A Turion isn't equivalent to an Athlon X2 (even if the Turion was dual-core, which it isn't); they've also got different FSB speeds, AFAIK.
FWIW, unlike Intel which is still bottlenecking memory access over the FSB through the northbridge, for AMD64 series CPUs the FSB speed is largely irrelevant to performance. FSB only really matters when you're using it to talk to RAM, and all the AMD64's have HyperTransport on-die memory controllers running at 800mhz. At present the Turion is only single-core and has only a single channel on-die memory controller, compared to dual core, dual channel for the X2. As I understand it though, the Turion will be dual core and dual channel as well Q2 2006.
If you haven't noticed, this country has a lot of Fundamentalist idiots.
There aren't as many as you seem to think. The great, vast majority in this country tend to be passive, luke-warm religious at most. It's only the extremes at both ends that get the headlines because they're the ones making the noise.
If this a la carte pricing happens, the channels that they watch (ESPN, Faux News, etc) will be cheap (due to high demand), and the channels the rest of us watch (Discovery channel, etc.) will be expensive (because the idiots are scared of science).
I see. So you like bundling because it forces the nutcase Fundies to subsidize science channels they don't like? I think you're irrationally allowing the statistically insignificant extreme case dictate your preference. Personally, I'd rather pay $5 each for History and Discovery* alone than the current $15 for the package that contains History and Discovery along with thirty others I never watch. If the bible thumpers want to exclude channels because they imply we came from monkeys, or because they make the news sound too liberal, well they should go right ahead.
* I'd prefer if they didn't have that "Watch two jackasses build the same unrideable harley chopper every damn week" show, but I reckon this gets some of the ESPN crowd watching, which would subsidize it...
The flaw in that logic is that all that matters is what the FCC find indecent, and the FCC's beliefs do not reflect the beliefs of a large minority of the citizens of this country.
I don't think you understand what's going on. The FCC isn't finding anything indecent with this. They're saying that a la carte channel selection will allow people to simply choose not to receive channels they find "indecent", thus reducing demands for the FCC to step in and judge programming decency.
Real programmers write self documenting code, so even if your boss makes you put in comments, all you really have to do is repeat what the code says:
int x, y, z;
snizlr mfSnizzlr;//create variables
x = 10;//set x equal to 10
mfSnizzlr(y,z);//call snizlr to get y and z
for(int z1=0;z1 < z;z1++)//start at 0 and loop until z1 reaches z {
y = (z>x) ? z : x;//set y to appropriate value
mfSnizzlr(y);//y back to snizlr
}
return(y);//return y
What the hell does that mean? I have seen many "decent" UPS units, ranging in size from an oversized power strip up to roughly 20U sized. Now I'm not sure I trust the rest of the review, as any halfway knowledgeable IT person understands that the size of an UPS is entirely dependent on needs dictated by (load * time). There are so many comparisons available, and he managed to pick the one that is utterly meaningless.
The THAAD Radar is built by Raytheon, but the whole THAAD program is done by LM. BTW, I am a Raytheon software engineer on the Radar... Look for some press releases on the Radar itself, it is one fine piece of work, if I do say so.
You mean built by the Raytheon radar division in El Segundo, CA? The one that used to be Hughes Radar Systems Group? I will concede that Raytheon has a better track record with radar.
And I would have to through your trash comments out the window.
Trash comments? I'm relating the experiences of a former employee! Since you obviously don't work for what used to be the Hughes Missile Systems Group, I don't see how you can judge it to be trash. I heard stories about Raytheon consistently for twenty years. How long have you worked for Raytheon? How much exposure to the company beyond your small part have you had?
My assumption was, when you dial 911 from a cell phone, whichever cell you're in at the time determines which 911 center the call will be routed to - so if I'm at home and dial 911, the call will be routed to my local 911 response center
Dunno what it's "supposed" to do, but I know that both last week and about six months ago when I dialed 911 to report DUIs, the calls were routed to a regional highway patrol emergency center which then connected me to the closest highway patrol station*. Made sense the first time, as I was driving on the freeway, but the second time I was driving a block from my house. Really, I don't see why Vonnage should have to provide specific location when apparently Cingular can't be bothered to do so.
