. Successful counter insurgencies do too. The U.S. to date has been pretty bad at this game and it really does appear that its due to a mindset in U.S. commanders that insists on forcing big war paradigms onto the a very different kind of battlefield. It sounds like this book needs wider distribution if we are going to go to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is no correlation between a weak dollar and the strength or status of the U.S. in the world economy. A weak dollar is not inherently bad either as it makes our exports more attractive and competitive.
It always amazes me. When the dollar is strong everyone says the U.S. is loosing economic power because of trade imbalances (weak exports). When the dollar is weak and trade exports are much higher, then people claim the U.S. is loosing economic power because of the weak dollar. Obviously neither interpretation is accurate. A strong dollar can be good and bad, a weak dollar can be good and bad. In this case American video game exporters are probably benefiting from less competition from Nintendo.
Such simplistic interpretations remind me of mercantilist theory, which is similairly idiotic. Carry on.
AT&T does offer a major advantage over Verizon: actual 3G.
Sorry but CDMA EVDO is nothing like the speeds I can get on AT&T's 3G network. I have both (a work phone and a personal phone) and there is no comparison between the two services. AT&T 3G offers vastly superior transfer speeds and far lower latency. More often then not my tethered blackjack is faster then the wired network at hotels.
Admittedly a tad off-topic but as we are bashing Monster-
I don't really care what Monster charges for cable. What bothers me is that the retailers are in on it. If I want some cable and I want it NOW the only thing a place like Circuit City or Best Buy stocks is Monster or some over priced equivalent. I know I can go an order a cable that produces equivalent results online for $5, but if I want it that day the only thing to do is buy what Best Buy or Circuit City is stocking, which invariably costs $50.
I have always wondered if there was the basis for someone who was far more litigious then me to file some anti-competitive based lawsuit against Monster and the retailers here. There is NO WAY that Radio Shack, Best Buy, Circuit City have all independently decided to only stock "high end" cables that unbranded sell for 1/10th or less online.
The first dune is a goddamn travesty. If the master of it was lost forever I would jump for joy. The first book needs a proper screen rendition. Not some crappy home rendered CG like the mini-series and not some gimmicky twist of voice into weapons. If you think I am trolling just take one look at my Nick please.
The first novel was split into two books. The movie should be as well. This is giving me heartburn. Friday night lights? The kingdom? Will Smith? I have visions of I Robot in the sand.
"Standing up taller" is actually a double edged sword for using on an airline seat. If you are 6'4 and have large thick legs (muscular or otherwise) then a taller screen makes it harder to use. When the passenger in front puts their seat back then the taller screen has to be bent forward; because you are so tall you end up looking fown on the leading edge of the cover and cant see sh*t on the screen.
"You may be able to argue that it's little different than Christianity or Islam"
Indeed the most terrifying aspects of Scientology are those that resemble the other major religions. Suppression of information, the use of violence to suppress opposition, a claim to hold monopoly on "the Truth" and a willingness to place themselves above civil law. Oh and lets not forget the tendency to place beliefs before observable information...
(1) No one would say he was motivated by religion, as the motivation was pretty clearly to establish racial equality for its own sake. (2) His means, peaceful protest, were (A) derived from Gandhi's anti-colonial movement in India (largely secular) (B) Not consistent with his religion's history or ideology when you consider the thousands of violent protests that were in fact motivated by religion over the past several hundred years (C) The exact same religion as King's was responsible for the rationalization that led to slavery and eventually segregation.
So yeah he was religious, but it wasn't core to the civil rights movement or King's motivations. The fact that he was religious was largely incidental beyond the pulpit of respect in gained him in the community.
