let us take your assertion at face value: batista was 100% the puppet of the usa I'll concede this premise.
based on that, when castro overthrew him, castro reasserted cuban independence, and has in fact been acting in opposition to the usa the best he could ever since Here's the flawed premise: Explain how "[Castro] has in fact been acting in opposition to the usa the best he could". What did Castro do to justify the Bay of Pigs invasion? Has there been in any time in the last 50 years that the US was NOT trying to assassinate or overthrow Castro?
I'm sure you're going to argue that Castro accepted Soviet support and that's "in opposition to the usa", but he had no choice. It was that or death, the US was trying to kill him and destroy his government and he didn't have the resources to fight alone.
And if the goal is to stop Cuba from acting "in opposition to the usa", why not try to reconcile?
therefore, according to the implications of your own assertion, whatever the hell cuba does today, is cuba's responsibility and cuba responsibility's alone What does the embargo have to do with "what cuba does today"? How does the embargo help the Cuban people?
The embargo has absolutely nothing to do with human rights, that's a red herring. If you wish to argue this point there is no reason to engage in further discussion. The US does not embargo dictatorships with FAR worse human rights records.
This gives democide estimates for both Batista and Castro. Between 1952 and 1959, about 1,000 people are thought to have been outright murdered by the Batista regime. Between 1959 and 1987, between 35,000 and 73,000 people are thought to have been victims of democide by Castro's regime. You're misrepresenting these statistics. The "low" estimate for Batista 52-59 was 1,000, the "high" was 20,000. The "low" of Castro 59-87 was 15,000 and the "high" was 33,000. So assuming the "high" numbers it took Batista 7 years to kill 20,000 and it took Castro 28 years to kill 33,000, so Batista killed at about 2.5x the rate. Of course, it really all depends on whose numbers you want to believe.
Conflict in wartime, where both sides are armed, is different from democide, where the victims have been disarmed. There is plenty of slaughter of unarmed civilians in Congo. Look into it.
Pol Pot was a communist I was thinking of Suharto.
Don't blame the farmers for this. Its the politicians' fault. Oh no. I blame the farmers for refusing to support candidates that don't vote for agricultural subsidies.
The fact is that most family farms SHOULD be going out of business. The "small farmer" model is extremely inefficient and simply can't compete fairly with agribusiness. Why should taxpayers be forced to keep their failed businesses afloat with subsidies?
You say that we need to go back to sugar cane, is that going to give animals the quality food they need? Corn isn't "quality food". It makes pigs fat quicker than most grains, that's all it has going for it. You can feed pigs plenty of other less destructive crops (basically, almost anything) and they'll get just as fat.
But the amount of land in this country that can grow sugar cane isn't even close to the amount of land that can grow corn, wheat, oats, barley, etc... That's why all our sugar used to come from Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Americans live there too and deserve to make money as much as midwesterners.
You are looking at this from a strictly southern agricultural view. I don't think mid-west farmers have any option. They have to grow crops that will grow in their geographical region. My land is in eastern Colorado. As you pointed out, midwesterners can grow wheat, oats, barley, soy, etc. I think they're doing oats right now.
If we can import sugar cheaper than we can grow it, then why not put our fields to use growing something that is profitable to us. There is not one iota of doubt that we can import sugar far cheaper than we can grow subsidized corn.
a) it protects our extinction from a catastrophic cosmic event This is valid.
b) it alleviates population issues This is not. The resource cost of space travel, especially to Mars, is awesome. For the cost of a solo manned mission to Mars you could feed millions of people for centuries. The cost of an significant colony on Mars would be unimaginable. This simply won't work unless space travel becomes several orders of magnitude cheaper. In this context, undersea colonization (SeaLab!) seems far more reasonable because it's a lot cheaper.
the bad usa policy towards cuba does not make cuba. cuba makes the bad usa policy. castro did not turn his country into an authoritarian dictatorship because the usa doesn't want to trade with it, the usa doesn't want to trade with it because cuba is an authoritarian dictatorship I've been reading this thread and you simply refuse to acknowledge history: Castro replaced Batista, a US-backed authoritarian dictator. There is not one iota of doubt that Batista was an authoritarian dictator and the US specifically put him in power. The difference between Castro and Batista is that Castro threw out American business and organized crime because he had the evil idea that the land of Cuba actually belonged to Cubans.
because the usa is hostile towards castro, or iran, and iran or cuba tightens their grip, THAT THEREFORE THE USA IS REPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THOSE GOVERNMENTS DO You've reasoned in earlier posts that merely funding, training, and arming someone does not amount to "responsibility" for them. I believe this view is simply wrong.