* the first time a bored operator took the description of the car and, when I offered the license plate number and freeway exit we were near, said "nah, description's enough". The second one took make and license, but hand no answer when I asked how the highway patrol was going to see him when he's on surface streets, and claimed to have no idea how to route me to the LAPD. Good thing I wasn't being murdered or something.
Fortunately THAAD is built by Lockheed, whereas the Patriot is built by Raytheon. Raytheon is the classic example of a large, sloppy, wasteful defense contractor that continues to get defense contracts by purchasing its competitors, leaving it the sole source for many types of systems. My father worked for Hughes Aircraft, a Rytheon competitor, for thirty plus years and he repeatedly had to deal with astounding engineering incompetence in Raytheon-supplied subsystems (the DOD forced Hughes to "second source" many parts from Raytheon; smells like graft to me). Imagine his dismay when Raytheon bought Hughes from GM. He retired a year later after watching idiot managers from Raytheon come in and turn the well-run, competent, efficient Hughes Missile Systems Group into a clown factory. Lay-offs for the old timers making too much money, pay cuts for the mid level guys, and lower hiring salaries for new engineers have essentially turned it into a typical Raytheon division.
Don't forget the power to throw a giant cellophane S from the second movie. Or the ability to shoot white lasers out of your finger. Or to teleport.
I don't know. 2 had it's moments as well.
Yeah, those were pretty damn appalling, not to mention the ill-explained teleportation/holographic-projection/invisibility/ whatever-the-fuck power all the Kryptonians suddenly manifested there at the end. I think the best we can say about either movie is that neither is significantly better than the other. Just looking at the stories alone, though, I'd have to give 2 the nod over 1. I swear, whoever wrote that "turn back time" bit at the end of 1 must have been coked out of his mind or something. Then again, pretty much all the movies from the 70's were equally bad, so the studio morons in charge of script selection probably didn't know any better.
You can't automatically apply this to a alien life form that is very likely to be biologically, environmentally, technologically, and evolutionarily 100% distinct from us.
Can you substantiate this assertion? There is more evidence to support the theory that they are lifeforms like us (i.e. we are an example of such a lifeform) than the theory that they are "100% distinct from us" (i.e. no example even approaching that).
That is huge leap of logic.
Not nearly as huge as yours!
You might as well assume that crabs like to eat the same food you do.
Crabs will eat absolutely anything, so such an assumption would actually be correct.
"They're trying to defeat movie and TV spies, which don't exist in real life."
This is a reassuring statement, and probably even true. Although the flip version must be taken into account: just because you don't see them, that doesn't mean they don't exist...
Heh. Reminds me of a poem I heard once: "As I was climbing up the stair/I met a man who wasn't there/He wasn't there again today/He must be from the CIA". Seriously, I was a signal intelligence analyst for the army back in the Olden Days and as a result of my particular (classified) assignment I spent a lot of time around and conversed at length with many NSA/DIA/CIA agents. Trust me, there are no spies skulking around in black turtlenecks with lock pick sets. Inside information is nearly always procured via someone who's already inside. Risking exposure doing something as pedestrian as breaking into an office is stupid when the office secretary with full access is underpaid and hates his/her boss.
Maaaybe. Ideally, spies wish to leave no traces, so given the choice, they'd rather pick the lock than smash a window... and a properly picked lock is far less obvious than a burglary, which latter would draw an investigation sooner, which would in turn uncover evidence of espionage.
A properly compromised inside person is far less obvious than a picked lock. They come with their own key to the lock, plus they are also permitted inside. Espionage via burglary is really the domain of amateurs like G.Gordon Liddy's "plumbers" at the Watergate hotel.
