Darn! I hate it when I try to make a smart-ass comment and get it wrong.
Your points about VietNam are good and well-taken. I never said the U.S. was blameless, but I do think the original poster was being, how to put this diplomatically, an idiot.
The thinking was, I have read, first that a demonstration on some remote island, a la, the Bikini Atoll, would not have as effective in convincing the Japanese military leadership (not mention the people who were clearly fired up to fight to the last man).
Secondly, two bombs were used just to show that this was repeatable. We didn't want them to think we were bluffing and could only do it once. Of course, IIRC, at the time we _did_ only have the two bombs, but again it worked.
Was it the best decision possible? Maybe not. Did it save many, many lives and shorten the war? Without a doubt.
I have no doubt that the U.S. could not avoid "collateral damage" yesterday. I also have no doubt they tried very hard anyway. But by the same token, I wonder if any Afghan citizens were killed by the Taliban's show of force the other day when they dropped some bombs, apparently to make a point.
Anyhow, if it helps keep U.S. citizens safe, then I think it's a reasonable and just trade-off.
Taken out of context, yes, it looks pretty bad. Taken within the context of total war against an enemy that very nearly won (and systematically slaughtered something like 10,000,000 anyway), it looks a little different.
If you are equating that with the WTC attacks, then you've got some serious perspective problems.
While the quote of 6,000,000 Jews killed by the Germans is one of the most significant and talked about atrocities of all time, there were also something on the order of 4,000,000 non-Jews, many Christian, killed as well.
As an example, I would refer you to a priest named Maximillian Kolbe, who offered his life in the place of a Polish officer that had a family when the Nazi captors chose 10 people to kill in retaliation for an escape from the camp.
While the Jews faced the most significant and severe treatment (a 1/3 of all Jews in the world were put to death!), many, many others suffered similar fates as well. St. Maximillian was canonized in 1982 for his selfless sacrifice for his fellow man.
Now, I would still be opposed to the idea of "terror bombing", you also have to take it in context. We (the Allies) were at _total war_. This wasn't the video game cakewalk in Iraq or the target practice occurring in Afghanistan at this moment (discounting any special forces action we will probably never hear about).
The Allies very nearly lost that war, and even if you disagree with the tactics of carpet-bombing Germany or nuking entire cities in Japan, I challenge you to contrast that with the alternative, and ask the millions of people who would otherwise have died if it was worth it.
The planned invasion of Japan that was averted by Truman's use of Fat Man and Little Boy could have resulted in 7-figure casualty numbers on both sides and would have dragged out for years as Japan's cities (echoing Churchill's famous speech) would have to be defeated street by street and building by building by the "vast mass" of Japanese citizens.
On top of it all, we may see that these military strikes prevent a lot of bloodshed because they will illustrate to the rank and file Taliban soldiers just how insignificant they are. Expect mass defections.
You're right, we are strictly targeting innocent civilians by attacking sites with no military significance, to instill fear and terror in the Afghani people.
And we were no better than Germany when innocent civilians were killed by American bombing.
And we were certainly no better than Saddam Hussein when he put civilians in buildings targeted by the U.S. so they would be killed by American attacks.
And we are certainly engaging in terrorist activity when, after the Tabilan's air defenses are taken out that we will continue our history hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to the Afghani people by air dropping food and medicine to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have evacuated Kabul and other places.
555 was in common use _long_ before 1980 or whenever that song came out, although the reason for using it is correct.
I definitely recall the Brady Bunch having a 555 number, so that's the early 70's but I'm sure it goes way before that. (Being the kind of kid I was, I noticed that their phone number changed from episode to episode.)
I couldn't say when the 555 tradition started, but I do recall seeing fictional phone numbers given as "KLondike-5 blah blah blah blah", which suggests that the tradition dates back to the time when exhanges were still referred to by name (and actually had names associate with them).
I remember reading a newspaper article about AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds" song which contained the fictional phone number (IIRC) "862486 followed by a "hey!" which could be taken as an 8. THe owner of that phone number somewhere in Australia was suing the band for disrupting their lives because people were calling them so much. I remember reading the story in the early 80's, although IIRC that album first came out in 1973.
There's nothing indecent about sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, a 500-GeV electron-positron linear collider, or even a coffin. Eccentric? Sure. But not indecent.
That's the way I heard it. I don't think it will ever happen, but I do believe it reflects the lengths to which the music industry is willing to go to compensate for its increasing lack of relevance or of providing any value.
The genie is out of the bottle and the corporate executives don't want to move with the times, but rather design more complex and more improbable edifices to shore up their justification for existance.
