Sony has gear at all quality levels. My buddy's $200 Sony DVD player was crap...he replaced it three years ago with a $400 model which is still going strong.
BTW, expecting a DVD player to play MP3s is sort of ridiculous. Sure they can, but it's kind of a worthless feature. My Pioneer Elite Series DVD player doesn't play MP3s either...but it plays CDs with amazing clarity and DVDs with great colour and without washing out reds or greens.
Sony, btw, may not have the best HDTV tube system anymore...but they did have the FIRST one. My same buddy, Sony whore that he is, bought the 40" XBR three years ago and it's still the best overall TV I've seen.
I will agree that Sony's quality is somewhat elusive at times. A lot of times you're left wondering "where's the beef?"
I have had both a cellular phone AND a mobile device that had CompactFlash slots. Neither was bulky or unusable. In fact, the beauty of the CF slot in my old Toshiba was that it served double duty with my ethernet card and a barcode scanner. You can't stick an ethernet port out one side of a securedigital card.
Ah, Slashdot. Where simplifying a post so as not to confuse John Q. Playstation owner is like drafting a Requesting for Insults. Yes, yes, AC Troll, I do know the goddamn difference between a tool and an API. This was the POINT too what I was saying. I have worked as a software engineer for six years. Perhaps this is why I can afford the luxury of a free slashdot account, and you cannot.
See, when an API gives you trouble, a good IDE will help you use it more efficiently. The more esoteric the API, the more help a good IDE can provide, by offering a visual reference, or by automating repetetive tasks, or by completely abstracting the API with a framework. Some APIs are nothing but a list of several hundred poorly named commands, and even a simple browser tool can help organize, describe, and group together calls. I used such a tool to build a bridge to various Windows API calls at my last job...it allowed my coworkers to do things in WSH, Visual Basic and ASP that otherwise would have either taken thousands of lines of bug ridden code or that would have eaten the processor.
Don't mock people for semantics, man. It's a ridiculously antisocial practice.
Alright. Cute rant, but remember this: the reason Sony gear is such high quality is because they put a lot of money into research, design, and development. To recoup said monies, they have chosen to make their modestly priced devices compatible only with their own modestly priced accessories. The reason they can price so modestly is that they know they've got that tie in. A Cybershot would probably be another $50 or more if it used SD...and you'd probably look to Fuji or Canon.
In this, Sony's a lot like Apple. They spend time designing things, rather than just doing what everybody else does, and in turn their prices are a bit higher. And in designing them, they look to make really dramatic choices. Like using a single removable media for EVERY device, from camcorders to MP3 players to (I think) the PlayStation itself. Bash Memory Stick all you like, but when it first showed up it was faster than Compactflash and more durable than Smartmedia. Nowadays, you can't buy a Sony device that doesn't have a Memory Stick port in it somewhere, which is pretty cool. In the same time, competing camera and media companies have created no less than 4 different media types, including MMC/Secure Digital and xD. Sony's dogged devotion to Memory Stick has made things easy for customers and made them a pretty penny...there's NO reason for them to switch formats. Do you think that they care about using a standard medium? If they did that, nobody would buy it from them! They have the clout to create a defacto standard, and they're gonna do it.
Personally, I agree with you on Atrac3, but since some of my favorite artists are on Sony or Arista, I'm hoping instead that Apple adds Atrac3 support to the iPod. Because Sony is NOT going to change their mind -- nor should they, because as you list their failures, I could make an equally large list of successes. Things like the Trinitron tube, the Walkman, the compact disc, and the goddamn Playstation.
Well, the reason there are so many games for the PS2 is that good third party tools have been developed for it. Your favorite game's best features owe their quality to Metrowerks, not Sony.
I once did some graphic design work in return for a windshield for my 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle. The '73 Windshiled is a hard to find part that nobody will ship. In exchange for resizing and indexing some images the guy took at Airfest, I got the winshield shipped in a ginganic box...about $160 for the shield and something like $200 shipping.
I also once traded a year of hosting for a Sony WEGA TV, and six months for a new guitar.
For one thing, it seems this guy is a student worker of some kind...either a computer assistant, a work study kid, or some other sort of paying-for-my-education-with-work kind of employee. Which means if he says no, there's a good chance that he'll lose his workstudy job, and thus be unable to pay his tuition. At the worst case, there's a chance you'll piss off your professor...and first hand I can tell you that having professors who like you is more important than good grades, honors projects or stipends. Being Professor X's golden boy could mean glowing recommendations, exciting research projects, and in some cases scholarship awards (my wife got a few hundred dollars from one of these, recommended by a professor who loved her to death).