Note too, that there are burglars who follow this train of logic.
If there are, they're idiots. Most burglaries fall into one of two categories: "random", or "inside job". Random ones tend to be the rock through the window type. Inside jobs, which are the most common, often look like someone picked the lock and pulled a James Bond on the alarm; but invariably it turns out it was done by someone who got ahold of a key and the alarm code, usually directly from the homeowner himself*!
A concrete example of what I mean by "unrestricted access" would be the results of a search on "Iraq war pictures." Kids should get generic shots of tanks and soldiers, but not be confronted with children their own age who have been severely burned or had limbs blown off.
Why not? There are many complex issues that children aren't really capable of understanding, but the horrors of war isn't one of them. Intentionally sanitizing the nature of war doesn't really serve any purpose.
Adults need to see that so they know the true cost of war.
And children shouldn't? Children should be wrapped in fluffy, comfortable lies until they reach some arbitrary age when all the horrors of reality should be loosed upon them? I'm sorry, but I don't see the logic behind this. Proteccting children from harm is reasonable. Protection children from life is absurd.
A perfect example of what Schneier calls movie-plot security....But money spent on this is money better spent elsewhere, practically no matter where else you spend it
People are weird like that. As a locksmith, I tell people almost exactly the above when they ask for a SECOND deadbolt, or for an "unpickable" lock on their cheap, hollow core masonite door. They're trying to defeat movie and TV spies, which don't exist in real life. Real life burglars throw a rock through a rear window. And in fact, real life spies aren't even going to pick the lock, but rather throw a rock through the rear window so it looks like a burglary. But no, people have delusions that there are packs of secret agent type thieves with sophisticated alarm disabling blinkenlights tools and lockpick sets. People watch too much TV.
Your arguement assumes that aliens would even think like us and be emotionally driven by the same motivations, if they even had anything resembling our emotions. Our desire to be malicious is driven by a need to feel powerful, there is no reason to assume they'd have any such need.
The need to feel powerful or in control derives directly from the survival instinct. Unless the aliens are some sort of multi-dimensional immortals, I think it highly likely they would have a survival instinct as well.
Zod is great, and I can't shake childhood memories of how awesome the second one was, but I actually watched it recently and was surprised how bad it was. Technically, the first is far superior.
Dear god you can't be serious! The FIRST one? The one that ended with Superman turning back time, possibly the most face-slappingly egregious use of deus ex machina since ancient greece? Or how about that jaw-droppingly bad "thought poem" by Lois Lane we're subjected to when Superman takes her flying? The first movie was embarassingly bad.
The average person knows something about almost everything. A skilled person knows a lot about a few things. A specialist knows everything about nothing.
That, sadly, really is the case.
I know it's supposed to be funny, but I can't say that I agree at all. I'd say the average person only knows a little bit about a handful of things, and much of that is incorrect or incomplete. "Skilled" people tend to have a lot of very narrow knowledge, often much of it simple rote memorization. Specialists tend to be the ones who know the why as well as the how, or they at least understand the importance of learning the "why".
I don't think I get your point. Are you saying that the inventor of FTP should be allowed to host movies and other IP on his site for other people to freely download? Why, because he invented a protocol? I guess you're modded at +5 insightful, so who am I to say that it's faulty logic and a bad analogy?
His point was that (at this point) Bram Cohen has as much control over the use of bittorrent as the creator of FTP has of the use of FTP.
[DDT] was once considered harmless. People showered in the stuff!
Geez, did you even read the wikipedia article you linked?
DDT is not particularly toxic to humans, compared to other widely used pesticides. In particular, no link to cancer has yet been established. Numerous studies have been conducted, including one in which humans voluntarily ingested 35 mg of DDT daily for almost two years. DDT is often applied directly to clothes and used in soap, with no demonstrated ill effects.