On to Lincoln- (1) I will again point out that slaver in the U.S. was largely rationalized on the basis of religion and considered to be perfectly consistent for most of the history of Chirstianity; just check out the bible and count the pro-slavery bits. Lincoln's abolitionism was in fact in defiance of his religion. (2) Lincoln did not pursue emancipation for moral or ethical reasons. The emancipation proclamation came years into the civil war. Aboltion was a strategic policy to designed to undermine the south and help northern recruitment. Here is some proof for you:
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. -Abraham Lincoln August 26th, 1863
Someone please show me Christs teachings in that letter...
b/c every evil act can be performed in the absence of a religious motivation
I'm sorry but that is just not true. The fact of the matter is that there are whole categories of evil acts that are by definition only the product of religion. When has the world ever witnessed an inquisition for reasons other then faith? Religious crusades, pogroms against jews, none of these things happen absent religion. Crusades, Jihad, Inquisitions, these things cannot be done absent religion because by definition they require religion as a component. Sure one could say that this argument is a tautology, but that should in itself tell you something about the history of religion.
But weren't for the examples he listed.
Again I disagree. Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln were simply men of good conscience. To say that they owed their beliefs to religion is not just wrong, but insulting. Good people will act by their conscience with or without faith and dont require the threat of eternal damnation or the bribery of heaven to do the right thing. There is little to suggest otherwise for Lincoln or King.
".(although none of the mentioned will try to blow you up or cut your head off if you do so, anymore)."
I take exception to this. Genocide in Bosnia, the attacks on doctors and abortion clinics in the U.S., Christian terrorism in N.E. India (http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/christian-india-terrorism.html), Christian attacks/murders on gays in the U.S., Evangelical funding of settlers in the West Bank, Christian violence against Jews in Russia, this is just the a quick list off the top of my head from the past two decades. Christians are still plenty violent in the name of Christ. They just lack the media savy of Muslims.
Sure, Islam has been a bit more violent then Christianity in the last 10 years. However they both have over a thousand years of blood on their hands. Christians pointing to the violence of Muslims is like a Rapist proclaiming innocence because he doesn't target children.
W/r/t to those reformations that "Christianity has promoted" I will refer you to the Christopher Hitchens challenge. The flaw in your argument is that is asserts that religion was in someway responsible for these good things you list, when in fact in every case they could have been done absent a component of religion. In any good thing religion is never a prerequisite, while for many bad things it is.
From a Hitchen's op-ed:
"Here is my challenge... Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith?"
"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to So that when they turn their backs on you You'll get the chance to put the knife in. You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older And in the end you'll pack up, fly down south Hide your head in the sand Just another sad old man All alone and dying of cancer. And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone And it's too late to loose the weight you used to need to throw around So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone"
No, the value is shared. Look it up. In economics, you simply can't create value.
Sure you can, in fact thats one of the ways economic growth is created. Bank lends me $1000. I deposit that into a checking account, a large percentage of which is lent to someone else, who deposits it in a bank account, etc, etc, etc. This is fundamental to banking, and tot that different from creating derivative works really.
Oil is traded in petro-currency, which is based on the dollar.
"As a side exercise why don't you check how the dollar has done against gold/silver in the last 25 years?"
The only people who care about the price of gold & silver, outside of the jewelry and electronics industry, are wackos who think that somehow they are more intrinsically valuable then paper money. A valid comparison would be against the euro, where we clearly see weakness. However that weakness which has existed for nearly a decade now has not correlated with economic decline. Debt has existed since the 60s, and yet it has had no impact on economic growth.
Finally, a weak currency does not result in a lack of credit unless you are in a really extreme situation. That would likely mean hyper-inflation and host of other problems so extreme that the lack of credit would seem like a minor problem. Within the realm of what can be expected for the dollars strength, the impact is still "who cares?". The exception being idiots like Ron Paul who think that gold standard and abolishing the FRB is a smart idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what disturbs me about the submitter is the implication that lack of government or large organization action implies we don't "care" as a country about these problems.
Thats a flawed argument. Yes we care, its just we care more about the individuals right to make their or decisions. Talk about a loaded political submission. I thought this was "news for nerds" not "manifestos for the nanny state".
