It's not as comparable to rape as it is comparable to getting beat up after raping their sister. Substitute "having sex with" for "raping", and you'll have successfully removed the propaganda from that analogy. For example, the "rape" (sending of US troops into) of Osama BL's "sister" (Saudi Arabia) in Desert Storm was not just "consensual", but was at the request of the "sister" herself! Not a very logical viewpoint.
There's also a famous quote from a WWI British officer named Julian Grenfell:
"I adore war. It's like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I've never been so well or happy. No one grumbles at one for being dirty."...
Julian Grenfell's picnic was soon over. He died from wounds on April 30th, 1915. He was 27 years old.
Well, if you consider the period, you can kinda see where he's coming from: freshly post-Victorian young man, likely of some nobility given that he was an officer. He probably grew up in a prim, stuffy household; and went to a prim, stuffy school; followed by a prim, stuffy military academy. The guy probably hadn't had a moment to slouch a little, have a beer, and cut loose his entire life--- nor had he probably ever had any real direction in his life either, just a constant nebulous pressure to maintain decorum. First time out in the world, gettin' dirty, doing real work towards a tangible goal... it was probably liberating. Granted, the death thing probably soured him on it in the end, but it was probably the first time he ever felt like he had a life.
The original story on slashdot is pretty biased to begin with: warrantless searches, habeas corpus, detainment without charge? They're military units at war in a foreign land - they're not the local police department, they're not there to serve & protect the interests of the locals, but the interests of the USA - or more accurately, its commander in chief. You can't blame Slashdot for the editorial slant! They're just parroting the slant found on the wikileaks page:
"The manual... may be critically described as "what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places"."
Think someone has an axe to grind? It's an amusingly snide and disingenuous angle, considering the excerpt they quote halfway down the page:
All members of training assistance teams must understand their responsibilities concerning acts of misconduct by HN personnel. Team members receive briefings before deployment on what to do if they encounter or observe such acts. Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions lists prohibited acts by parties to the convention. Such acts are-
* Violence to life and person, in particular, murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture.
* Taking of hostages.
* Outrages against personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.
* Passing out sentences and carrying out executions without previous judgment by a regularly constituted court that affords all the official guarantees that are recog-nized as indispensable by civilized people.
* The provisions in the above paragraph represent a level of conduct that the United States expects each foreign country to observe.
If team members encounter prohibited acts they can not stop, they will disengage from the activity, leave the area if possible, and report the incidents immediately to the proper in-country U.S. authorities. The country team will identify proper U.S. authorities during the team's initial briefing. Team members will not discuss such matters with non-U.S. Government authorities such as journalists and civilian contractors.
(emphasis theirs)
The part they found objectionable was the part where Special Forces guys are reminded that they are not press agents for the military. I'm trying to figure out how the "training death squads" angle fits within the confines of the UNhighlighted part that precedes it.
I read the previous version of this manual in 1989 when I was in the Army. This is extremely old news. We've been showing locals how to fight their governments for a long time. Hell, we aided and advised Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese in WW2! It's so bizarre seeing softie-lefty types get their panties in a bunch when they find out war is a nasty business.
Those men are living the dream. They're getting to do exactly what they signed up for on the ground, on horseback and working with local forces."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Nov 21, 2001. He's not that far off. One of the biggest gripes I heard in the Army was that it was all training and no action. Then along came Desert Storm.... which for most of us (me included) was 99% gearing up for the real thing and 1% action. Then came Bosnia, which was nearly all standing around and watching the action between two groups of shitcrazy fucktards. Finally, along came Afghanistan, where we actually got to do our freakin' jobs for once. It wasn't fun, and it wasn't pretty, but it sure as hell was gratifying to actually use 15 years worth of training and practice for the real thing. It's kind of a weird thing to say, and I'd never have put it that way if I was Dums...errr..RUMSfeld addressing the press; but in its own sometimes-nightmare way, it really was "living the dream".
