"Kind of funny, but why is it that the Americans have a tendancy to totally and completely dislike and discourage anything that does not allow Americans to do what they want? Especially when it comes to military involvement."
All Great Powers show this trait to some degree or another.
"The UN stands and pushes for world peace and security. Its there to stop people destroying each other."
What gives the UN the right "to stop people destroying each other" if said people don't eant them there?
"In New Zealand we pay special attention training our armed forces for peacekeeping missions (with or without the UN) but it seems to me the US military is solely there to fight anyone they perceive is a threat, regardless of realistic facts."
Again, many Great Powers have behaved in similar ways.
"I am getting so sick of seeing all these Americans with a gun-ho attitude that think that going in and shooting up a country is alright. The Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea are examples of such a situation (even worse because they dragged other countries in). Regional disputes that had nothing to do with the US, yet the US still decided to go in there and try to play the 'staunch man'."
I agree with you about Vietnam, but the UN asked the US to get involved in Korea, and the GCC asked the US to get involved in the Kuwait War.
"Maybe the UN needs more power so that countries can't get involved in disputes that do not involve them. Let the UN go in there as peace keepers to stop the fighting, keep the US out because they just antagonize people."
As the original poster said, the UN needs to go. What gives them the right to "get involved in disputes that do not involve them"? They shouldn't be anywhere they weren't asked to go. If you want to hold the US to this, then the UN must be held to it as well.
"With the policies of Pres G W Bush (ie, the missile defence, poor environmental policies) I'd feel much better if the UN had more power, just in case Pres Bush decides to go off the handle, gets all religious and righteous on us and decides that Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Budhists etc should be eliminated."
UN or not, if that happened the US would instantly become the parriah of the world, and it would quickly find itself in economic ruin.
"Look what his father did during his term, we almost had WW3 on our hands."
Eh - would you please explain that one to me?
Going back to the original topic, the UN is fast setting itself up as the world government. It has been trying to do this in two ways: by sanctioning violence, as this poster believes it should; and via international treaties and organizations like the Hague Convention, the IMF, the World Bank, the WIPO, et al. It is slowly usurping the sovereignty of nations.
The reason their older radars worked better is because they put out more radar energy than their newer sets. Stealth aircraft can be detected by focusing enough radar energy at them. SU and Russian AWACS radar, if directed at a narrow swath of sky, would be excellent for this. The problem is knowing what swath of sky to look in. However, if the enemy knows what direction the attack will come from, the planes can be picked up.
"We should have spent the $100 billion on something else like going to the moon. At least that would attract attention rather than watching astronauts do what they've been doing for decades.. orbitting the earth endlessly. BORING."
The space station may not be very exciting, but it is valuable for learning zero-g construction and studying the long-term effects of living in space. Knowledge of both will be required to make any expedition to the moon, or any planet, feasible. Its better to make mistakes 1,000 miles away from home than 100,000 miles away.
In addition, any permanent or semi-permanent installation on an off-world site will require large amounts of materials. It would be much more cost effective to depot the materials at the ISS and move it in bulk to wherever it may be needed, rather than sending shuttles directly to the off-world sites from Earth.
What you describe is already possible, and has been so for over a decade, using biological weapons. Anthrax especially could be used in this role. While it is possible to accinate against most bioweapons, dissemination of the virus, if done correctly, would be too fast to allow anyone who isn't vaccinated already, which is about 95% of the population, to be vaccinated. Culturing and distributing such a contagin would be much cheaper and easier than developing a genetic weapon. If anyone is interested, Tom Clancy's Executive Orders has a rather scary scenario along these lines. Also, my site has a paper I wrote on this subject a couple years ago.
In the Orwell Helicopter Corporation's plant only a few trouble shooters are visible, and these respond to lights that flare up on a board whenever a vacuum tube burns out or there is a short circuit. By holes punched in a roll of paper, every operation necessary to produce a helicopter is indicated.
It's interesting that, despite all the other technological advances predicted, computers are still supposed to be using vaccum tubes and punch cards. Considering the impact computers have had on the progress of other technologies, I don't think most of what he predicted would have been possible if computers hadn't gone past this point.
Second, licensing in the software industry exists for a number of reasons. Again, it is more complicated than songs or movies, and has a high probability of having bugs in it. If you sold software, all sorts of people would cash in their warranties. With licensing, you don't need to make warranties, and you get away with having bugs.
Licensing is not necessary do disclaim all warranties. Most warranties can be disclaimed on tanigble property. Therefore people could only cash in on warranties if they were offered. That said, I don't know of any good reasons for the licensing model. I hope the FTC invalidates them.
