Indeed. Hitler was no more evil than some of the people I've met in life, he just happened to head one of the most hard working and wondrously efficient nations in history. Germany, Japan, the US... there are certain nations you just don't want anyone evil at the head of, given their capabilities, resources, and sheer industriousness. Not that you want anyone evil at the head of any nation, mind you, but it's much less a problem for everyone if its Elbonia (well, everyone except for the Elbonians, of course).
The only way this works politically, however, is if they took lots of pictures and video of the corpse as proof of identity. I expect those to come out before long.
Um, why? Do you really think rumors of his continued survival, robbing him of any martyr status, would hurt rather than help US interests? The best possible result the US could hope for is for him to actually be dead, but no one actually believes it.
Really, most of the people in the middle east didn't give a damn about the US, until Osama bin Laden hatched a plan to get the US to invade a middle east country so he could rally people against them. We have this on tape, by the way. Of course, we're not gullible enough to do exact what the enemy wants us to do, right?/eyeroll
The purpose of the Iraq mission was to establish a counter-balance to Iran.
Sorry, which week was that?
(For those with short memory spans, or just weren't around at the time, there were about a dozen weeks around the time we invaded Iraq during which, each week, the President or a member of his administration articulated a new and distinctly different reason for the Iraq invasion from the previous week's line. Eventually they settled on the one that polled the best...)
49% of us *are* separate from our government. It only takes 51% to vote our leaders in.
Nope. In the US, you do not require a majority of votes to win. In most elections, you just require more votes than anyone else got, even if that's, say, only 39% of the votes (with the remaining 61% split between multiple other candidates). In US presidential elections, you don't even need that, since US presidents aren't elected by popular vote. (A popular vote is held, but the results are meaningless, or Gore would have been president in 2001, as the man who won the popular vote.) US presidents just need more votes than anyone else from members of the Electoral College.
What the helicopter failure during the Iran hostage rescue attempt also suspicious? Honestly, the more I hear about these kinds of operations, the most I'm starting to think it would be suspicious if a helicopter didn't break! These things apparently fall out of the sky right and left!
As for failing to capture him alive, understand that capturing something alive is virtually impossible without their cooperation. They're soldiers, not gods, and this isn't some Hollywood action flick where the heroes can just do anything the script writer thinks would be cool. If someone would rather die that be captured, your odds of capturing them are effectively zilch, I don't care who you are, how well trained you are, or what equipment you have.
They didn't haul him back on foot, they had multiple helicopters. (They do that, since, you know, helicopters have a bad habit of failing...) They may very well have had a Muslim chaplain on the ship -- they're rarer than Christian chaplains but not unheard of. And if people choose to believe he's not dead, this serves US interests far better than making a martyr out of him.
President Obama said "no Americans were injured" so I would assume it was only a minor hit.
Given his occupation, you should assume President Obama was lying.
Common misunderstanding by people who think they know what "skepticism" means, but actually don't. Believing a particular statement is false is every bit as non-skeptical an attitude as believing it is true. A skeptic does not believe either. Pardon me from being pedantic, but I'm always annoyed by the legions of incredibly gullible people who call themselves skeptical because of all their unfounded beliefs (this is false, that is false, yada yada).
The real problem with software patents is not the fundamental idea of software patents...
Many of us here would disagree with that. Specifically...
The method that an algorithm uses may be patentable.
As long as this statement is true, they're something fundamentally wrong with the idea of software patents. The discovery of a new algorithm is precisely that: a scientific (specifically mathematics) discovery. Such a thing should, never, ever be patentable under any circumstances at all whatsoever, period.
...11 significant figures is very suspiciously precise in the miles figure.
Not really. The precision by which we delivered these spacecraft to their respective flybys was breathtaking. At the time they did their planetary flybys, NASA could have told you, at a given point in time, how many yards it was between Voyager and the JPL lobby. To be able to tell you accurately to the nearest mile today is, well, bloody remarkable, but to be expected. The whole problem with the "Voyager Anomaly" (recently solved) was only known about because we know their positions so precisely, we can detect how a bit of stray operating heat has altered their course over the years.
Every two years or so Voyager \d crosses the (heliosheath | heliopause | bow shock | edge of the cosmic wind | edge of the Oort cloud |... ) and this arbitrary boundary is used as a pretext to run off a press release.
Every few years, some new area of space is entered, new science is done, etc. You would prefer NASA not inform the public about what it does with their money? Really, they should have just kept all the pictures and data and stuff to themselves all along, who cares about Neptune and stuff anyhow...