For example, based on your reasoning the Vietnam War was pure mindless aggression by the US because the Vietnamese were acting independently to spread popular political ideas in Vietnam.
I, on the other hand, believe that the Soviet Union bears some responsibility for the Vietnam War because they supported North Vietnam and the Vietcong.
I'm personally against forcing anyone into any system which requires forced regular payments. Apparently you have a problem with government in general. I suggest you buy a boat and try to stay in international waters. It "worked" for L. Ron Hubbard.
I don't blindly accept fluoridation of our water supply is a good thing, do you? So how *IS* the John Birch Society doing? And do you have a RaHoWa or a Fourteen Words tattoo? I'm really curious.
Communist dictators generally murder between 10 and 1000 times as many people as non-communist dictators. Castro is no exception to the rule. Any evidence of this? Can you prove that in any given 23 year period (the period of time Batista ruled Cuba) Castro killed more people? Can you prove that during his entire reign Castro killed more people than Batista?
Your rule simply isn't true. Hitler and Pol Pot killed an awful lot of people and they weren't communist. The bloodiest conflict in the world, Congo, has nothing to do with communism.
YES! That's the answer. Put the last few farmers in the US out of business! Why didn't I think of that? What evidence do you have that US agricultural production is almost gone? Any? That's because it isn't true. What's happening is that most of the so-called "family farms" have been bought up or driven out by large agribusiness. The same thing has been happening to all kinds of small businesses. As far as I'm concerned "family" farmers can go whine to corner store owners about how screwed they are.
Cheap Caribbean sugar did not kill C&H, the big US sugar producer. C&H used to receive massive government subsidies to produce sugar in Hawaii, Caribbean producers couldn't compete with the subsidized prices, which is why C&H dominated the US market. Other agribusiness lobbyists in the US convinced Congress to kill the C&H sugar subsidies and instead give massive subsides for corn to ADM, this also helped small corn farmers a little bit so it was marketed as something for "family farms" (never mind the small sugarcane producers) but instead allowed ADM to flood the US market with tons of low-quality HFCS that is making Americans sick and fat.
Besides, you CAN'T kill the corn farmers. We rely so heavily on corn. Exactly my point. Corn subsides have MADE us rely on corn. Corn is low-quality shit. It's barely suitable as pig food, which is the main way most of the world uses it. Ethanol is an incredible scam and is arguably the worst possible alternative to gasoline out there (biodiesel comes close). We need to get rid of corn and switch back to the far healthier, better tasting, and higher-quality cane sugar.
BTW, I AM a farmer. I own productive farmland that I lease. Corn, cotton, and tobacco farmers give the rest of us a bad name.
Though not homosexuality per se, there is extremely strong evidence that transgender/transsexuality (at least in men) is genetically determined. In short, they've discovered unique brain structures in male and female brains and transgendered "males" have the female brain structures.
Religious types typically teach (actually, they typically ignore it altogether because it breaks their limited model of the world) that transgendered people are "sexual deviants" who have CHOSEN to be "perverted". Obviously proof that transgender is genetic and NOT a choice undermines these claims.
Though, as others have said, any sort of sex education whatsoever, even for high school students and adults, is considered unacceptable by these religious types.
The FEEDBACK system is the problem, not the buyer/seller situation. The buyer/seller situation is messed up in part BECAUSE the Feedback system is useless.
Back in the begininng feedback was given to show sellers how quickly buyers paid for items. Nonsense. Why does this matter AL ALL? No seller ships until he's been paid unless he's mentally retarded, so "time to pay" really only affects large seller's turnover which we don't give a fuck about because big sellers are the main PROBLEM.
The PURPOSE of the feedback system always has been to to allow buyers to report rogue sellers to get them kicked off eBay. It's assumed that rogue buyers aren't a serious issue (with one exception) because THEY AREN'T. 90% of the complaints eBay gets are about getting defective or counterfeit items from sellers.
If a buyer refuses to pay the seller's listing fees are returned, so the only POSSIBLE WAY a seller can get screwed is if the buyer pays with a bad check and sellers have PayPal to prevent that. PayPal also protects them from charge backs. So all this whining from the sellers is BULLSHIT. There maximum possible losses are actually very small.
Of course, the feedback system is useless to report rogue sellers because sellers use shill bidders to drive up prices and give them fake positive feedback. This is why most Power Sellers have a positive feedback rating of 99%.