For another, it's not like a professor asking a student worker to digitize his notes is anything new. A lot of my friends have been asked by their professors to type up notes in the worst henscratch imaginable, to make transparencies, to proofread papers and so on. I even had a professor ask me to write a note for each student in his three classes giving permission to photocopy one of his "famous essays" on logic design, which he then signed.
If the problem is just volume and feasibility of getting 100 handwritten pages scanned in, you should say so. It shouldn't be, though. From the "minute per page thing," I assume you're using the scanner incorrectly...turning off color and reducing the resolution for a massive speed boost. 150 dpi grayscale should be plenty for pencil, it'll keep file sizes down and keep your machine from chugging away when compressing/OCRing things. Speaking of which, do these documents really need to be digitized to be searchable, or merely digitized so the prof can put them on his website for download? It's probably only the latter...but if it is the former, I suggest brushing up on your typing skills. You've just become a stenographer.
The company I used to work for processed newspaper ads into html, thus repurposing static content without the graphic ad designers having to learn anything new or do any additional work, which they weren't willing to do. Most of our clients saw the internet as a necessary evil that was probably robbing them of subscribers, but that they had to have some small piece of, so it wouldn't have been worth more than a few measly dollars.
We converted these by sending the scanned tif and gif files to a US company which outsourced the creation of the new graphics to India and/or Pakistan (it used employees in both to hedge bets against political instability). Cost to us was something like a dollar or so for straight cut and paste graphics conversions, and $5 for more "artistic" work, adding full colour clip art and the like. We estimated it took them about two hours for this...which means the outsourcing company took in about $2.50 per hour. No word on what the "artists" received.
Incidentally, at one point they replaced this expensive, manual process for most ads with a simple resizing program. It wasn't searchable, but nobody cared too much...and it saved so much money.
I know Estes had an X-wing model...a star destroyer too, i think.
Anyhow, there are plenty of other jet engines available for hobbiests these days, especially for models in 1/12 and 1/8 scale. My dad has a 1/8 scale F4 Phantom (the plane he used to maintain in Vietnam)...it's really cool to watch him fly it around, especially since at 1/8 scale the thing is still 7 foot long, but it's so hard to fly a jet from thumb controls with no idea what the wind is up to that 4 out of 5 times you wind up crashing. Which gets to be expensive to repair -- that 7 feet is mostly balsa with a thin aluminum superstructure. Imagine having to glue together a rib cage, and you'll understand the problem.
Nobody can surrender to Bin Laden. He's a terrorist, not a general. Living paranoid does more to help him seed terror with the slightest action than it does to help our country find him. Ask yourself: has the Patriot act made you feel more secure to be living in the US?
If you want to make a law about not marrying your cat, go ahead. It'll probably stick...I doubt even the ACLU would fight for beastiality. But this is hardly the same as making a law trying to establish as abstract a concept as marriage just to appease some homophobes and reactionaries who can't get over the fact that the institution of marriage doesn't match some gothic ideal (and never has; witness the countless marriages of convenience, marriages for money, shotgun marriages, marriages that are essentially bribes, etc). Certianly it's foolish to make an amendment out of this; the first amendment to actively deny Americans a right since the well accepted, highly successful 18th.
And of course you can investigate minorities. But not for BEING minorities. That's retarded. A guy in the paper today got arrested for selling marijuana. He lived down the street from me, I didn't know him. We're the same colour, came from the came background, have similar educations and similar politics. But I don't even SMOKE marijuana. I don't think the feds should be allowed carte blanche to investigate me just because I have a similar background -- do you? Or is it "okay" because so many white college boys sell marijuana, so that's the only way to catch 'em?
Uh, yeah. Their political views fall on the "Civil Liberties" side of the aisle.
If you choose to ally yourself with a political party that believes in legislating away people's civil freedoms, then I could definitely see you upset by them. I am -- or was, registered Dem this year to vote in the primary -- a registered Republican. I've also been a member of the ACLU for several years. See, the ACLU is a non-government agency working within the system to prevent government tyranny. Yes, when a "conservative" (and I use the term loosely...Bush & co are obviously neither state's rights conservatives nor are they fiscal conservatives) government is in power, they'll have to fight conservative rulings, and thus appear liberal. But they're also there to fight liberal rulings under a liberal government. Want to know who's going to protect you from forced multiculturalism or the removal of your right to free and open assembly or religion? Two guesses.