Back on the subject of "licensing" CDs and movies, the recording industry tried that back in the late 1920's, if I recall correctly. It was shot down then. Hopefully it will get shot down now.
Its the only Tyan board I've ever had, and I bought it on a reccomendation from a friend. I only brought it up because it was built at the time the original poster was talking about.
I agree that one shouldn't diss "the whole of Taiwan", but I have a Tyan motherboard (S1590S Trinity 100AT) with enough bugs that I'm not sure that I'll buy another Tyan. To illustrate the bugs:
1) Internal communications devices lock up the BIOS load.
2) The RAM loses contact in the socket every once in a while.
3) The serial and printer ports fail, briefly, every so often.
4) There seems to be something going on with the IDE controller, as my machine frequently has to rescan the secondary IDE channel for devices.
After this experience, I'm not ready to put down hundreds of dollars on another one of their products.
Are proprietary commercial licenses valid in the sense that their wording implies?
The second line of Microsoft's EULA states, "The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed, not sold." This indicates that the license does not fall under the copyright license section of U.S. Copyright Law, as the GPL does. Is that statement from the Microsoft EULA valid? Can such a license legally strip the end user of rights granted by the Federal government?
The FTC is grappling with the question of validity. I've read part of the transcript from their conference last October, when they asked several representatives from the software industry to justify their licenses. I have not heard anything since. How could an FTC decision, either way, affect both proprietary and open source licenses?
War is a fixture in human relations. Whether or not one gets "excited" about it is a matter of personal opinion. But the trend in weapons development, as of late, has not been "to develop new ways to kill more people faster". Rather, the focus has been on two things: how to minimize the exposure and number of friendly troops; and how to hit the enemy such that little or no collateral damage results. Both serve to reduce the number of casualties taken, mostly amongst innocents but also amongst combat forces. Developments such as supercavitation weapons serve to further the above two goals.
A cornerstone of Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu's strategy was the minimization of the destructiveness of war, for both sides. For him, the pinnacle of achievement for a general was to win a war without combat, and failing that to use a minimum of it. Thanks to developments such as this, the trend in war in the past couple of decades has been towards Sun Tzu's ideal.
I've written extensively on subjects like this, and continue to do so. All of my writings are posted on my website.
Slashdot Mirror
"Kind of funny, but why is it that the Americans have a tendancy to totally and completely dislike and discourage anything that does not allow Americans to do what they want? Especially when it comes to military involvement."
All Great Powers show this trait to some degree or another.
"The UN stands and pushes for world peace and security. Its there to stop people destroying each other."
What gives the UN the right "to stop people destroying each other" if said people don't eant them there?
"In New Zealand we pay special attention training our armed forces for peacekeeping missions (with or without the UN) but it seems to me the US military is solely there to fight anyone they perceive is a threat, regardless of realistic facts."
Again, many Great Powers have behaved in similar ways.
"I am getting so sick of seeing all these Americans with a gun-ho attitude that think that going in and shooting up a country is alright. The Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea are examples of such a situation (even worse because they dragged other countries in). Regional disputes that had nothing to do with the US, yet the US still decided to go in there and try to play the 'staunch man'."
I agree with you about Vietnam, but the UN asked the US to get involved in Korea, and the GCC asked the US to get involved in the Kuwait War.
"Maybe the UN needs more power so that countries can't get involved in disputes that do not involve them. Let the UN go in there as peace keepers to stop the fighting, keep the US out because they just antagonize people."
As the original poster said, the UN needs to go. What gives them the right to "get involved in disputes that do not involve them"? They shouldn't be anywhere they weren't asked to go. If you want to hold the US to this, then the UN must be held to it as well.
"With the policies of Pres G W Bush (ie, the missile defence, poor environmental policies) I'd feel much better if the UN had more power, just in case Pres Bush decides to go off the handle, gets all religious and righteous on us and decides that Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Budhists etc should be eliminated."
UN or not, if that happened the US would instantly become the parriah of the world, and it would quickly find itself in economic ruin.
"Look what his father did during his term, we almost had WW3 on our hands."
Eh - would you please explain that one to me?
Going back to the original topic, the UN is fast setting itself up as the world government. It has been trying to do this in two ways: by sanctioning violence, as this poster believes it should; and via international treaties and organizations like the Hague Convention, the IMF, the World Bank, the WIPO, et al. It is slowly usurping the sovereignty of nations.