Many buyers simply don't read the agreement, they don't bother to figure out what things are going to cost before bidding. If, LITERALLY, someone mentally retarded reading your listing can't clearly understand these things you're doing something wrong. Most Power Seller listings I've seen use complicated templates which hide the item description and have gone out of their way to conceal the shipping costs. You shipping cost should be in bold text at least twice as large as everything else in you listing. I've listed hundreds of items on eBay and I've never had this problem because my listings aren't obfuscated crap.
Secondly, your "agreement" can't say whatever you want. In practice, in most of the USA you LEGALLY have 30 days to return anything you buy, there is no such thing as "as is" sales, and you can't charge "restocking fees". Trying to do this stuff is scammy. Just follow the damn law.
If Wal-Mart had a scratched DVD on their shelf, and you buy it, that counts as a "negative shopping experience". Wal-Mart shouldn't have broken shit on their shelves. I'd argue that this is even MORE true of an eBay seller selling used merchandise. He either knowingly sent broken shit to the customer or he was incompetent and didn't bother to check before he sent it. Either way he fucked up.
It's called "the price of doing business". ALL other retailers have to deal with these issues, the power sellers are basically whining about being forced to act like regular merchants instead of scam artists.
Many Power Sellers buy shit at Wal-Mart, mark it up slightly often using confusing shipping terms, and then sell the crap on eBay. Or they're selling counterfeit goods. I'd be very pleased if eBay got rid of these people.
I live not far from eBay and I know their security staff. I can tell you 90% of the incident reports they get are from Power Sellers selling fraudulent or defective goods. For example, eBay says that 90% of the iPods sold on eBay are fake and they encourage buyers not to buy them. Why not just refuse to let people LIST iPods? Because they want to make money off the scammers.
eBay traffic is way down because buyers aren't tolerating this crap anymore.
This is basically a no-win for eBay. Getting rid of the scammers means killing revenue but buyers are leaving the site BECAUSE of the scammers.
1) There WAS an embargo against China until the 1970's, when Nixon started opening relations with them. Obviously, it didn't work very well. If the goal was to end an oppressive regime, obviously ending the Chinese embargo hasn't worked well, either. Likewise, I doubt that ending the US embargo will really do much for or to Cuba. There was no embargo against China. The United States bought Chinese goods from 1940 though 1972. What changed in 1972 is that Nixon granted China "Most Favored" status which removed all possible tarrifs and give tax incentives to American companies to invest in China.
There is not one iota of doubt that this change has helped the average Chinese. Despite most of the vast wealth for trading to the US has gone to the elite at the top, some of it HAS "trickled down" to the population in general. Chinese consumers have access to better food, clothing, products, etc. Auto and home ownership are now with the grasp of many Chinese. These are all substantial improvements.
There is not one iota of doubt that ending the US embargo on Cuba would help the Cuban people in much the same way. For example, The US embargo prevents Cuba from getting new automobiles because the US refuses to let a ship that has docked in Cuba dock in the USA. So auto manufacturers can't drop off new autos in Cuba on the way to the US. They have to make a direct trip from their production facilities (in Asia typically), which is prohibitively expensive. So the Cubans have very few new cars.
killing the US domestic sugar industry Corn subsidies killed the US sugar industry a long time ago. Corn is the devil and if ending the Cuban embargo will help put US corn farmers out of business than I'm all for it.
1) Cuba has a little press freedom. China has none.
2) Cuba has rigged elections. China has none.
3) China operates large-scale death camps/work camps. Cuba has none.
Is anyone going to seriously argue that the Cuban government RIGHT NOW is worse on human rights that the Chinese government RIGHT NOW?
People have pointed out that 1/10 of Cuba's population fled to the US. So what? Fact: There are more Chinese-Americans than there are Cuban-Americans., despite the fact they had to cross thousands of miles of oceans. Do you think those Chinese left because China was a great place to live? They were fleeing large-scale purges that killed MILLIONS of Chinese. Nothing remotely comparable happened in Cuba.
While I agree that smoking a joint laws are too tough, I disagree that a fine (which he won't pay) and being told not to do it again is sufficient penalty for the theft of $30 million. He's almost certainly going to run more scams given this slap on the wrist. I think a felony conviction for fraud, and 6 months in jail is sufficient penalty. That might actually deter him (and others).
It works right up to the point where you have customers.
Customer A says to you "We need feature X, when will you have it?" you say "Sometime in the future." and they say "We'll go with one of your competitors then."