But remember: the ACLU is there to help their members regardless of political affiliation. They stepped in at my college to prevent the heavily liberal student union from preventing distribution of the "offensive" right wing newspaper in student government kiosks. This same newsletter had written many articles critical of the ACLU's plotical stance.
Not really. Especially not since you can buy and sell whatever the fuck you want regardless of a social security number.
I don't see why people persist in finding meaning in a bullshit allegory of the fall of rome written by a deranged disciple in the first century. Oh yeah, that's right: because people are weak and they like the idea that some benevolent force is guiding their chaotic lives. Tracking the events of Revelations is on par with thinking "Helter Skelter" was a metaphor for the coming race war: it's dangerous, idiotic superstition.
Of course, the assumption here is that all terrorists are of middle eastern descent, visit there often, etc.
Terrorists need not fit your depiction of them. Shit, we have eco-terrorists in this country, and radical militia men, and god-fearing christians bombing abortion doctors. None of these is arab. Most of them are white. They probably keep to themselves...you can't give somebody a score for being a LONER, can you?
All this stupid database is is twenty first century profiling. And it will fail to catch the next batch of terrorists.
Personally, I don't consider the "right to not be in a database" an essential liberty, mostly because I assumed I didn't have it anyway. Shit, you can get my name, address, annual income, and a bunch of details about my house for free on NY State's geo database website. You have to do some work to process it, but the fact is this: if you see me walk my dog and enter my house, you're about three clicks away from finding anything you want about me.
Ergo, I endeavour to live my life without any secrets. That way, I don't have to act surprised or indignant when they're exposed.
The day that accurate futurables are predicted in Fear Factory songs is the day I complete my moon rocket.
Nobody is going to get "arrested" for being in a database. Questioned, maybe. And if you act suspicious, or resist the questioning, detained, possibly. But not arrested: no charges files, no trial to be held. Granted, the P.A. allows the government to hold you indefinitely, but the ACLU and others including the supreme court are trying their damnedest to get that repealed. Or did you believe Bill O'reilly when he said the ACLU was nothing more than an agent of the secularists trying to destroy American spirituality?
Furthermore, I don't remember where the government had any authority in saying who can get hired and who can get a loan. In fact, if you've never been convicted of a crime, there's nothing the government can do to you in these circumstances. So don't commit any damn crimes! It's not hard.
I heard from somebody the other day, "yes, but our torture was only psychological. They're doing much worse to our guys." Fuck is that? We're aiming to be the lesser evil now? Here's a radical idea: why don't we aim to be not evil at all?
My wife's late granddad was a soldier posted at a POW camp in WWII. They were so kind to their prisoners! He looked after his german wards as if they were his own men, fed them well, exercised with them. They made him a brass sculpture at craft time in appreciation of his hard work. They taught him German.
Of course, these were men from Auschwitz. Men who had killed millions of jews. Her grandfather knew this, and thought it was deplorable...he wrote at lengths about it in his journal, which he claimed he had lost but we found hidden in his closet after he died.
These were murderers, genociders -- and he treated them as if they were his brothers. Which, being of German dissent, they probably were.
And that's the key, isn't it. It's easy to be kind to somebody who looks like you. It's not so easy when they're of a completely alien culture, speaking a strange language with no resemblence to your own, with a culture that is vastly different. You start to realize, hey, look, they're ashamed of being held by our women. Hey, let's put Cpl. Jones underwear on them. Hey, let's make them jack off, I think that's against their religion, right?
And so it goes. Torture becomes okay, because they're so wacky. I'm sad that t's grandad passed away, but very glad he never had to see this. It's a mockery of the pride he took in his job fifty years ago...a mockery of the American spirit of tolerance and strength.
Well, yeah. If the system didn't pick up known terrorists, than obviously, it should be retooled until it works. That's elementary stuff, man. If I wrote an applescript to find every AAC file on my hard drive by led zepplin, and it didn't find one, I'd have to rewrite it, wouldn't I?
You make it seem like basic unit testing is some kind of marketting gimmick.
Of course, for unbiased statistics and thoughtful debate on Marijuana, we should always look to NORML.
Jesus, how about some peer review, man? What do the DOH and Johns Hopkins say about the legalization of marijuana? Or are we to ignore their numbers because they're in league with the prohibtionists?