If these things were cheap enough, we could use them to power our cars! (fat chance, the plutonium in them makes them highly appealing to all sorts of bad people)
"I'm sure in 1985 plutonium is available on every corner drugstore..." -- Doc Brown (1955)
Since all the exclusion did was hurt nVidia in sales for people who stay loyal to AMD and refuse to go intel just for SLi. Allowing SLi on AMD boards will boost nVidias sales a bit.
It works both ways. nVidia has loyal customers, too, and with CPUs and mobos so much cheaper than a good GPU these days, there are plenty of people who buy the rest of the system to go with the GPU rather than the other way around.
In any case, more choices are good for everyone, customers most of all.
Senators and Representatives going after Apple, now Sony, aren't there other goddamned things they should be working on?
There are, and they are. A government, being composed of many, many individuals, is capable of working on many, many things at the same time. Thus, an argument along the lines of "isn't there something else they should be working on" is always utterly moronic...
why is the PSN outage any of the (US?) government's business?
Why would you even question that? Preventing citizens from being harmed or abused by others, whether they be foreign armies, domestic criminals, or large corporations skirting or possibly even breaking the law, is precisely the most fundamental function of any government. There are regulations dictating how a corporation must handle user's information precisely because of this, and there's good reason to believe Sony ain't following them at the moment. Are you suggesting governments should just ignore their job and not enforce laws or address threats to their citizens merely because it's a corporation that did them rather than an individual or a foreign power, and therefore somehow above the law?
However, he is, by no means, "the government", nor does a single letter from a freshman senator constitute "attention from the government".
Actually, it does. "The government" is a collection of people doing various jobs paid for out of the Treasury. He is one of those people, currently a member of the legislative branch of the government. Getting attention from any of those people is therefore "attention from the government".
Even if Sony offered a pay service, the same would have likely happened. I don't see the validity in your complaint.
Most people assume that if they pay a company for a service, at least some of the money they pay goes to improving the service. If your assumption is that Sony's service would be identical regardless of whether you paid for it or not (and you would have to assume that for your post to be at all logical), that's awfully cynical of you. Not that you're necessarily wrong, but it should be noted that most people aren't that cynical, and thus, do see the validity of the argument you're apparently not seeing the validity of.
...until we can access content, on AND offline, from any device...
Or from no device at all! A device shouldn't be necessary any more than being online should be, amirite?;)
But seriously, having "offline" as a requirement is going to look like a seriously antiquated idea very soon. Requiring an online connection will be as limiting to a computing device as having an atmosphere is a limiting requirement to an airplane. Sure, there are places a plane can't fly, due to the fact that it require airflow over the wings -- but most people can live with a device that simply works everywhere on Earth, even if these are other parts of the universe from which it would be useless.
...since we can call elections at just about any time...
Which is just brilliant! I wish the US would upgrade its democracy to include some of the features of the many, many much more democratic nations around the world these days. If only the same people who think the Bible is the word of God (idolatry at its worst -- take a book written by men and act like it's infallible or has other god-like attributes) didn't also think the US Constitution is likewise sacred holy writ... and they didn't form half the electorate.
As if they did something they didn't have to do, went above and beyond what was expected of them?
No.
Rewarding people for being honest only validates the actions of those who stole.
No it doesn't. Do you believe frequent customer rewards validate the actions of those who shop with your competitor? Is it not possible to show appreciation to anyone without suggesting they're somehow supermen for being appreciated? You can't appreciate someone unless they're somehow exceptional? Gods forbid ordinary people be treated like they're appreciated by the people around them. That might lead to all kinds of horribly things, like...
It suggests that dishonesty is the status quo, and that honesty is some self-sacrificing act of heroism.
This is so patently absurd it's ridiculous. "I'm sorry, you're not a paragon of heroism. I can't show you the slightest appreciation for anything you do, or civilization might come to an end..." Please...
Reminds me of a local convenience store/gas station near where I lived what was severely damaged by a tornado. It was bad enough they had to close the place, and eventually tear it down and rebuild it. When they went to close it, they found out no one had the key. It had been lost, possibly years before, and no one ever noticed as its one of those places that's open 24/7 regardless of holidays. They eventually had to get a locksmith...
When people realize they can get away with something they shouldn't do, many people do take advantage of the situation.
Most, however, do not. If the majority were like that, looting would occur 24/7 even without blackouts or disasters, given that there aren't enough police in the world to stop them, and they'd pretty much all get away with it if they were the majority.
What makes police necessary is that there are people like that. What makes police effective rather than a futile gesture is that these people are the minority.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Hitler was no more evil than some of the people I've met in life, he just happened to head one of the most hard working and wondrously efficient nations in history. Germany, Japan, the US... there are certain nations you just don't want anyone evil at the head of, given their capabilities, resources, and sheer industriousness. Not that you want anyone evil at the head of any nation, mind you, but it's much less a problem for everyone if its Elbonia (well, everyone except for the Elbonians, of course).