As soon as they stop acting like the enemy of the consumer, consumers will stop treating them like enemies. I personally am willing to buy product for a reasonable price, even when I can get it illegally free, but by the same token, if I do so, I expect to maintain the same rights of use I have enjoyed with similar purchases in the past.
IMO, ST:TNG was the best show in the entire franchise, but not until about the third season. Most of the first season sucked on toast, in retrospect (though at the time it was just cool to have new Star Trek to watch).
Any show that's worth it will take a while to develop. You can tell a complete stinker pretty easily, but the difference between a watchable show and a great show isn't immediately obvious (i.e., you can judge episodes obviously, but if the premiere is "OK" or "pretty good" or "so-so", then it's still quite possible that the show will turn out to be excellent).
I just hope that the folks behind this show realize that there have been around five hundred episodes of Star Trek and they pretty much ran out of new ideas after about 150-200. I personally got bored with Voyager and punted the last few seasons.
I'd like to what "Enterprise", but I sure don't want to see the same "aliens have taken over the ship in some ludicrously easy way" or "Officer X has been kidnapped" or "Regardless of how dramatic the plot tries to be you always know it will end exactly back at the status quo ante."
I do know one thing from the pictures I've seen... they definitely are sticking to the "Seven of Nine" formula. Let's hope that character is more than just eye-candy (Seven of Nine _was_ a very interesting character, for a while...).
Wow, I assumed that RIAA-types would argue the "anti-piracy" features would reduce piracy and thus make CD's cheaper Of course, they would _never_ lower CD prices, but that's just a trivial detail that can easily be overlooked by the harried record executive.
No, that's not it either. The return value of the function is type ultimate_answer_t, which from the context of the story, turns out to be typedef'ed to an integer (although technically they didn't know that when they created Deep Thought). Since Deep Thought was created for one sole purpose, there is no input needed to the function.
The function is "correct" as stated.
If think we all need to get out and talk to normal people more.
...on how much bigger you want the underground economy to grow. You cannot eliminate money and expect all the "shady" dealings will immediately switch to e-money. You would probably drive more of the economy underground because people generally don't want a record kept of many kinds of transactions for many reasons.
I think your assessment is sobering, but I personally have two things in mind that give me some optimism.
First, the country has (hopefully) learned a lot of lessons from VietNam, Colin Powell understands how to properly use the military ("overwhelming force") from a firsthand perspective, and Bush's other advisors are far more well suited to make any military action successful than the previous administration (cf. Somalia). I would be confident that our forces will be given the proper support and not be hamstrung by ridiculous restrictions so as not to appear "too agressive". I also have a lot more confidence in the U.S. military in 2001 than in the Soviet military in the 1980's or any other year. The administration must realize that lots of body bags will weaken our national resolve, especially compared to the Gulf War, where, but for a single missile strike, we probably lost more men to friendly fire than from the enemy (not an indictment of our forces, just a comment on how trivial our losses were compared to Iraq), and in any event, American deaths were very few.
Not to mention the credibility you get if you are (successfully) running the National ID Card system. That's better than any commercial you could ever run on the Superbowl.
Would we really hold the people of Ireland as responsible as we're holding the people of Afghanistan.
Um, did you hear the President's speech on Thursday. If it weren't obvious before, it should be obvious after hearing him speak. The U.S. does not hold the people of Afghanistan responsible for anything, but rather the government, in so much as it has harbored and supported terrorist groups. We are Afghanistan's bniggest source of humanitarian aid. I thought Bush did an excellent job of reminding us that this war is not against Arabs in general, Muslims in general, or Afghanistan in general (as opposed to the Taliban, which almost no one recognizes as legitimate anyway and even some of those (like the UAE) are backpedaling from that. Now, that doesn't mean I disagree with your reasons for Places like Pakistan not wanting us to use their territory as a staging area, but so far, I trust that the U.S.'s intentions (as spoken by Bush) are correct, justified and not excessive. I might re-evaluate as more happens.
Yoda: The most powerful wielder of the Force ever he may potentially be, but train him we don't want to do. So loose let's just cut him and if an apprentice a Sith Lord takes him as in the future, deal with it we will in a sequel.
Mace Windu: I bet they don't sell as as many stuffed me's as they do Jar-Jar.
Slashdot Mirror
Darn! I hate it when I try to make a smart-ass comment and get it wrong.
Your points about VietNam are good and well-taken. I never said the U.S. was blameless, but I do think the original poster was being, how to put this diplomatically, an idiot.
Again, was it right to target civilians?
The thinking was, I have read, first that a demonstration on some remote island, a la, the Bikini Atoll, would not have as effective in convincing the Japanese military leadership (not mention the people who were clearly fired up to fight to the last man).