They installed and supported the "pro west" Shah of Iran You lose your credibility as a knowledgeable commentator right there. Shah Pahlavi was the the last in a continuous line of lawful ruling monarchs of Iran verifiably going back 2500 years, and Pahlavi took the throne in 1941, six years before there even was a CIA. He was head of the constitutional monarchy. The supposed "installation" by the CIA consisted of funding protest groups seeking the ouster of PM Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953, and encouraging the Shah to exercise his lawful power as head of state to remove Mossadeq from office. Mossadeq "nationalized" the oil industry by basically seizing millions of dollars worth of equipment from AIOC, sparking a devastating British naval blockade. He then demanded control of the military, moved to dissolve the parliament, and "repealed" the guarantee of a secret ballot in elections--- all of this in complete violation of the Iranian constitution. All the CIA did was cajole the Shah into using his position as head of the Constitutional Monarchy to get rid of a would-be self appointed dictator. Granted, Shah Pahlavi was a total asshat and prick, but 1) all the ambitious jerks vying for power were asshat pricks, and 2) he was the lawful ruler of the damn country.
So really, next time you cite history, make sure you didn't learn it from a bunch of ignorant folks parroting what is essentially an international urban legend. There are plenty of nasty CIA doings (bay of pigs, pinochet, etc)without resorting to lefty/liberal/media mythology.
Maybe not for you, but for Apple employees it obviously is what makes them want to get up in the morning. No, I'd say it's the fact that they're enthusiastic to get up in the morning and go to work that results in good interface design and slick packaging.
They've got an awful lot of talented people, so something is tilting the favor that direction, and it's obviously not the money.... Granted. I'm just saying that it's clearly not the "cool" products that make the engineers designing them well managed, efficient, and happy, it's the fact that the engineers are obviously well-managed, efficient, and happy that results in "cool" products.
you get to work at the company that makes some of the coolest electronics and computers out there, wouldn't it be awesome to work there? "Coolness" and "awesomeness" are hardly things that would tilt a talented person's interest in their favor. If you were offered $19K/yr to muck out the toilets at Apple when you could get $24K/yr at IBM, I doubt neither the "awesomeness" of working at Apple, nor the "coolness" of their products would significantly influence your decision.
No, if you're working in an engineering capacity what matters are things like how "interesting" the projects you're assigned are, and the support you receive from the non-engineering staff. I have worked on software projects that were utterly mundane in their purpose and end use (military fuel management systems), but were extremely interesting to work on. Slick packaging and good interface design aren't what make you want to get up in the morning to go to work.
So you are the type of guy responsible for skyrocketing insurance premiums? No, premiums are increasing because of uninsured (usually unlicensed) motorists and sue-happy jackasses looking to "win the lottery" on a fender bender. Accident rates have steadily decreased over the last 50 years, it's just the average cost of the individual accidents that's gone through the roof. Also, there's the small problem of insurance companies being thieving asshats.
heh. I suppose my answer to her should have been "I cannot call ibuprofen.take until the appropriate interrupt routine is invoked!" That would've told her!
No, they don't think that differently really. More, it's like women obfuscate their thinking. Ask any man on here's whose married. They just can't understand what women are thinking. At all. That's because their thinking is obfuscated. Could be. Question is, do they even know what they're thinking? Case in point: last night I had a headache. I'm sitting on the couch.
wife: "You don't look good. you should get ready for bed."
me: "Not yet. I'm waiting for the ibuprofen I just took to start working."
wife: "I had ibuprofen with me this afternoon I could have given you."
me: "how does that help a headache that started half an hour ago?"
wife: "I don't know"
When she says "I don't know", I think she's telling the truth. She frequently offers ex post facto solutions like that and can never say why she thinks they're relevant to the present situation.
I think many of the things we write up to genetic determinism really have social roots. When you actually look deeper into the subject matter, you find that a lot of our social characteristics have genetic roots. Seriously, men and women don't work the same. A few thousand years living in upholstered caves isn't going to erase millions of years of gender-based specialization. The classic example is men being single task focusers, and women being multi-taskers (regardless of whether the corpus callosum morphology has any relation). Men are biologically tailored to hunting, for which single-task focus is key (follow the prey). Women are biologically tailored to gather edible vegetation, care for young, etc (pick some berries, listen for bears, where's the baby, pick some berries, etc). You can't rationally argue that primitive society "forced" women to birth and care for the young, nor that it "forced" men to be larger and more muscular.
snagged up I think you mean "snatched up". The word "snagged" means "caught on a protuberance or obstacle" and implies that progress is halted. If you were to say you were "snagged up" in your search for employment, people would think you meant you were unsuccessful due to some sort of hindrance.
I read no such insinuation in the comment that his CEO is a woman. Christ almighty, his post was only two sentences long, and the second one was "Our Pres/CEO is also a woman".