A video driver is a video driver - I HAVE written a video driver for Windows, fact is, even if the driver is in user space, it's still possible for you to write a driver to totally F* up the machine to a point that a reboot is _almost_ inevitable - without the driver/kernel even crashing - thus undetected by Vista. Have you written a driver for Vista? They made it a lot harder for a driver to fuck up the machine in general. And even if it's not perfect, as you pointed out THE major cause of BSODs in Windows XP was video drivers and if this change only reduces SOME of those crashes it will still constitute a MAJOR improvement.
The main reason to take the drivers out of the kernel was stability. Read the MS mailing lists if you don't believe me. Or are all the MS developers engaged in an elaborate deception to push DRM?
This is no different from Apple not supporting Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word. But Adobe and Microsoft WILL. The point I am making is that Apple does not support Windows in BootCamp *AND* Microsoft does not support Windows in BootCamp, which means THERE IS NO 1ST-PARTY SUPPORT FOR WINDOWS RUNNING IN BOOTCAMP FROM ANYONE. As far as troubleshooting a Windows install within BootCamp you are completely on your own.
I stand by my statement that this is not significantly different from OSX86 except the install might be smoother.
I stand by my statement that it's disingenuous to say that "Windows is supported on/by Apple".
Similarly, Apple *does* support you installing Windows on your Mac My company had their "Business" support, I forget what it's called by we paid something like $2500 for it. I called their phone number and asked for help installing Windows on a MacBook. No dice. Again, I can't speak to other people's experiences.
But "support for installing Windows", even if it exists, isn't the same as "support for the Windows install ITSELF" which is what I'm talking about.
Call me a troll all you want, I'm just relating my experiences with Apple developer support. Two different companies I worked for gave up trying to port apps to MacOSX for this very reason.
Most sane companies do not deliberately engage in monopolist practices in order to cheat and delude their customers. Microsoft did. Microsoft got where they are today largely because other companies dropped the ball, especially IBM, Xerox, and Apple. The Mac was a nice system, but it was too expensive and Jobs wouldn't compromise the design (further, the Lisa was REALLY expensive). Windows would run on commodity crap from Compaq and elsewhere. Jobs wrongly assumed that business would pay a price premium for superior usability. Business went with Windows because it was cheaper. Business buys the vast majority of desktop computers. Windows won.
Mac fanboys can whine all they want about this, but it's reality. Microsoft won because Macs were too expensive. Period.
The real story here is not Apple "crippling" software, but Apple "crippling" developers by not adequately documenting their interfaces. Lots of methods for Cocoa/Carbon are completely undocumented. If you ask Apple about them they tell you to go to hell. There are lots of method and prefs they didn't want to expose because they don't want to support them. So they'll patch in a fucntion or methods for an Apple app, like iLife, developers will ask "How do I do this thing iLife does?" and they'll tell you to read the docs, which don't actually document anything, before you go to hell.
The Geneva Conventions divide everyone on Earth into two categories:
Combatants - anybody who fights
Civilians - anybody who doesn't fight
All combatants are treated as Prisoners Of War if captured. This means no questioning whatsoever, name rank and serial# only. You can hold POWs indefinitely until the cessation of hostilities. You can charge POWs with war crimes and execute them if convicted.
This "illegal combatant" crap is all about wanting to interrogate and torture people, which is 100% illegal for anyone under all circumstances under US military, civilian, and international law.
This comment is not directed at the OP, who is obviously just a white power type that hates Arabs.
It doesn't matter is the stats say 0.01% of people are harmed - those people did not have a choice, so any number over 0 is unacceptable. (And I'm quite sure the number is far higher.) Give me a real example of someone being physically restrained and killed with secondhand cigarette smoke. You can simply avoid smoky bars. If you're going to a smoke-filled bar you're presumably going there to buy poison (alcohol) so it seems a little weird to me to complain about the health hazards.
Yes, secondhand smoke is technically dangerous. Studies on secondhand smoke show that the primary danger is to children under 5 whose parents smoke. Studies on adults, especially adults in bars, either show a much smaller effect or are inconclusive. There is no proven case of adult lung cancer or emphysema caused by secondhand smoke.
And please don't repeat nonsense about going someplace else, before the indoor bans there WAS no other place. My objection to the indoor smoking bans is that they are total. No bar, nightclub, restaurant, specialty store, or private club can allow smoking indoors even if they're called "The Cancer Stick Lounge". People shopping at cigar specialty stores can't actually smoke cigars on the premises. This is retarded and has absolutely killed the bar scene in California. And in practice it doesn't protect anybody from secondhand smoke, it just makes everyone cold by forcing them to hang out in outdoor lounges (and every bar that doesn't have one no longer exists) or at home where they smoke indoors. The cops love it because it's another way to shut down and harass bars and nightclubs.