The DDT ban wasn't the result of scientific reason, it was environmental hysteria, mostly as a result of Rachel Carson's willful misinterpretation (and in some cases, complete fabrication) of DDT study results in her alarmist book "Silent Spring". A million people a year die of malaria-- deaths that could easily be prevented by application of small amounts of DDT.
1: Commit crime
2: Drive to least favorite relative's house
3: Loan car to (for me anyway) sister-in-law, who borrows everything & returns nothing, for vacation trip
4: Laugh for a very long time while she tries to prove she's innocent.
5: cops come to see you once sister-in-law starts pointing fingers
6: witness to the crime ID's you, accomplices rat you out for lighter sentences, hilarity ensues
License plates don't tell who's driving, but anything that leads them to your door is probably gonna get you caught. Better to steal TWO cars, and switch in between somewhere.
But do we know how to identify the child whose brilliance might change the world?
Non-sequitur. Most world-changing is done by loud, charismatic jackasses of only average-plus intelligence. Those few world-changers who make great scientific discoveries aren't generally super-ultra genius material, but rather tend to be the hard-working, driven variety of the more common "lesser" genius. "Super-genius" people tend to not be able to apply themselves at education to build a knowledge base from which to make such discoveries.
It seems certain that banned chemical weapons were not used in Fallujah, and the Italian documentary also fails to prove its claim that incendiary bombs were deliberately used to target civilians.
And second, the wiki article reveals no such "admission", it merely repeats the military's unchanging assertion that 1) white phosphorus as used by the US military is an incendiery, not a chemical weapon; and 2) there was no improper use of white phosphoris munitions. It then bizarrely concludes that they've somehow "admitted" using chemical weapons. Then again, their poor grasp of the details of the subject is exposed by their belief that White Phosphorus munitions are called "Sneaky Pete". Ten seconds with Google informs one that the military slang is "Willie Pete". You see, it's the initials. There's nothing "sneaky" about white phosphorus. The wiki author is a moron.
James T. Fallows, "The U.S. military does everything in Iraq worse and slower than it could if it solved its language problems. It is unbelievable that American fighting ranks have so little help. Soon after Pearl Harbor the U.S. military launched major Japanese-language training institutes at universities and was screening draftees to find the most promising students. America has made no comparable effort to teach Arabic. Nearly three years after the invasion of Iraq the typical company of 150 or so U.S. soldiers gets by with one or two Arabic-speakers. T. X. Hammes says that U.S. forces and trainers in Iraq should have about 22,000 interpreters, but they have nowhere near that many. "
James T Fallows is comparing apples and oranges.
1) this is not 1942. We don't have a huge pool of eager, patriotic draftees fresh off a decade of depression looking for purpose in their lives.
2) this is not 1942. The military has little leverage on college campuses in general, and is unlikely to find the professors teaching southwest asian languages willing to cooperate with them.
3) this is not 1942. We aren't concentrating on breaking coded military communications by a traditional army in a war with clealy defined front lines. We're trying to root out a loose confederation of miltant religious extremists living and operating within the countries we've already conquered. We need to be able to talk to the locals, not just listen in to the enemy's phone calls. Subsequently, we don't have just one language to deal with. The military needs not only Arabic, but Pashto, Dari, Azgari, Uzbek, Turkmen, Berberi, Aimaq, Baluchi, Basha Indonesian, Urdu, Turkic, and Persian Farsi linguists.
His attempt to compare A) the monumental task of finding qualified instructors for obscure languages, developing curriculum for the courses, and teaching these extremely difficult languages that (in some cases) don't even have an alphabet; and B) getting a bunch of people to learn, or finding people who already speak, a common and (relatively) widely known language like Japanese; well, the attmept is basically idiotic.
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FWIW, unlike Intel which is still bottlenecking memory access over the FSB through the northbridge, for AMD64 series CPUs the FSB speed is largely irrelevant to performance. FSB only really matters when you're using it to talk to RAM, and all the AMD64's have HyperTransport on-die memory controllers running at 800mhz. At present the Turion is only single-core and has only a single channel on-die memory controller, compared to dual core, dual channel for the X2. As I understand it though, the Turion will be dual core and dual channel as well Q2 2006.