We'll never know...the current regime is slowly working its way back to Taliban levels of gender based repression. But I'll bet you never saw that on Fox News.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony has gear at all quality levels. My buddy's $200 Sony DVD player was crap...he replaced it three years ago with a $400 model which is still going strong.
BTW, expecting a DVD player to play MP3s is sort of ridiculous. Sure they can, but it's kind of a worthless feature. My Pioneer Elite Series DVD player doesn't play MP3s either...but it plays CDs with amazing clarity and DVDs with great colour and without washing out reds or greens.
Sony, btw, may not have the best HDTV tube system anymore...but they did have the FIRST one. My same buddy, Sony whore that he is, bought the 40" XBR three years ago and it's still the best overall TV I've seen.
I will agree that Sony's quality is somewhat elusive at times. A lot of times you're left wondering "where's the beef?"
Slashdot decides who lives and who dies.
dasmegabyte, 3
anonymous dickhead who's full of himself, -1
I'm very proud of your access to the PS2 dev manuals. I'm sure your whole IRC channel is impressed.
I have had both a cellular phone AND a mobile device that had CompactFlash slots. Neither was bulky or unusable. In fact, the beauty of the CF slot in my old Toshiba was that it served double duty with my ethernet card and a barcode scanner. You can't stick an ethernet port out one side of a securedigital card.
Ah, Slashdot. Where simplifying a post so as not to confuse John Q. Playstation owner is like drafting a Requesting for Insults. Yes, yes, AC Troll, I do know the goddamn difference between a tool and an API. This was the POINT too what I was saying. I have worked as a software engineer for six years. Perhaps this is why I can afford the luxury of a free slashdot account, and you cannot.
See, when an API gives you trouble, a good IDE will help you use it more efficiently. The more esoteric the API, the more help a good IDE can provide, by offering a visual reference, or by automating repetetive tasks, or by completely abstracting the API with a framework. Some APIs are nothing but a list of several hundred poorly named commands, and even a simple browser tool can help organize, describe, and group together calls. I used such a tool to build a bridge to various Windows API calls at my last job...it allowed my coworkers to do things in WSH, Visual Basic and ASP that otherwise would have either taken thousands of lines of bug ridden code or that would have eaten the processor.
Don't mock people for semantics, man. It's a ridiculously antisocial practice.
You mean, like that guy in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey? I always wondered what his deal was.
Alright. Cute rant, but remember this: the reason Sony gear is such high quality is because they put a lot of money into research, design, and development. To recoup said monies, they have chosen to make their modestly priced devices compatible only with their own modestly priced accessories. The reason they can price so modestly is that they know they've got that tie in. A Cybershot would probably be another $50 or more if it used SD...and you'd probably look to Fuji or Canon.
In this, Sony's a lot like Apple. They spend time designing things, rather than just doing what everybody else does, and in turn their prices are a bit higher. And in designing them, they look to make really dramatic choices. Like using a single removable media for EVERY device, from camcorders to MP3 players to (I think) the PlayStation itself. Bash Memory Stick all you like, but when it first showed up it was faster than Compactflash and more durable than Smartmedia. Nowadays, you can't buy a Sony device that doesn't have a Memory Stick port in it somewhere, which is pretty cool. In the same time, competing camera and media companies have created no less than 4 different media types, including MMC/Secure Digital and xD. Sony's dogged devotion to Memory Stick has made things easy for customers and made them a pretty penny...there's NO reason for them to switch formats. Do you think that they care about using a standard medium? If they did that, nobody would buy it from them! They have the clout to create a defacto standard, and they're gonna do it.
Personally, I agree with you on Atrac3, but since some of my favorite artists are on Sony or Arista, I'm hoping instead that Apple adds Atrac3 support to the iPod. Because Sony is NOT going to change their mind -- nor should they, because as you list their failures, I could make an equally large list of successes. Things like the Trinitron tube, the Walkman, the compact disc, and the goddamn Playstation.
Well, the reason there are so many games for the PS2 is that good third party tools have been developed for it. Your favorite game's best features owe their quality to Metrowerks, not Sony.
I once did some graphic design work in return for a windshield for my 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle. The '73 Windshiled is a hard to find part that nobody will ship. In exchange for resizing and indexing some images the guy took at Airfest, I got the winshield shipped in a ginganic box...about $160 for the shield and something like $200 shipping.
I also once traded a year of hosting for a Sony WEGA TV, and six months for a new guitar.
Unlike everybody else here, I disagree.