Secondly, two bombs were used just to show that this was repeatable. We didn't want them to think we were bluffing and could only do it once. Of course, IIRC, at the time we _did_ only have the two bombs, but again it worked.
Was it the best decision possible? Maybe not. Did it save many, many lives and shorten the war? Without a doubt.
I have no doubt that the U.S. could not avoid "collateral damage" yesterday. I also have no doubt they tried very hard anyway. But by the same token, I wonder if any Afghan citizens were killed by the Taliban's show of force the other day when they dropped some bombs, apparently to make a point.
Anyhow, if it helps keep U.S. citizens safe, then I think it's a reasonable and just trade-off.
Taken out of context, yes, it looks pretty bad. Taken within the context of total war against an enemy that very nearly won (and systematically slaughtered something like 10,000,000 anyway), it looks a little different.
If you are equating that with the WTC attacks, then you've got some serious perspective problems.
While the quote of 6,000,000 Jews killed by the Germans is one of the most significant and talked about atrocities of all time, there were also something on the order of 4,000,000 non-Jews, many Christian, killed as well.
As an example, I would refer you to a priest named Maximillian Kolbe, who offered his life in the place of a Polish officer that had a family when the Nazi captors chose 10 people to kill in retaliation for an escape from the camp.
While the Jews faced the most significant and severe treatment (a 1/3 of all Jews in the world were put to death!), many, many others suffered similar fates as well. St. Maximillian was canonized in 1982 for his selfless sacrifice for his fellow man.
Now, I would still be opposed to the idea of "terror bombing", you also have to take it in context. We (the Allies) were at _total war_. This wasn't the video game cakewalk in Iraq or the target practice occurring in Afghanistan at this moment (discounting any special forces action we will probably never hear about).
The Allies very nearly lost that war, and even if you disagree with the tactics of carpet-bombing Germany or nuking entire cities in Japan, I challenge you to contrast that with the alternative, and ask the millions of people who would otherwise have died if it was worth it.
The planned invasion of Japan that was averted by Truman's use of Fat Man and Little Boy could have resulted in 7-figure casualty numbers on both sides and would have dragged out for years as Japan's cities (echoing Churchill's famous speech) would have to be defeated street by street and building by building by the "vast mass" of Japanese citizens.
On top of it all, we may see that these military strikes prevent a lot of bloodshed because they will illustrate to the rank and file Taliban soldiers just how insignificant they are. Expect mass defections.
(oh yeah an please mod me down because you want everything USA to be so pretty!)
No, not pretty, just coherent.
You're right, we are strictly targeting innocent civilians by attacking sites with no military significance, to instill fear and terror in the Afghani people.
And we were no better than Germany when innocent civilians were killed by American bombing.
And we were certainly no better than Saddam Hussein when he put civilians in buildings targeted by the U.S. so they would be killed by American attacks.
And we are certainly engaging in terrorist activity when, after the Tabilan's air defenses are taken out that we will continue our history hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to the Afghani people by air dropping food and medicine to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have evacuated Kabul and other places.
Go back to Saigon, Jane.
555 was in common use _long_ before 1980 or whenever that song came out, although the reason for using it is correct.
I definitely recall the Brady Bunch having a 555 number, so that's the early 70's but I'm sure it goes way before that. (Being the kind of kid I was, I noticed that their phone number changed from episode to episode.)
I couldn't say when the 555 tradition started, but I do recall seeing fictional phone numbers given as "KLondike-5 blah blah blah blah", which suggests that the tradition dates back to the time when exhanges were still referred to by name (and actually had names associate with them).
I remember reading a newspaper article about AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds" song which contained the fictional phone number (IIRC) "862486 followed by a "hey!" which could be taken as an 8. THe owner of that phone number somewhere in Australia was suing the band for disrupting their lives because people were calling them so much. I remember reading the story in the early 80's, although IIRC that album first came out in 1973.
My phone number in 1980 when that song was big was an anagram of Jenny's number. I always wondered if I would get a call from some dyslexic rock fan.
There's nothing indecent about sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, a 500-GeV electron-positron linear collider, or even a coffin. Eccentric? Sure. But not indecent.
> my email name is latin, look it up
No it isn't. It just means you are breastless.
Rick Gutleber
hooterfree@zycha.com
No, I think you have to deal with some tedious, red, evil robot with spinning blades.
That's the way I heard it. I don't think it will ever happen, but I do believe it reflects the lengths to which the music industry is willing to go to compensate for its increasing lack of relevance or of providing any value.
The genie is out of the bottle and the corporate executives don't want to move with the times, but rather design more complex and more improbable edifices to shore up their justification for existance.