There aren't as many as you seem to think. The great, vast majority in this country tend to be passive, luke-warm religious at most. It's only the extremes at both ends that get the headlines because they're the ones making the noise.
If this a la carte pricing happens, the channels that they watch (ESPN, Faux News, etc) will be cheap (due to high demand), and the channels the rest of us watch (Discovery channel, etc.) will be expensive (because the idiots are scared of science).
I see. So you like bundling because it forces the nutcase Fundies to subsidize science channels they don't like? I think you're irrationally allowing the statistically insignificant extreme case dictate your preference. Personally, I'd rather pay $5 each for History and Discovery* alone than the current $15 for the package that contains History and Discovery along with thirty others I never watch. If the bible thumpers want to exclude channels because they imply we came from monkeys, or because they make the news sound too liberal, well they should go right ahead.
* I'd prefer if they didn't have that "Watch two jackasses build the same unrideable harley chopper every damn week" show, but I reckon this gets some of the ESPN crowd watching, which would subsidize it...
heh. Indeed, size and placement are inconsequentialities. The most important characteristic is clearly given: it's yellow
I don't think you understand what's going on. The FCC isn't finding anything indecent with this. They're saying that a la carte channel selection will allow people to simply choose not to receive channels they find "indecent", thus reducing demands for the FCC to step in and judge programming decency.
snizlr mfSnizzlr;
x = 10;
mfSnizzlr(y,z);
for(int z1=0;z1 < z;z1++)
{
y = (z>x) ? z : x;
mfSnizzlr(y);
}
return(y);
see? easy!
What the hell does that mean? I have seen many "decent" UPS units, ranging in size from an oversized power strip up to roughly 20U sized. Now I'm not sure I trust the rest of the review, as any halfway knowledgeable IT person understands that the size of an UPS is entirely dependent on needs dictated by (load * time). There are so many comparisons available, and he managed to pick the one that is utterly meaningless.
You mean built by the Raytheon radar division in El Segundo, CA? The one that used to be Hughes Radar Systems Group? I will concede that Raytheon has a better track record with radar.
And I would have to through your trash comments out the window.
Trash comments? I'm relating the experiences of a former employee! Since you obviously don't work for what used to be the Hughes Missile Systems Group, I don't see how you can judge it to be trash. I heard stories about Raytheon consistently for twenty years. How long have you worked for Raytheon? How much exposure to the company beyond your small part have you had?
BTW it's "throw", not "through".
Correction: Verizon, not Cingular.
Dunno what it's "supposed" to do, but I know that both last week and about six months ago when I dialed 911 to report DUIs, the calls were routed to a regional highway patrol emergency center which then connected me to the closest highway patrol station*. Made sense the first time, as I was driving on the freeway, but the second time I was driving a block from my house. Really, I don't see why Vonnage should have to provide specific location when apparently Cingular can't be bothered to do so.
* the first time a bored operator took the description of the car and, when I offered the license plate number and freeway exit we were near, said "nah, description's enough". The second one took make and license, but hand no answer when I asked how the highway patrol was going to see him when he's on surface streets, and claimed to have no idea how to route me to the LAPD. Good thing I wasn't being murdered or something.
Fortunately THAAD is built by Lockheed, whereas the Patriot is built by Raytheon. Raytheon is the classic example of a large, sloppy, wasteful defense contractor that continues to get defense contracts by purchasing its competitors, leaving it the sole source for many types of systems. My father worked for Hughes Aircraft, a Rytheon competitor, for thirty plus years and he repeatedly had to deal with astounding engineering incompetence in Raytheon-supplied subsystems (the DOD forced Hughes to "second source" many parts from Raytheon; smells like graft to me). Imagine his dismay when Raytheon bought Hughes from GM. He retired a year later after watching idiot managers from Raytheon come in and turn the well-run, competent, efficient Hughes Missile Systems Group into a clown factory. Lay-offs for the old timers making too much money, pay cuts for the mid level guys, and lower hiring salaries for new engineers have essentially turned it into a typical Raytheon division.