Itanium *did* have 32-bit x86 compatibility... The failure of Itanium had almost nothing to do with 32-bit backwards compatibility. That's not completely accurate. The IA-32 "compatibility" was through an on-die emulator, the use of which slowed the chip down to roughly the same speed as a (much cheaper) Xeon. The fact that there was no advantage to buying an Itanium without also switching to IA-64 software combined with the fact that few vendors were willing to expend the resources to come up with an IA-64 version of their software, that's what doomed it.
Intel already dominate the gfx market, they just don't offer any high end products (enthusiasts/gamers/highend)... A huge number of low end systems (ie cheaper and greater volume) use Intel onboard video chips, and these systems are heavily used in offices around the world, and by home users who aren't interested in heavy video processing or gaming. You have to consider the fact that grandma sending email with Outbarf Express, and cube farms full of drones using Excel for tasks it was never intended* are exactly not the market for USB 3.0, and that's where those low end commodity workstations go.
* it's like digital graph paper with a database engine!
And the hard drive is welded in? That's where the data is, just take it out and hook it to another machine. You're missing the point. No one expects no CD booting, BIOS passwording, etc. to stand up to the freakin' NSA or a determined corporate spy with a prybar. Real life has far more mundane hazards. Some smart little fucker kid isn't going to be able to disassemble the computer [in the library|at school|*] and take the hard drive out without someone noticing. Some smart little fucker kid will be able to plug in a firewire device.
Seems to me that USB was always an anti-competitive standard right out the gate. I always felt it was needlessly complex as a barrier to entry into the peripheral market. Older ports were straightforward enough that anyone with a little electronics experience could build a device that interfaced with their computer. USB, on the other hand... if you're not an industry professional, good luck. I doubt it was any conspiracy; that's just what happens in the normal course of technological development. Compare, for example, a modern electronic fuel injected automobile like a 2008 Honda Civic with a 1967 Dodge Dart. Shadetree mechanics have been bemoaning the complexity of new cars for years, pining for the "good old days" of carburetors, but no rational person would argue that we should've stayed with polluting 15MPG V8's. Same thing with peripherals. The old dedicated MIDI/joystick port was an inefficient use of both space and computing resources. It's only natural that such things would disappear in favor of a common universal IO port. Just like you need to know something about electronics to work on a modern car, you're going to need to know something about programming to make a modern USB Human Interface Device. Really, it's not that big a deal. You can buy inexpensive hardware development kits from several manufacturers. If you really don't want to deal with the software side, you can just buy a cheap chinese multibutton joystick and tear it apart and solder away at it. Really, it's just like the good ol' days, only the joystick controller hardware is in the joystick rather than on your SoundBlaster card.
Apples pricing... are less expensive than DELL ON the same hardware. I keep hearing this same thing every time the subject comes up. Where did Mac enthusiasts get the idea that Dell represents the benchmark for PC pricing?
No, it was to do with safety. The 70mph limit was introduced in to 60's after whole string of accidents.
Citation? Prior to 1974, there was no singular authority on speed limits, the power to do so being at the state level. Most states did, in fact, have upper limits of 70mph, but there was no particular requirement to do so.
It was briefly dropped to 50mph during the oil crisis. No, it was dropped to 55 in 1974 and stayed there for 20 years. You are perhaps thinking of the non-binding exhortation to "keep it under 50". This was not law, but rather just an encouragement to conserve.
1) Speed limits without any "good" reason are rare. I would agree that some are probably only to raise money, but I think they are the exception. Actually, you'd be surprised how many speed limits are too low. A group of residents wanted radar enforcement of the 35mph limits on the major roads in my city, but state law requires municipalities to have a traffic engineering study to justify any limits before they can be enforced with radar (anti speed trap law). The engineering study found that 90% of them were posted far too low. Most major streets were found safe at 45 or 50 MPH. So did they change the posted limits? No, they left them at 35 and chose not to use radar.
Personally, I think most speed limits are not low enough and they do sacrifice some innocent lives for convenience. See, the problem with speed limits is that they are set by ignoramuses like you who think "slower is safer, always", rather than by experienced traffic engineers who understand the dynamics of traffic flow. An unreasonably low limit that results in a mix of driving speeds across a wide range, from the slow "I drive the posted limit, always" folks to the "I drive what the road can handle" ones, is more dangerous because of the wide differential than a higher limit that gets people moving closer to the same speed.