I don't like all these anti-smoking laws in general. Higher taxes just drives business into the hands of organized crime. Neo-prohibitionism is not a good thing.
From 1973 onward (mostly due to the 1967 war) Israel stopped living under the threat of attack from foreign countries. Individual terrorist groups are another matter, but it is quite hard to deter stateless players. No country seemed to have figured that one out yet.
I don't think we're going to be able to bridge the gap in perception here. Israel fought a war LAST YEAR with Lebanon over security concerns.
No western country uses this form of deterrence
The French used it in Algeria, the UK used it in Northern Ireland. It's very difficult to believe that torture isn't used this way by the British and American forces in Iraq given the countless eyewitness accounts by prisoners and interrogators, the video recordings and photographs, and they have plainly stated they are doing so. What more do you need exactly?
I am saying that if you can protect even a single life by not releasing security-sensitive information then you should do so.
And what I am saying is that keeping "security-sensitive" information secret costs people's lives.
You could reveal this information months after this information is changed but you definitely shouldn't be revealing it while it's "live" and poses a security risk to reveal.
Since this has never actually happened, and these kinds of leaks have been going on for centuries, I don't think we have much to worry about.
More importantly, if we're discussing a subjective matter (which I believe we are) then who the heck cares what they think?
Fair pricing on goods really isn't subjective. Remember that $600 toilet seat? It's now $2000. Does it take an "expert" to determine that? Why do meals served in Iraq cost $250 each? The idea that only the military and defense contractors themselves are qualified to do any assessment whatsoever of military spending is a canard used for decades to avoid scrutiny for their corruption.
Army personnel have to bear responsibility for their actions if they do something wrong
Really, how? The generals that make purchasing decisions never set foot on the battlefield. There hasn't been a serious investigation into procurement corruption in the Pentagon in over 60 years, so there is no possibly for punishment. The worst case scenario is early retirement to the cushy "consulting" job defense contractors gave you in exchange for procurement favors.
It would really suck if the tables were turned and *you* were being constantly watched, criticized and second-guessed.
1) I am. I do security work and I'm closely scrutinized.
2) THEY SIGNED UP FOR IT! This is akin to celebrities whining about the paparazzi. They wanted all this power and money, and make no mistake they're all making millions, scrutiny comes with the territory. And it damn well should. These people control the lives of millions of people and trillions of dollars. If it were up to me they'd be under 24/7 public video and audio surveillance and tagged with GPS tags. They would, literally, not be able to go to the bathroom without the public knowing about it. All of their personal financials should be made public. Transparency will lead to less second-guessing as the decisonmaking process is more open.
Maybe it makes great strategical sense to go one way or another.
What strategy? To prove to our enemies we're too stupid to be a threat?
No, I have not.
I have. Maybe you should speak from a little experience.
And people who believe that what went on in Abu Graib is torture don't know what the heck they're talking about.... You should hear the kinds of things they do in the middle-east. Abu Graib pales in comparison.
Stop splitting hairs. You obviously agree that what took place at Abu Graib is torture, just not "as bad" as some other tortures you've heard about. Is attacking a hog-tied naked man with a police dog torture? Is
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you're going to argue that Castro accepted Soviet support and that's "in opposition to the usa", but he had no choice. It was that or death, the US was trying to kill him and destroy his government and he didn't have the resources to fight alone.
And if the goal is to stop Cuba from acting "in opposition to the usa", why not try to reconcile? therefore, according to the implications of your own assertion, whatever the hell cuba does today, is cuba's responsibility and cuba responsibility's alone What does the embargo have to do with "what cuba does today"? How does the embargo help the Cuban people?
The embargo has absolutely nothing to do with human rights, that's a red herring. If you wish to argue this point there is no reason to engage in further discussion. The US does not embargo dictatorships with FAR worse human rights records.
The fact is that most family farms SHOULD be going out of business. The "small farmer" model is extremely inefficient and simply can't compete fairly with agribusiness. Why should taxpayers be forced to keep their failed businesses afloat with subsidies? You say that we need to go back to sugar cane, is that going to give animals the quality food they need? Corn isn't "quality food". It makes pigs fat quicker than most grains, that's all it has going for it. You can feed pigs plenty of other less destructive crops (basically, almost anything) and they'll get just as fat. But the amount of land in this country that can grow sugar cane isn't even close to the amount of land that can grow corn, wheat, oats, barley, etc... That's why all our sugar used to come from Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Americans live there too and deserve to make money as much as midwesterners. You are looking at this from a strictly southern agricultural view. I don't think mid-west farmers have any option. They have to grow crops that will grow in their geographical region. My land is in eastern Colorado. As you pointed out, midwesterners can grow wheat, oats, barley, soy, etc. I think they're doing oats right now. If we can import sugar cheaper than we can grow it, then why not put our fields to use growing something that is profitable to us. There is not one iota of doubt that we can import sugar far cheaper than we can grow subsidized corn.