Didn't you just do the same? GAH- Now I did!?!?! Where will the cycle end?
How about they stfu and go out of business forever? K thx bye.
Google can drive up a private driveway and take a picture, but the public can't photograph inside a public museum? If google is going to go about playing big brother, the least they could do is work on establishing precedent for the rest of us.
Funny, It has to be the marketing and the UI, because the hardware is not so hot.
My company is evaluating moving over to mac book pros. We have put 25 of them into use and are tracking their rate of hardware failure against the 200 Dell Latitudes we have in play. Guess what- the mac books experience hardware failures 6x as often. Its not like there is one mac mac book pro either, MOST of them have had issues, including replacements.
I would never use an inspiron but the Latitude's are more reliable (hardware) then the mac book pros.
Actually no the insurgents did not win in any of the examples I cited.
(1) In Ireland England has won outright. They suppressed the violence and the political process is taking place.
(2) In India the British held the nation firmly for over 100 years before deciding it was best to leave due to a series of peaceful protests in India and war fatigue from WWII.
(3) Again in the middle east the British left due to war fatigue from WWII.
(4) The French were able to totally suppress the insurgents in Algiers and violence dissipated for a couple of years. When in came back in a different form outside of the cities, the French left due to internal politics and lack of money (again due to WWII).
My point is this, its utterly impossible for a political process to take hold when you have insurgents blowing up civilians. If you look at a place like Iraq, one can't really argue that the current violence will cease if the U.S. leaves. Most of the killing going on right now is basically tribal. So as the current occupying power (not a position I like btw) what is the moral thing to do? Use clean handed tactics that are totally ineffectual, or use tactics from dirty playbooks that are proven to work? The morale high ground is already long gone, and I would argue that we have a moral obligation as long as we are there to try and reduce the number of civilians kill by factional bombing even if it means using the dirty play book.
To me, the most moral thing to do (at this point now that we are there) is take the most direct route to eliminating the civilian slaughter and allowing a political process to take hold. The British have demonstrated how to do this in the middle east and else where. It isn't pretty but it works. Of course this is not what I would ultimatly advocate that the U.S. should do; I think we should follow self interest 100% and pull out tomorrow, but thats a separate issue for another time.
This is really kind of absurd. The article is all alarmist creating the impression that the U.S. is on some moral limb with its counter insurgency tactics. This is hogwash. Whats REALLY funny is that the U.S. has always been hesitant to really commit to the kind of counter insurgency tactics that actual work and keeps trying to fight insurgencies with normal battlefield tactics. This book is just an attempt to implement in the special forces what many other governments have already successfully done against insurgencies.
For example-
(1) England. England practically wrote this play book. They used it to great effect in Ireland, India and amusingly the middle east. They suppressed the media, lied, arrested on mere flimsy suspicion, bribed and bombed. Guess what- it worked. They were very successful at suppressing insurgencies in many many countries.
(2) India. They learned very well from their former colonial masters and have one of the best counter insurgency operations in history running in Kashmir and a few other provinces. Totally dirty. Totally works.
(3) The French in Algeria. The French successfully beat down an insurgency in Algiers that was particularly brutal (bombed many many civilian locations) using all of the tactics cited in the article above. Unfortunatly they went one step too far and engaged in some pretty nasty torture. While they were able to pacify the city their was media outrage at home. The insurgents started operations again in the country-side and the broke French government just decided to leave.
There are a lot of other examples. However consider this, the British have been far more unsuccessful in their areas of operations in Iraq then the U.S.. On the one hand they are far less arrogant, and far more respectful in some ways to the locals then the U.S.. On the hand they are employing all of the dirty tricks they learned from hundreds of years of successful direct colonialism.