For one thing, it seems this guy is a student worker of some kind...either a computer assistant, a work study kid, or some other sort of paying-for-my-education-with-work kind of employee. Which means if he says no, there's a good chance that he'll lose his workstudy job, and thus be unable to pay his tuition. At the worst case, there's a chance you'll piss off your professor...and first hand I can tell you that having professors who like you is more important than good grades, honors projects or stipends. Being Professor X's golden boy could mean glowing recommendations, exciting research projects, and in some cases scholarship awards (my wife got a few hundred dollars from one of these, recommended by a professor who loved her to death).
For another, it's not like a professor asking a student worker to digitize his notes is anything new. A lot of my friends have been asked by their professors to type up notes in the worst henscratch imaginable, to make transparencies, to proofread papers and so on. I even had a professor ask me to write a note for each student in his three classes giving permission to photocopy one of his "famous essays" on logic design, which he then signed.
If the problem is just volume and feasibility of getting 100 handwritten pages scanned in, you should say so. It shouldn't be, though. From the "minute per page thing," I assume you're using the scanner incorrectly...turning off color and reducing the resolution for a massive speed boost. 150 dpi grayscale should be plenty for pencil, it'll keep file sizes down and keep your machine from chugging away when compressing/OCRing things. Speaking of which, do these documents really need to be digitized to be searchable, or merely digitized so the prof can put them on his website for download? It's probably only the latter...but if it is the former, I suggest brushing up on your typing skills. You've just become a stenographer.
The company I used to work for processed newspaper ads into html, thus repurposing static content without the graphic ad designers having to learn anything new or do any additional work, which they weren't willing to do. Most of our clients saw the internet as a necessary evil that was probably robbing them of subscribers, but that they had to have some small piece of, so it wouldn't have been worth more than a few measly dollars.
We converted these by sending the scanned tif and gif files to a US company which outsourced the creation of the new graphics to India and/or Pakistan (it used employees in both to hedge bets against political instability). Cost to us was something like a dollar or so for straight cut and paste graphics conversions, and $5 for more "artistic" work, adding full colour clip art and the like. We estimated it took them about two hours for this...which means the outsourcing company took in about $2.50 per hour. No word on what the "artists" received.
Incidentally, at one point they replaced this expensive, manual process for most ads with a simple resizing program. It wasn't searchable, but nobody cared too much...and it saved so much money.
I say we toast the cast of Enterprize with some Iocaine powder.
Good idea. I'll call Mandy Patinkin and see if he's available to reprise his role as Grand Negus Zex.
I know Estes had an X-wing model...a star destroyer too, i think.
Anyhow, there are plenty of other jet engines available for hobbiests these days, especially for models in 1/12 and 1/8 scale. My dad has a 1/8 scale F4 Phantom (the plane he used to maintain in Vietnam)...it's really cool to watch him fly it around, especially since at 1/8 scale the thing is still 7 foot long, but it's so hard to fly a jet from thumb controls with no idea what the wind is up to that 4 out of 5 times you wind up crashing. Which gets to be expensive to repair -- that 7 feet is mostly balsa with a thin aluminum superstructure. Imagine having to glue together a rib cage, and you'll understand the problem.
Not with a propeller, no. That's an impulse engine. For a warp capable model, you'd need one of those little jet motors.
Been hucking your Rubick's Cube at your brother again, have you?
Nobody can surrender to Bin Laden. He's a terrorist, not a general. Living paranoid does more to help him seed terror with the slightest action than it does to help our country find him. Ask yourself: has the Patriot act made you feel more secure to be living in the US?
If you want to make a law about not marrying your cat, go ahead. It'll probably stick...I doubt even the ACLU would fight for beastiality. But this is hardly the same as making a law trying to establish as abstract a concept as marriage just to appease some homophobes and reactionaries who can't get over the fact that the institution of marriage doesn't match some gothic ideal (and never has; witness the countless marriages of convenience, marriages for money, shotgun marriages, marriages that are essentially bribes, etc). Certianly it's foolish to make an amendment out of this; the first amendment to actively deny Americans a right since the well accepted, highly successful 18th.
And of course you can investigate minorities. But not for BEING minorities. That's retarded. A guy in the paper today got arrested for selling marijuana. He lived down the street from me, I didn't know him. We're the same colour, came from the came background, have similar educations and similar politics. But I don't even SMOKE marijuana. I don't think the feds should be allowed carte blanche to investigate me just because I have a similar background -- do you? Or is it "okay" because so many white college boys sell marijuana, so that's the only way to catch 'em?