I've done networking over tin cans and string, but sneakernet sounds like a new low.
For example, based on your reasoning the Vietnam War was pure mindless aggression by the US because the Vietnamese were acting independently to spread popular political ideas in Vietnam.
I, on the other hand, believe that the Soviet Union bears some responsibility for the Vietnam War because they supported North Vietnam and the Vietcong.
Your rule simply isn't true. Hitler and Pol Pot killed an awful lot of people and they weren't communist. The bloodiest conflict in the world, Congo, has nothing to do with communism.
Cheap Caribbean sugar did not kill C&H, the big US sugar producer. C&H used to receive massive government subsidies to produce sugar in Hawaii, Caribbean producers couldn't compete with the subsidized prices, which is why C&H dominated the US market. Other agribusiness lobbyists in the US convinced Congress to kill the C&H sugar subsidies and instead give massive subsides for corn to ADM, this also helped small corn farmers a little bit so it was marketed as something for "family farms" (never mind the small sugarcane producers) but instead allowed ADM to flood the US market with tons of low-quality HFCS that is making Americans sick and fat. Besides, you CAN'T kill the corn farmers. We rely so heavily on corn. Exactly my point. Corn subsides have MADE us rely on corn. Corn is low-quality shit. It's barely suitable as pig food, which is the main way most of the world uses it. Ethanol is an incredible scam and is arguably the worst possible alternative to gasoline out there (biodiesel comes close). We need to get rid of corn and switch back to the far healthier, better tasting, and higher-quality cane sugar.
BTW, I AM a farmer. I own productive farmland that I lease. Corn, cotton, and tobacco farmers give the rest of us a bad name.
Though not homosexuality per se, there is extremely strong evidence that transgender/transsexuality (at least in men) is genetically determined. In short, they've discovered unique brain structures in male and female brains and transgendered "males" have the female brain structures.
Religious types typically teach (actually, they typically ignore it altogether because it breaks their limited model of the world) that transgendered people are "sexual deviants" who have CHOSEN to be "perverted". Obviously proof that transgender is genetic and NOT a choice undermines these claims.
Though, as others have said, any sort of sex education whatsoever, even for high school students and adults, is considered unacceptable by these religious types.
The PURPOSE of the feedback system always has been to to allow buyers to report rogue sellers to get them kicked off eBay. It's assumed that rogue buyers aren't a serious issue (with one exception) because THEY AREN'T. 90% of the complaints eBay gets are about getting defective or counterfeit items from sellers.
If a buyer refuses to pay the seller's listing fees are returned, so the only POSSIBLE WAY a seller can get screwed is if the buyer pays with a bad check and sellers have PayPal to prevent that. PayPal also protects them from charge backs. So all this whining from the sellers is BULLSHIT. There maximum possible losses are actually very small.
Of course, the feedback system is useless to report rogue sellers because sellers use shill bidders to drive up prices and give them fake positive feedback. This is why most Power Sellers have a positive feedback rating of 99%. Many buyers simply don't read the agreement, they don't bother to figure out what things are going to cost before bidding. If, LITERALLY, someone mentally retarded reading your listing can't clearly understand these things you're doing something wrong. Most Power Seller listings I've seen use complicated templates which hide the item description and have gone out of their way to conceal the shipping costs. You shipping cost should be in bold text at least twice as large as everything else in you listing. I've listed hundreds of items on eBay and I've never had this problem because my listings aren't obfuscated crap.
Secondly, your "agreement" can't say whatever you want. In practice, in most of the USA you LEGALLY have 30 days to return anything you buy, there is no such thing as "as is" sales, and you can't charge "restocking fees". Trying to do this stuff is scammy. Just follow the damn law.
If Wal-Mart had a scratched DVD on their shelf, and you buy it, that counts as a "negative shopping experience". Wal-Mart shouldn't have broken shit on their shelves. I'd argue that this is even MORE true of an eBay seller selling used merchandise. He either knowingly sent broken shit to the customer or he was incompetent and didn't bother to check before he sent it. Either way he fucked up.