Insurgencies fight dirty. Successful counter insurgencies do too. The U.S. to date has been pretty bad at this game and it really does appear that its due to a mindset in U.S. commanders that insists on forcing big war paradigms onto the a very different kind of battlefield. It sounds like this book needs wider distribution if we are going to go to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is no correlation between a weak dollar and the strength or status of the U.S. in the world economy. A weak dollar is not inherently bad either as it makes our exports more attractive and competitive.
It always amazes me. When the dollar is strong everyone says the U.S. is loosing economic power because of trade imbalances (weak exports). When the dollar is weak and trade exports are much higher, then people claim the U.S. is loosing economic power because of the weak dollar. Obviously neither interpretation is accurate. A strong dollar can be good and bad, a weak dollar can be good and bad. In this case American video game exporters are probably benefiting from less competition from Nintendo.
Such simplistic interpretations remind me of mercantilist theory, which is similairly idiotic. Carry on.
AT&T does offer a major advantage over Verizon: actual 3G.
Sorry but CDMA EVDO is nothing like the speeds I can get on AT&T's 3G network. I have both (a work phone and a personal phone) and there is no comparison between the two services. AT&T 3G offers vastly superior transfer speeds and far lower latency. More often then not my tethered blackjack is faster then the wired network at hotels.
However I know that certain sections are outsourced to consulting firms. Mostly the aggregated content.
Admittedly a tad off-topic but as we are bashing Monster-
I don't really care what Monster charges for cable. What bothers me is that the retailers are in on it. If I want some cable and I want it NOW the only thing a place like Circuit City or Best Buy stocks is Monster or some over priced equivalent. I know I can go an order a cable that produces equivalent results online for $5, but if I want it that day the only thing to do is buy what Best Buy or Circuit City is stocking, which invariably costs $50.
I have always wondered if there was the basis for someone who was far more litigious then me to file some anti-competitive based lawsuit against Monster and the retailers here. There is NO WAY that Radio Shack, Best Buy, Circuit City have all independently decided to only stock "high end" cables that unbranded sell for 1/10th or less online.
Funny that. My spelling hasn't much improved in the 10 years since I craeted this acoont.
The first dune is a goddamn travesty. If the master of it was lost forever I would jump for joy. The first book needs a proper screen rendition. Not some crappy home rendered CG like the mini-series and not some gimmicky twist of voice into weapons. If you think I am trolling just take one look at my Nick please.
The first novel was split into two books. The movie should be as well. This is giving me heartburn. Friday night lights? The kingdom? Will Smith? I have visions of I Robot in the sand.
"Standing up taller" is actually a double edged sword for using on an airline seat. If you are 6'4 and have large thick legs (muscular or otherwise) then a taller screen makes it harder to use. When the passenger in front puts their seat back then the taller screen has to be bent forward; because you are so tall you end up looking fown on the leading edge of the cover and cant see sh*t on the screen.
"You may be able to argue that it's little different than Christianity or Islam"
Indeed the most terrifying aspects of Scientology are those that resemble the other major religions. Suppression of information, the use of violence to suppress opposition, a claim to hold monopoly on "the Truth" and a willingness to place themselves above civil law. Oh and lets not forget the tendency to place beliefs before observable information...
Hardly. Lets start with the King example
(1) No one would say he was motivated by religion, as the motivation was pretty clearly to establish racial equality for its own sake.
(2) His means, peaceful protest, were (A) derived from Gandhi's anti-colonial movement in India (largely secular) (B) Not consistent with his religion's history or ideology when you consider the thousands of violent protests that were in fact motivated by religion over the past several hundred years (C) The exact same religion as King's was responsible for the rationalization that led to slavery and eventually segregation.
So yeah he was religious, but it wasn't core to the civil rights movement or King's motivations. The fact that he was religious was largely incidental beyond the pulpit of respect in gained him in the community.
On to Lincoln-
(1) I will again point out that slaver in the U.S. was largely rationalized on the basis of religion and considered to be perfectly consistent for most of the history of Chirstianity; just check out the bible and count the pro-slavery bits. Lincoln's abolitionism was in fact in defiance of his religion.