Yeah, those were pretty damn appalling, not to mention the ill-explained teleportation/holographic-projection/invisibility/ whatever-the-fuck power all the Kryptonians suddenly manifested there at the end. I think the best we can say about either movie is that neither is significantly better than the other. Just looking at the stories alone, though, I'd have to give 2 the nod over 1. I swear, whoever wrote that "turn back time" bit at the end of 1 must have been coked out of his mind or something. Then again, pretty much all the movies from the 70's were equally bad, so the studio morons in charge of script selection probably didn't know any better.
Can you substantiate this assertion? There is more evidence to support the theory that they are lifeforms like us (i.e. we are an example of such a lifeform) than the theory that they are "100% distinct from us" (i.e. no example even approaching that).
That is huge leap of logic.
Not nearly as huge as yours!
You might as well assume that crabs like to eat the same food you do.
Crabs will eat absolutely anything, so such an assumption would actually be correct.
This is a reassuring statement, and probably even true. Although the flip version must be taken into account: just because you don't see them, that doesn't mean they don't exist...
Heh. Reminds me of a poem I heard once: "As I was climbing up the stair/I met a man who wasn't there/He wasn't there again today/He must be from the CIA". Seriously, I was a signal intelligence analyst for the army back in the Olden Days and as a result of my particular (classified) assignment I spent a lot of time around and conversed at length with many NSA/DIA/CIA agents. Trust me, there are no spies skulking around in black turtlenecks with lock pick sets. Inside information is nearly always procured via someone who's already inside. Risking exposure doing something as pedestrian as breaking into an office is stupid when the office secretary with full access is underpaid and hates his/her boss.
Maaaybe. Ideally, spies wish to leave no traces, so given the choice, they'd rather pick the lock than smash a window... and a properly picked lock is far less obvious than a burglary, which latter would draw an investigation sooner, which would in turn uncover evidence of espionage.
A properly compromised inside person is far less obvious than a picked lock. They come with their own key to the lock, plus they are also permitted inside. Espionage via burglary is really the domain of amateurs like G.Gordon Liddy's "plumbers" at the Watergate hotel.
Note too, that there are burglars who follow this train of logic.
If there are, they're idiots. Most burglaries fall into one of two categories: "random", or "inside job". Random ones tend to be the rock through the window type. Inside jobs, which are the most common, often look like someone picked the lock and pulled a James Bond on the alarm; but invariably it turns out it was done by someone who got ahold of a key and the alarm code, usually directly from the homeowner himself*!
* contractors, housekeepers, babysitters, etc.
"crotch-grabbingly" is better. "Face-slappingly" lies between that and "ballsack-kneeingly".
Why not? There are many complex issues that children aren't really capable of understanding, but the horrors of war isn't one of them. Intentionally sanitizing the nature of war doesn't really serve any purpose.
Adults need to see that so they know the true cost of war.
And children shouldn't? Children should be wrapped in fluffy, comfortable lies until they reach some arbitrary age when all the horrors of reality should be loosed upon them? I'm sorry, but I don't see the logic behind this. Proteccting children from harm is reasonable. Protection children from life is absurd.
People are weird like that. As a locksmith, I tell people almost exactly the above when they ask for a SECOND deadbolt, or for an "unpickable" lock on their cheap, hollow core masonite door. They're trying to defeat movie and TV spies, which don't exist in real life. Real life burglars throw a rock through a rear window. And in fact, real life spies aren't even going to pick the lock, but rather throw a rock through the rear window so it looks like a burglary. But no, people have delusions that there are packs of secret agent type thieves with sophisticated alarm disabling blinkenlights tools and lockpick sets. People watch too much TV.