The canonical example is the federally mandated 55mph speed limit put in force in the early 70's. It was initially instituted as a fuel saving measure, but dogmatic "safety nazis" pointed to a correlated reduction in accidents and it became "common wisdom" that a lower limit is safer. When the federal 55 limit was eased in 88 and repealed in the 90's, there were all kinds of dire predictions of increased mayhem on the highways. In reality, accidents went down! The problem is that elected officials and bureaucrats don't actually understand the 85th percentile rule. The safest limit is one where 85% of drivers naturally obey the limit. The 55 limit saw compliance rates under 20%! Studies (see pg 88) show that nearly all posted limits are 8 to 12 mph below the 85th percentile.
So what about the reduction in accidents in 1974? Well, it's a classic case of "correlation is not necessarily causation". The late 1960's saw a dramatic improvement in the safety of automobiles. Everything from increased use of radial instead of bias ply tires to mandatory seat belts came into play in the late 60's. The biggest improvement, however, was the 1968 mandate of front wheel disc brakes. If you've never driven a car with 4 wheel drum brakes, it's easy to miss the importance of this. So starting in '68 you have all new cars being equipped with disc brakes. The "replacement point" on cars of that vintage was around 5 years, meaning that the majority of driving miles were logged in cars 5 or fewer years old. Older cars were still driven, but were largely relegated to secondary status (e.g. wife's car, kid's car, etc). So around 1973 the tide turns from drum brakes to disc brakes... and accidents went down. It was pure chance that the 55 limit coincided with that. Really, the 55 limit was more dangerous, but the increase in vehicle safety hid that. Sadly, we still have morons like you who blindly belive the mythology. Perhaps that can be changed by people like me handing out education and insults, but I'm not optimistic.
Injuring yourself will have a cost for society. This is an utterly invalid reason for laws curtailing behavior in a free society. Free individuals do not "owe" society anything. Society is a voluntary association. Fucking safety nazi shitheads like you would do well to understand that.
Homosexuality is a lifestyle choice. Really? Like LARPing, or living near Venice Beach so you can party every night? What are you, some sort of right wing nutjob who thinks sexual orientation is a decision to either "be normal" or "go against God and be a fag"? Never met a homosexual who felt it was a choice. If it was really a choice, does it not stand to reason that militant homosexuals would be arguing they have the right to choose homosexuality, rather than arguing they were born that way and biology isn't a choice? Seriously, you need to stop getting your lessons in morality and ethics from a 2000 year old book of bullshit mythology.
As far as i know, only Motorolas' cells allows charging through the USB port. I might be wrong though. "As far as you know"? What do you base that on? Casual sampling of two data points, your current Motorola phone and your previous Samsung? Go look at the display models at your local cell phone purveyor. It's easily at 50%+ and growing.
Forgive me for being sceptical of the sceptics here, but without knowing what process they claim to use to separate the hydrogen from the water, how can we reliably debunk it as not obeying the laws of physics? We know the process (in general). They tell us in TFA. It's chemical. "Similar to the mechanism that produces hydrogen by a reaction of metal hydride and water" is how they put it. They're sacrificing electrode material to make hydrogen. THe "water and air" claim is just marketing bullshit.
It's one thing to claim that their car doesn't work, it's another to claim it doesn't work because what it proposes to do is impossible.
A few decades ago, people claimed it was impossible to go to the moon... No one ever claimed it was impossible to go to the moon. Simple ballistic physics says it is possible. There were questions about whether people could survive the hazards of space long enough to reach the moon, but that's a whole 'nother issue. They didn't have to throw out the basic laws of physics and start over to accommodate some newly discovered "moon transit physics" that the oold system didn't allow. Please, try to understand the subject matter just a little before making analogies.
Slashdot Mirror
"The manual... may be critically described as "what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places"."
Think someone has an axe to grind? It's an amusingly snide and disingenuous angle, considering the excerpt they quote halfway down the page:
All members of training assistance teams must understand their responsibilities concerning acts of misconduct by HN personnel. Team members receive briefings before deployment on what to do if they encounter or observe such acts. Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions lists prohibited acts by parties to the convention. Such acts are-
* Violence to life and person, in particular, murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture.
* Taking of hostages.
* Outrages against personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.
* Passing out sentences and carrying out executions without previous judgment by a regularly constituted court that affords all the official guarantees that are recog-nized as indispensable by civilized people.
* The provisions in the above paragraph represent a level of conduct that the United States expects each foreign country to observe.