(2) Lincoln did not pursue emancipation for moral or ethical reasons. The emancipation proclamation came years into the civil war. Aboltion was a strategic policy to designed to undermine the south and help northern recruitment. Here is some proof for you:
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. -Abraham Lincoln August 26th, 1863
Someone please show me Christs teachings in that letter...
b/c every evil act can be performed in the absence of a religious motivation
I'm sorry but that is just not true. The fact of the matter is that there are whole categories of evil acts that are by definition only the product of religion. When has the world ever witnessed an inquisition for reasons other then faith? Religious crusades, pogroms against jews, none of these things happen absent religion. Crusades, Jihad, Inquisitions, these things cannot be done absent religion because by definition they require religion as a component. Sure one could say that this argument is a tautology, but that should in itself tell you something about the history of religion.
But weren't for the examples he listed.
Again I disagree. Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln were simply men of good conscience. To say that they owed their beliefs to religion is not just wrong, but insulting. Good people will act by their conscience with or without faith and dont require the threat of eternal damnation or the bribery of heaven to do the right thing. There is little to suggest otherwise for Lincoln or King.
".(although none of the mentioned will try to blow you up or cut your head off if you do so, anymore)."
I take exception to this. Genocide in Bosnia, the attacks on doctors and abortion clinics in the U.S., Christian terrorism in N.E. India (http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/christian-india-terrorism.html), Christian attacks/murders on gays in the U.S., Evangelical funding of settlers in the West Bank, Christian violence against Jews in Russia, this is just the a quick list off the top of my head from the past two decades. Christians are still plenty violent in the name of Christ. They just lack the media savy of Muslims.
Sure, Islam has been a bit more violent then Christianity in the last 10 years. However they both have over a thousand years of blood on their hands. Christians pointing to the violence of Muslims is like a Rapist proclaiming innocence because he doesn't target children.
W/r/t to those reformations that "Christianity has promoted" I will refer you to the Christopher Hitchens challenge. The flaw in your argument is that is asserts that religion was in someway responsible for these good things you list, when in fact in every case they could have been done absent a component of religion. In any good thing religion is never a prerequisite, while for many bad things it is.
From a Hitchen's op-ed:
"Here is my challenge... Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301461.html
"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.
You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder
You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older
And in the end you'll pack up, fly down south
Hide your head in the sand
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer.
And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it's too late to loose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone"
Now fuck off.
The article cites future revenue growth of 10%-15% a year as evidence of MSFTs decline. Huh? Most companies would kill for that sort of growth.
Moderate the article -1 Troll please.
Well maybe, but maybe not. What if the university is taking federal funding/grants?
I really did not see anything all that damning in the diff. Nice sensational headline though!
No, the value is shared. Look it up. In economics, you simply can't create value.
Sure you can, in fact thats one of the ways economic growth is created. Bank lends me $1000. I deposit that into a checking account, a large percentage of which is lent to someone else, who deposits it in a bank account, etc, etc, etc. This is fundamental to banking, and tot that different from creating derivative works really.
"How you going to buy oil?"
Oil is traded in petro-currency, which is based on the dollar.
"As a side exercise why don't you check how the dollar has done against gold/silver in the last 25 years?"
The only people who care about the price of gold & silver, outside of the jewelry and electronics industry, are wackos who think that somehow they are more intrinsically valuable then paper money. A valid comparison would be against the euro, where we clearly see weakness. However that weakness which has existed for nearly a decade now has not correlated with economic decline. Debt has existed since the 60s, and yet it has had no impact on economic growth.
Finally, a weak currency does not result in a lack of credit unless you are in a really extreme situation. That would likely mean hyper-inflation and host of other problems so extreme that the lack of credit would seem like a minor problem. Within the realm of what can be expected for the dollars strength, the impact is still "who cares?". The exception being idiots like Ron Paul who think that gold standard and abolishing the FRB is a smart idea.