As soon as they stop acting like the enemy of the consumer, consumers will stop treating them like enemies. I personally am willing to buy product for a reasonable price, even when I can get it illegally free, but by the same token, if I do so, I expect to maintain the same rights of use I have enjoyed with similar purchases in the past.
So they build a 500-GeV electron-positron linear collider. The next you know Michael Jackson will buy one to sleep in because it makes him younger.
...or ananlog outputs on CD players.
From what I've read, that's the music industry's plan. After all TV's going completely digital in 2006 or so whether we want it or not...
H2O not a pollutant? Not toxic?
Obviously, you've never heard about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide!
http://www.dhmo.org
... I hope to catch it when it's run tomorrow.
IMO, ST:TNG was the best show in the entire franchise, but not until about the third season. Most of the first season sucked on toast, in retrospect (though at the time it was just cool to have new Star Trek to watch).
Any show that's worth it will take a while to develop. You can tell a complete stinker pretty easily, but the difference between a watchable show and a great show isn't immediately obvious (i.e., you can judge episodes obviously, but if the premiere is "OK" or "pretty good" or "so-so", then it's still quite possible that the show will turn out to be excellent).
I just hope that the folks behind this show realize that there have been around five hundred episodes of Star Trek and they pretty much ran out of new ideas after about 150-200. I personally got bored with Voyager and punted the last few seasons.
I'd like to what "Enterprise", but I sure don't want to see the same "aliens have taken over the ship in some ludicrously easy way" or "Officer X has been kidnapped" or "Regardless of how dramatic the plot tries to be you always know it will end exactly back at the status quo ante."
I do know one thing from the pictures I've seen... they definitely are sticking to the "Seven of Nine" formula. Let's hope that character is more than just eye-candy (Seven of Nine _was_ a very interesting character, for a while...).
Wow, I assumed that RIAA-types would argue the "anti-piracy" features would reduce piracy and thus make CD's cheaper Of course, they would _never_ lower CD prices, but that's just a trivial detail that can easily be overlooked by the harried record executive.
No, that's not it either. The return value of the function is type ultimate_answer_t, which from the context of the story, turns out to be typedef'ed to an integer (although technically they didn't know that when they created Deep Thought). Since Deep Thought was created for one sole purpose, there is no input needed to the function.
The function is "correct" as stated.
If think we all need to get out and talk to normal people more.
...on how much bigger you want the underground economy to grow. You cannot eliminate money and expect all the "shady" dealings will immediately switch to e-money. You would probably drive more of the economy underground because people generally don't want a record kept of many kinds of transactions for many reasons.
"0-gravity" was mentioned in the context of being in space, not the moon.
I think your assessment is sobering, but I personally have two things in mind that give me some optimism.
First, the country has (hopefully) learned a lot of lessons from VietNam, Colin Powell understands how to properly use the military ("overwhelming force") from a firsthand perspective, and Bush's other advisors are far more well suited to make any military action successful than the previous administration (cf. Somalia). I would be confident that our forces will be given the proper support and not be hamstrung by ridiculous restrictions so as not to appear "too agressive". I also have a lot more confidence in the U.S. military in 2001 than in the Soviet military in the 1980's or any other year. The administration must realize that lots of body bags will weaken our national resolve, especially compared to the Gulf War, where, but for a single missile strike, we probably lost more men to friendly fire than from the enemy (not an indictment of our forces, just a comment on how trivial our losses were compared to Iraq), and in any event, American deaths were very few.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Did you reintroduce "eth"?
Not to mention the credibility you get if you are (successfully) running the National ID Card system. That's better than any commercial you could ever run on the Superbowl.
Would we really hold the people of Ireland as responsible as we're holding the people of Afghanistan.
Um, did you hear the President's speech on Thursday. If it weren't obvious before, it should be obvious after hearing him speak. The U.S. does not hold the people of Afghanistan responsible for anything, but rather the government, in so much as it has harbored and supported terrorist groups. We are Afghanistan's bniggest source of humanitarian aid. I thought Bush did an excellent job of reminding us that this war is not against Arabs in general, Muslims in general, or Afghanistan in general (as opposed to the Taliban, which almost no one recognizes as legitimate anyway and even some of those (like the UAE) are backpedaling from that. Now, that doesn't mean I disagree with your reasons for Places like Pakistan not wanting us to use their territory as a staging area, but so far, I trust that the U.S.'s intentions (as spoken by Bush) are correct, justified and not excessive. I might re-evaluate as more happens.
Yoda: The most powerful wielder of the Force ever he may potentially be, but train him we don't want to do. So loose let's just cut him and if an apprentice a Sith Lord takes him as in the future, deal with it we will in a sequel.
Mace Windu: I bet they don't sell as as many stuffed me's as they do Jar-Jar.