The only way this works politically, however, is if they took lots of pictures and video of the corpse as proof of identity. I expect those to come out before long.
Um, why? Do you really think rumors of his continued survival, robbing him of any martyr status, would hurt rather than help US interests? The best possible result the US could hope for is for him to actually be dead, but no one actually believes it.
Really, most of the people in the middle east didn't give a damn about the US, until Osama bin Laden hatched a plan to get the US to invade a middle east country so he could rally people against them. We have this on tape, by the way. Of course, we're not gullible enough to do exact what the enemy wants us to do, right? /eyeroll
The purpose of the Iraq mission was to establish a counter-balance to Iran.
Sorry, which week was that?
(For those with short memory spans, or just weren't around at the time, there were about a dozen weeks around the time we invaded Iraq during which, each week, the President or a member of his administration articulated a new and distinctly different reason for the Iraq invasion from the previous week's line. Eventually they settled on the one that polled the best...)
49% of us *are* separate from our government. It only takes 51% to vote our leaders in.
Nope. In the US, you do not require a majority of votes to win. In most elections, you just require more votes than anyone else got, even if that's, say, only 39% of the votes (with the remaining 61% split between multiple other candidates). In US presidential elections, you don't even need that, since US presidents aren't elected by popular vote. (A popular vote is held, but the results are meaningless, or Gore would have been president in 2001, as the man who won the popular vote.) US presidents just need more votes than anyone else from members of the Electoral College.
What the helicopter failure during the Iran hostage rescue attempt also suspicious? Honestly, the more I hear about these kinds of operations, the most I'm starting to think it would be suspicious if a helicopter didn't break! These things apparently fall out of the sky right and left!
As for failing to capture him alive, understand that capturing something alive is virtually impossible without their cooperation. They're soldiers, not gods, and this isn't some Hollywood action flick where the heroes can just do anything the script writer thinks would be cool. If someone would rather die that be captured, your odds of capturing them are effectively zilch, I don't care who you are, how well trained you are, or what equipment you have.
They didn't haul him back on foot, they had multiple helicopters. (They do that, since, you know, helicopters have a bad habit of failing...) They may very well have had a Muslim chaplain on the ship -- they're rarer than Christian chaplains but not unheard of. And if people choose to believe he's not dead, this serves US interests far better than making a martyr out of him.
President Obama said "no Americans were injured" so I would assume it was only a minor hit.
Given his occupation, you should assume President Obama was lying.
Common misunderstanding by people who think they know what "skepticism" means, but actually don't. Believing a particular statement is false is every bit as non-skeptical an attitude as believing it is true. A skeptic does not believe either. Pardon me from being pedantic, but I'm always annoyed by the legions of incredibly gullible people who call themselves skeptical because of all their unfounded beliefs (this is false, that is false, yada yada).
The real problem with software patents is not the fundamental idea of software patents...
Many of us here would disagree with that. Specifically...
The method that an algorithm uses may be patentable.
As long as this statement is true, they're something fundamentally wrong with the idea of software patents. The discovery of a new algorithm is precisely that: a scientific (specifically mathematics) discovery. Such a thing should, never, ever be patentable under any circumstances at all whatsoever, period.
If someone doesn't understand English, they should still be able to look at a math function and understand it.
Only if they understand mathematics. Since you obviously don't (beyond some rudimentary basics, no doubt), this would not be the case for you.
Considering how thin it is, a very, very long time. They're far more likely to run into something bigger first...
...11 significant figures is very suspiciously precise in the miles figure.
Not really. The precision by which we delivered these spacecraft to their respective flybys was breathtaking. At the time they did their planetary flybys, NASA could have told you, at a given point in time, how many yards it was between Voyager and the JPL lobby. To be able to tell you accurately to the nearest mile today is, well, bloody remarkable, but to be expected. The whole problem with the "Voyager Anomaly" (recently solved) was only known about because we know their positions so precisely, we can detect how a bit of stray operating heat has altered their course over the years.
Every two years or so Voyager \d crosses the (heliosheath | heliopause | bow shock | edge of the cosmic wind | edge of the Oort cloud | ... ) and this arbitrary boundary is used as a pretext to run off a press release.
Every few years, some new area of space is entered, new science is done, etc. You would prefer NASA not inform the public about what it does with their money? Really, they should have just kept all the pictures and data and stuff to themselves all along, who cares about Neptune and stuff anyhow...