*some* buyers are scammers (it never arrived!)
It's called "the price of doing business". ALL other retailers have to deal with these issues, the power sellers are basically whining about being forced to act like regular merchants instead of scam artists.
Many Power Sellers buy shit at Wal-Mart, mark it up slightly often using confusing shipping terms, and then sell the crap on eBay. Or they're selling counterfeit goods. I'd be very pleased if eBay got rid of these people.
I live not far from eBay and I know their security staff. I can tell you 90% of the incident reports they get are from Power Sellers selling fraudulent or defective goods. For example, eBay says that 90% of the iPods sold on eBay are fake and they encourage buyers not to buy them. Why not just refuse to let people LIST iPods? Because they want to make money off the scammers.
eBay traffic is way down because buyers aren't tolerating this crap anymore.
This is basically a no-win for eBay. Getting rid of the scammers means killing revenue but buyers are leaving the site BECAUSE of the scammers.
There is not one iota of doubt that this change has helped the average Chinese. Despite most of the vast wealth for trading to the US has gone to the elite at the top, some of it HAS "trickled down" to the population in general. Chinese consumers have access to better food, clothing, products, etc. Auto and home ownership are now with the grasp of many Chinese. These are all substantial improvements.
There is not one iota of doubt that ending the US embargo on Cuba would help the Cuban people in much the same way. For example, The US embargo prevents Cuba from getting new automobiles because the US refuses to let a ship that has docked in Cuba dock in the USA. So auto manufacturers can't drop off new autos in Cuba on the way to the US. They have to make a direct trip from their production facilities (in Asia typically), which is prohibitively expensive. So the Cubans have very few new cars. killing the US domestic sugar industry Corn subsidies killed the US sugar industry a long time ago. Corn is the devil and if ending the Cuban embargo will help put US corn farmers out of business than I'm all for it.
The differences between China and Cuba:
1) Cuba has a little press freedom. China has none.
2) Cuba has rigged elections. China has none.
3) China operates large-scale death camps/work camps. Cuba has none.
Is anyone going to seriously argue that the Cuban government RIGHT NOW is worse on human rights that the Chinese government RIGHT NOW?
People have pointed out that 1/10 of Cuba's population fled to the US. So what? Fact: There are more Chinese-Americans than there are Cuban-Americans., despite the fact they had to cross thousands of miles of oceans. Do you think those Chinese left because China was a great place to live? They were fleeing large-scale purges that killed MILLIONS of Chinese. Nothing remotely comparable happened in Cuba.
While I agree that smoking a joint laws are too tough, I disagree that a fine (which he won't pay) and being told not to do it again is sufficient penalty for the theft of $30 million. He's almost certainly going to run more scams given this slap on the wrist. I think a felony conviction for fraud, and 6 months in jail is sufficient penalty. That might actually deter him (and others).
It works right up to the point where you have customers.
Customer A says to you "We need feature X, when will you have it?" you say "Sometime in the future." and they say "We'll go with one of your competitors then."
The main reason to take the drivers out of the kernel was stability. Read the MS mailing lists if you don't believe me. Or are all the MS developers engaged in an elaborate deception to push DRM?
I stand by my statement that this is not significantly different from OSX86 except the install might be smoother.
I stand by my statement that it's disingenuous to say that "Windows is supported on/by Apple". Similarly, Apple *does* support you installing Windows on your Mac My company had their "Business" support, I forget what it's called by we paid something like $2500 for it. I called their phone number and asked for help installing Windows on a MacBook. No dice. Again, I can't speak to other people's experiences.
But "support for installing Windows", even if it exists, isn't the same as "support for the Windows install ITSELF" which is what I'm talking about.
Call me a troll all you want, I'm just relating my experiences with Apple developer support. Two different companies I worked for gave up trying to port apps to MacOSX for this very reason.
Mac fanboys can whine all they want about this, but it's reality. Microsoft won because Macs were too expensive. Period.
The real story here is not Apple "crippling" software, but Apple "crippling" developers by not adequately documenting their interfaces. Lots of methods for Cocoa/Carbon are completely undocumented. If you ask Apple about them they tell you to go to hell. There are lots of method and prefs they didn't want to expose because they don't want to support them. So they'll patch in a fucntion or methods for an Apple app, like iLife, developers will ask "How do I do this thing iLife does?" and they'll tell you to read the docs, which don't actually document anything, before you go to hell.