The need to feel powerful or in control derives directly from the survival instinct. Unless the aliens are some sort of multi-dimensional immortals, I think it highly likely they would have a survival instinct as well.
Dear god you can't be serious! The FIRST one? The one that ended with Superman turning back time, possibly the most face-slappingly egregious use of deus ex machina since ancient greece? Or how about that jaw-droppingly bad "thought poem" by Lois Lane we're subjected to when Superman takes her flying? The first movie was embarassingly bad.
I know it's supposed to be funny, but I can't say that I agree at all. I'd say the average person only knows a little bit about a handful of things, and much of that is incorrect or incomplete. "Skilled" people tend to have a lot of very narrow knowledge, often much of it simple rote memorization. Specialists tend to be the ones who know the why as well as the how, or they at least understand the importance of learning the "why".
His point was that (at this point) Bram Cohen has as much control over the use of bittorrent as the creator of FTP has of the use of FTP.
Geez, did you even read the wikipedia article you linked?
The DDT ban wasn't the result of scientific reason, it was environmental hysteria, mostly as a result of Rachel Carson's willful misinterpretation (and in some cases, complete fabrication) of DDT study results in her alarmist book "Silent Spring". A million people a year die of malaria-- deaths that could easily be prevented by application of small amounts of DDT.3: Loan car to (for me anyway) sister-in-law, who borrows everything & returns nothing, for vacation trip
4: Laugh for a very long time while she tries to prove she's innocent.
5: cops come to see you once sister-in-law starts pointing fingers
6: witness to the crime ID's you, accomplices rat you out for lighter sentences, hilarity ensues
License plates don't tell who's driving, but anything that leads them to your door is probably gonna get you caught. Better to steal TWO cars, and switch in between somewhere.
Non-sequitur. Most world-changing is done by loud, charismatic jackasses of only average-plus intelligence. Those few world-changers who make great scientific discoveries aren't generally super-ultra genius material, but rather tend to be the hard-working, driven variety of the more common "lesser" genius. "Super-genius" people tend to not be able to apply themselves at education to build a knowledge base from which to make such discoveries.
And second, the wiki article reveals no such "admission", it merely repeats the military's unchanging assertion that 1) white phosphorus as used by the US military is an incendiery, not a chemical weapon; and 2) there was no improper use of white phosphoris munitions. It then bizarrely concludes that they've somehow "admitted" using chemical weapons. Then again, their poor grasp of the details of the subject is exposed by their belief that White Phosphorus munitions are called "Sneaky Pete". Ten seconds with Google informs one that the military slang is "Willie Pete". You see, it's the initials. There's nothing "sneaky" about white phosphorus. The wiki author is a moron.
James T Fallows is comparing apples and oranges. 1) this is not 1942. We don't have a huge pool of eager, patriotic draftees fresh off a decade of depression looking for purpose in their lives.
2) this is not 1942. The military has little leverage on college campuses in general, and is unlikely to find the professors teaching southwest asian languages willing to cooperate with them.
3) this is not 1942. We aren't concentrating on breaking coded military communications by a traditional army in a war with clealy defined front lines. We're trying to root out a loose confederation of miltant religious extremists living and operating within the countries we've already conquered. We need to be able to talk to the locals, not just listen in to the enemy's phone calls. Subsequently, we don't have just one language to deal with. The military needs not only Arabic, but Pashto, Dari, Azgari, Uzbek, Turkmen, Berberi, Aimaq, Baluchi, Basha Indonesian, Urdu, Turkic, and Persian Farsi linguists.
His attempt to compare A) the monumental task of finding qualified instructors for obscure languages, developing curriculum for the courses, and teaching these extremely difficult languages that (in some cases) don't even have an alphabet; and B) getting a bunch of people to learn, or finding people who already speak, a common and (relatively) widely known language like Japanese; well, the attmept is basically idiotic.