If these things were cheap enough, we could use them to power our cars! (fat chance, the plutonium in them makes them highly appealing to all sorts of bad people)
"I'm sure in 1985 plutonium is available on every corner drugstore..." -- Doc Brown (1955)
The future sure ain't what it used to be...
Wow. What remarkable conciseness. So much wrong in one small paragraph, it'd take a book to explain it all...
Since all the exclusion did was hurt nVidia in sales for people who stay loyal to AMD and refuse to go intel just for SLi. Allowing SLi on AMD boards will boost nVidias sales a bit.
It works both ways. nVidia has loyal customers, too, and with CPUs and mobos so much cheaper than a good GPU these days, there are plenty of people who buy the rest of the system to go with the GPU rather than the other way around.
In any case, more choices are good for everyone, customers most of all.
Indeed. Novell isn't going away. They just have new owners.
Senators and Representatives going after Apple, now Sony, aren't there other goddamned things they should be working on?
There are, and they are. A government, being composed of many, many individuals, is capable of working on many, many things at the same time. Thus, an argument along the lines of "isn't there something else they should be working on" is always utterly moronic...
why is the PSN outage any of the (US?) government's business?
Why would you even question that? Preventing citizens from being harmed or abused by others, whether they be foreign armies, domestic criminals, or large corporations skirting or possibly even breaking the law, is precisely the most fundamental function of any government. There are regulations dictating how a corporation must handle user's information precisely because of this, and there's good reason to believe Sony ain't following them at the moment. Are you suggesting governments should just ignore their job and not enforce laws or address threats to their citizens merely because it's a corporation that did them rather than an individual or a foreign power, and therefore somehow above the law?
However, he is, by no means, "the government", nor does a single letter from a freshman senator constitute "attention from the government".
Actually, it does. "The government" is a collection of people doing various jobs paid for out of the Treasury. He is one of those people, currently a member of the legislative branch of the government. Getting attention from any of those people is therefore "attention from the government".
Even if Sony offered a pay service, the same would have likely happened. I don't see the validity in your complaint.
Most people assume that if they pay a company for a service, at least some of the money they pay goes to improving the service. If your assumption is that Sony's service would be identical regardless of whether you paid for it or not (and you would have to assume that for your post to be at all logical), that's awfully cynical of you. Not that you're necessarily wrong, but it should be noted that most people aren't that cynical, and thus, do see the validity of the argument you're apparently not seeing the validity of.
...until we can access content, on AND offline, from any device...
Or from no device at all! A device shouldn't be necessary any more than being online should be, amirite? ;)
But seriously, having "offline" as a requirement is going to look like a seriously antiquated idea very soon. Requiring an online connection will be as limiting to a computing device as having an atmosphere is a limiting requirement to an airplane. Sure, there are places a plane can't fly, due to the fact that it require airflow over the wings -- but most people can live with a device that simply works everywhere on Earth, even if these are other parts of the universe from which it would be useless.
...since we can call elections at just about any time...
Which is just brilliant! I wish the US would upgrade its democracy to include some of the features of the many, many much more democratic nations around the world these days. If only the same people who think the Bible is the word of God (idolatry at its worst -- take a book written by men and act like it's infallible or has other god-like attributes) didn't also think the US Constitution is likewise sacred holy writ... and they didn't form half the electorate.
We should reward people for being honest now?
Yes.
As if they did something they didn't have to do, went above and beyond what was expected of them?
No.
Rewarding people for being honest only validates the actions of those who stole.
No it doesn't. Do you believe frequent customer rewards validate the actions of those who shop with your competitor? Is it not possible to show appreciation to anyone without suggesting they're somehow supermen for being appreciated? You can't appreciate someone unless they're somehow exceptional? Gods forbid ordinary people be treated like they're appreciated by the people around them. That might lead to all kinds of horribly things, like...
It suggests that dishonesty is the status quo, and that honesty is some self-sacrificing act of heroism.
This is so patently absurd it's ridiculous. "I'm sorry, you're not a paragon of heroism. I can't show you the slightest appreciation for anything you do, or civilization might come to an end..." Please...
Reminds me of a local convenience store/gas station near where I lived what was severely damaged by a tornado. It was bad enough they had to close the place, and eventually tear it down and rebuild it. When they went to close it, they found out no one had the key. It had been lost, possibly years before, and no one ever noticed as its one of those places that's open 24/7 regardless of holidays. They eventually had to get a locksmith...
When people realize they can get away with something they shouldn't do, many people do take advantage of the situation.
Most, however, do not. If the majority were like that, looting would occur 24/7 even without blackouts or disasters, given that there aren't enough police in the world to stop them, and they'd pretty much all get away with it if they were the majority.
What makes police necessary is that there are people like that. What makes police effective rather than a futile gesture is that these people are the minority.