The Geneva Conventions divide everyone on Earth into two categories:
Combatants - anybody who fights
Civilians - anybody who doesn't fight
All combatants are treated as Prisoners Of War if captured. This means no questioning whatsoever, name rank and serial# only. You can hold POWs indefinitely until the cessation of hostilities. You can charge POWs with war crimes and execute them if convicted.
This "illegal combatant" crap is all about wanting to interrogate and torture people, which is 100% illegal for anyone under all circumstances under US military, civilian, and international law.
This comment is not directed at the OP, who is obviously just a white power type that hates Arabs.
Yes, secondhand smoke is technically dangerous. Studies on secondhand smoke show that the primary danger is to children under 5 whose parents smoke. Studies on adults, especially adults in bars, either show a much smaller effect or are inconclusive. There is no proven case of adult lung cancer or emphysema caused by secondhand smoke. And please don't repeat nonsense about going someplace else, before the indoor bans there WAS no other place. My objection to the indoor smoking bans is that they are total. No bar, nightclub, restaurant, specialty store, or private club can allow smoking indoors even if they're called "The Cancer Stick Lounge". People shopping at cigar specialty stores can't actually smoke cigars on the premises. This is retarded and has absolutely killed the bar scene in California. And in practice it doesn't protect anybody from secondhand smoke, it just makes everyone cold by forcing them to hang out in outdoor lounges (and every bar that doesn't have one no longer exists) or at home where they smoke indoors. The cops love it because it's another way to shut down and harass bars and nightclubs.
I don't like all these anti-smoking laws in general. Higher taxes just drives business into the hands of organized crime. Neo-prohibitionism is not a good thing.
From 1973 onward (mostly due to the 1967 war) Israel stopped living under the threat of attack from foreign countries. Individual terrorist groups are another matter, but it is quite hard to deter stateless players. No country seemed to have figured that one out yet.
I don't think we're going to be able to bridge the gap in perception here. Israel fought a war LAST YEAR with Lebanon over security concerns.
No western country uses this form of deterrence
The French used it in Algeria, the UK used it in Northern Ireland. It's very difficult to believe that torture isn't used this way by the British and American forces in Iraq given the countless eyewitness accounts by prisoners and interrogators, the video recordings and photographs, and they have plainly stated they are doing so. What more do you need exactly?
I am saying that if you can protect even a single life by not releasing security-sensitive information then you should do so.
And what I am saying is that keeping "security-sensitive" information secret costs people's lives.
You could reveal this information months after this information is changed but you definitely shouldn't be revealing it while it's "live" and poses a security risk to reveal.
Since this has never actually happened, and these kinds of leaks have been going on for centuries, I don't think we have much to worry about.
More importantly, if we're discussing a subjective matter (which I believe we are) then who the heck cares what they think?
Fair pricing on goods really isn't subjective. Remember that $600 toilet seat? It's now $2000. Does it take an "expert" to determine that? Why do meals served in Iraq cost $250 each? The idea that only the military and defense contractors themselves are qualified to do any assessment whatsoever of military spending is a canard used for decades to avoid scrutiny for their corruption.
Army personnel have to bear responsibility for their actions if they do something wrong
Really, how? The generals that make purchasing decisions never set foot on the battlefield. There hasn't been a serious investigation into procurement corruption in the Pentagon in over 60 years, so there is no possibly for punishment. The worst case scenario is early retirement to the cushy "consulting" job defense contractors gave you in exchange for procurement favors.
It would really suck if the tables were turned and *you* were being constantly watched, criticized and second-guessed.
1) I am. I do security work and I'm closely scrutinized.
2) THEY SIGNED UP FOR IT! This is akin to celebrities whining about the paparazzi. They wanted all this power and money, and make no mistake they're all making millions, scrutiny comes with the territory. And it damn well should. These people control the lives of millions of people and trillions of dollars. If it were up to me they'd be under 24/7 public video and audio surveillance and tagged with GPS tags. They would, literally, not be able to go to the bathroom without the public knowing about it. All of their personal financials should be made public. Transparency will lead to less second-guessing as the decisonmaking process is more open.
Maybe it makes great strategical sense to go one way or another.
What strategy? To prove to our enemies we're too stupid to be a threat?
No, I have not.
I have. Maybe you should speak from a little experience.
And people who believe that what went on in Abu Graib is torture don't know what the heck they're talking about. ... You should hear the kinds of things they do in the middle-east. Abu Graib pales in comparison.
Stop splitting hairs. You obviously agree that what took place at Abu Graib is torture, just not "as bad" as some other tortures you've heard about. Is attacking a hog-tied naked man with a police dog torture? Is