The reason their older radars worked better is because they put out more radar energy than their newer sets. Stealth aircraft can be detected by focusing enough radar energy at them. SU and Russian AWACS radar, if directed at a narrow swath of sky, would be excellent for this. The problem is knowing what swath of sky to look in. However, if the enemy knows what direction the attack will come from, the planes can be picked up.
The space station may not be very exciting, but it is valuable for learning zero-g construction and studying the long-term effects of living in space. Knowledge of both will be required to make any expedition to the moon, or any planet, feasible. Its better to make mistakes 1,000 miles away from home than 100,000 miles away.
In addition, any permanent or semi-permanent installation on an off-world site will require large amounts of materials. It would be much more cost effective to depot the materials at the ISS and move it in bulk to wherever it may be needed, rather than sending shuttles directly to the off-world sites from Earth.
What you describe is already possible, and has been so for over a decade, using biological weapons. Anthrax especially could be used in this role. While it is possible to accinate against most bioweapons, dissemination of the virus, if done correctly, would be too fast to allow anyone who isn't vaccinated already, which is about 95% of the population, to be vaccinated. Culturing and distributing such a contagin would be much cheaper and easier than developing a genetic weapon. If anyone is interested, Tom Clancy's Executive Orders has a rather scary scenario along these lines. Also, my site has a paper I wrote on this subject a couple years ago.
In the Orwell Helicopter Corporation's plant only a few trouble shooters are visible, and these respond to lights that flare up on a board whenever a vacuum tube burns out or there is a short circuit. By holes punched in a roll of paper, every operation necessary to produce a helicopter is indicated.
It's interesting that, despite all the other technological advances predicted, computers are still supposed to be using vaccum tubes and punch cards. Considering the impact computers have had on the progress of other technologies, I don't think most of what he predicted would have been possible if computers hadn't gone past this point.
Second, licensing in the software industry exists for a number of reasons. Again, it is more complicated than songs or movies, and has a high probability of having bugs in it. If you sold software, all sorts of people would cash in their warranties. With licensing, you don't need to make warranties, and you get away with having bugs.
Licensing is not necessary do disclaim all warranties. Most warranties can be disclaimed on tanigble property. Therefore people could only cash in on warranties if they were offered. That said, I don't know of any good reasons for the licensing model. I hope the FTC invalidates them.
Back on the subject of "licensing" CDs and movies, the recording industry tried that back in the late 1920's, if I recall correctly. It was shot down then. Hopefully it will get shot down now.
Its the only Tyan board I've ever had, and I bought it on a reccomendation from a friend. I only brought it up because it was built at the time the original poster was talking about.
I agree that one shouldn't diss "the whole of Taiwan", but I have a Tyan motherboard (S1590S Trinity 100AT) with enough bugs that I'm not sure that I'll buy another Tyan. To illustrate the bugs:
1) Internal communications devices lock up the BIOS load.
2) The RAM loses contact in the socket every once in a while.
3) The serial and printer ports fail, briefly, every so often.
4) There seems to be something going on with the IDE controller, as my machine frequently has to rescan the secondary IDE channel for devices.
After this experience, I'm not ready to put down hundreds of dollars on another one of their products.
Are proprietary commercial licenses valid in the sense that their wording implies?
The second line of Microsoft's EULA states, "The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed, not sold." This indicates that the license does not fall under the copyright license section of U.S. Copyright Law, as the GPL does. Is that statement from the Microsoft EULA valid? Can such a license legally strip the end user of rights granted by the Federal government?
The FTC is grappling with the question of validity. I've read part of the transcript from their conference last October, when they asked several representatives from the software industry to justify their licenses. I have not heard anything since. How could an FTC decision, either way, affect both proprietary and open source licenses?
War is a fixture in human relations. Whether or not one gets "excited" about it is a matter of personal opinion. But the trend in weapons development, as of late, has not been "to develop new ways to kill more people faster". Rather, the focus has been on two things: how to minimize the exposure and number of friendly troops; and how to hit the enemy such that little or no collateral damage results. Both serve to reduce the number of casualties taken, mostly amongst innocents but also amongst combat forces. Developments such as supercavitation weapons serve to further the above two goals. A cornerstone of Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu's strategy was the minimization of the destructiveness of war, for both sides. For him, the pinnacle of achievement for a general was to win a war without combat, and failing that to use a minimum of it. Thanks to developments such as this, the trend in war in the past couple of decades has been towards Sun Tzu's ideal. I've written extensively on subjects like this, and continue to do so. All of my writings are posted on my website.