If team members encounter prohibited acts they can not stop, they will disengage from the activity, leave the area if possible, and report the incidents immediately to the proper in-country U.S. authorities. The country team will identify proper U.S. authorities during the team's initial briefing. Team members will not discuss such matters with non-U.S. Government authorities such as journalists and civilian contractors.
(emphasis theirs)
The part they found objectionable was the part where Special Forces guys are reminded that they are not press agents for the military. I'm trying to figure out how the "training death squads" angle fits within the confines of the UNhighlighted part that precedes it.
I read the previous version of this manual in 1989 when I was in the Army. This is extremely old news. We've been showing locals how to fight their governments for a long time. Hell, we aided and advised Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese in WW2! It's so bizarre seeing softie-lefty types get their panties in a bunch when they find out war is a nasty business.
So really, next time you cite history, make sure you didn't learn it from a bunch of ignorant folks parroting what is essentially an international urban legend. There are plenty of nasty CIA doings (bay of pigs, pinochet, etc)without resorting to lefty/liberal/media mythology.
No, if you're working in an engineering capacity what matters are things like how "interesting" the projects you're assigned are, and the support you receive from the non-engineering staff. I have worked on software projects that were utterly mundane in their purpose and end use (military fuel management systems), but were extremely interesting to work on. Slick packaging and good interface design aren't what make you want to get up in the morning to go to work.
heh. I suppose my answer to her should have been "I cannot call ibuprofen.take until the appropriate interrupt routine is invoked!" That would've told her!
(cue heroic music)
wife: "You don't look good. you should get ready for bed."
me: "Not yet. I'm waiting for the ibuprofen I just took to start working."
wife: "I had ibuprofen with me this afternoon I could have given you."
me: "how does that help a headache that started half an hour ago?"
wife: "I don't know"
When she says "I don't know", I think she's telling the truth. She frequently offers ex post facto solutions like that and can never say why she thinks they're relevant to the present situation.
* it's like digital graph paper with a database engine!
No, it was to do with safety. The 70mph limit was introduced in to 60's after whole string of accidents.
Citation? Prior to 1974, there was no singular authority on speed limits, the power to do so being at the state level. Most states did, in fact, have upper limits of 70mph, but there was no particular requirement to do so. It was briefly dropped to 50mph during the oil crisis. No, it was dropped to 55 in 1974 and stayed there for 20 years. You are perhaps thinking of the non-binding exhortation to "keep it under 50". This was not law, but rather just an encouragement to conserve.The canonical example is the federally mandated 55mph speed limit put in force in the early 70's. It was initially instituted as a fuel saving measure, but dogmatic "safety nazis" pointed to a correlated reduction in accidents and it became "common wisdom" that a lower limit is safer. When the federal 55 limit was eased in 88 and repealed in the 90's, there were all kinds of dire predictions of increased mayhem on the highways. In reality, accidents went down! The problem is that elected officials and bureaucrats don't actually understand the 85th percentile rule. The safest limit is one where 85% of drivers naturally obey the limit. The 55 limit saw compliance rates under 20%! Studies (see pg 88) show that nearly all posted limits are 8 to 12 mph below the 85th percentile.
So what about the reduction in accidents in 1974? Well, it's a classic case of "correlation is not necessarily causation". The late 1960's saw a dramatic improvement in the safety of automobiles. Everything from increased use of radial instead of bias ply tires to mandatory seat belts came into play in the late 60's. The biggest improvement, however, was the 1968 mandate of front wheel disc brakes. If you've never driven a car with 4 wheel drum brakes, it's easy to miss the importance of this. So starting in '68 you have all new cars being equipped with disc brakes. The "replacement point" on cars of that vintage was around 5 years, meaning that the majority of driving miles were logged in cars 5 or fewer years old. Older cars were still driven, but were largely relegated to secondary status (e.g. wife's car, kid's car, etc). So around 1973 the tide turns from drum brakes to disc brakes... and accidents went down. It was pure chance that the 55 limit coincided with that. Really, the 55 limit was more dangerous, but the increase in vehicle safety hid that. Sadly, we still have morons like you who blindly belive the mythology. Perhaps that can be changed by people like me handing out education and insults, but I'm not optimistic. Injuring yourself will have a cost for society. This is an utterly invalid reason for laws curtailing behavior in a free society. Free individuals do not "owe" society anything. Society is a voluntary association. Fucking safety nazi shitheads like you would do well to understand that.