Uh, yeah. Their political views fall on the "Civil Liberties" side of the aisle.
If you choose to ally yourself with a political party that believes in legislating away people's civil freedoms, then I could definitely see you upset by them. I am -- or was, registered Dem this year to vote in the primary -- a registered Republican. I've also been a member of the ACLU for several years. See, the ACLU is a non-government agency working within the system to prevent government tyranny. Yes, when a "conservative" (and I use the term loosely...Bush & co are obviously neither state's rights conservatives nor are they fiscal conservatives) government is in power, they'll have to fight conservative rulings, and thus appear liberal. But they're also there to fight liberal rulings under a liberal government. Want to know who's going to protect you from forced multiculturalism or the removal of your right to free and open assembly or religion? Two guesses.
But remember: the ACLU is there to help their members regardless of political affiliation. They stepped in at my college to prevent the heavily liberal student union from preventing distribution of the "offensive" right wing newspaper in student government kiosks. This same newsletter had written many articles critical of the ACLU's plotical stance.
Not really. Especially not since you can buy and sell whatever the fuck you want regardless of a social security number.
I don't see why people persist in finding meaning in a bullshit allegory of the fall of rome written by a deranged disciple in the first century. Oh yeah, that's right: because people are weak and they like the idea that some benevolent force is guiding their chaotic lives. Tracking the events of Revelations is on par with thinking "Helter Skelter" was a metaphor for the coming race war: it's dangerous, idiotic superstition.
Of course, the assumption here is that all terrorists are of middle eastern descent, visit there often, etc.
Terrorists need not fit your depiction of them. Shit, we have eco-terrorists in this country, and radical militia men, and god-fearing christians bombing abortion doctors. None of these is arab. Most of them are white. They probably keep to themselves...you can't give somebody a score for being a LONER, can you?
All this stupid database is is twenty first century profiling. And it will fail to catch the next batch of terrorists.
ooh, good comeback.
Personally, I don't consider the "right to not be in a database" an essential liberty, mostly because I assumed I didn't have it anyway. Shit, you can get my name, address, annual income, and a bunch of details about my house for free on NY State's geo database website. You have to do some work to process it, but the fact is this: if you see me walk my dog and enter my house, you're about three clicks away from finding anything you want about me.
Ergo, I endeavour to live my life without any secrets. That way, I don't have to act surprised or indignant when they're exposed.
The day that accurate futurables are predicted in Fear Factory songs is the day I complete my moon rocket.
Nobody is going to get "arrested" for being in a database. Questioned, maybe. And if you act suspicious, or resist the questioning, detained, possibly. But not arrested: no charges files, no trial to be held. Granted, the P.A. allows the government to hold you indefinitely, but the ACLU and others including the supreme court are trying their damnedest to get that repealed. Or did you believe Bill O'reilly when he said the ACLU was nothing more than an agent of the secularists trying to destroy American spirituality?
Furthermore, I don't remember where the government had any authority in saying who can get hired and who can get a loan. In fact, if you've never been convicted of a crime, there's nothing the government can do to you in these circumstances. So don't commit any damn crimes! It's not hard.
I heard from somebody the other day, "yes, but our torture was only psychological. They're doing much worse to our guys." Fuck is that? We're aiming to be the lesser evil now? Here's a radical idea: why don't we aim to be not evil at all?
My wife's late granddad was a soldier posted at a POW camp in WWII. They were so kind to their prisoners! He looked after his german wards as if they were his own men, fed them well, exercised with them. They made him a brass sculpture at craft time in appreciation of his hard work. They taught him German.
Of course, these were men from Auschwitz. Men who had killed millions of jews. Her grandfather knew this, and thought it was deplorable...he wrote at lengths about it in his journal, which he claimed he had lost but we found hidden in his closet after he died.
These were murderers, genociders -- and he treated them as if they were his brothers. Which, being of German dissent, they probably were.
And that's the key, isn't it. It's easy to be kind to somebody who looks like you. It's not so easy when they're of a completely alien culture, speaking a strange language with no resemblence to your own, with a culture that is vastly different. You start to realize, hey, look, they're ashamed of being held by our women. Hey, let's put Cpl. Jones underwear on them. Hey, let's make them jack off, I think that's against their religion, right?
And so it goes. Torture becomes okay, because they're so wacky. I'm sad that t's grandad passed away, but very glad he never had to see this. It's a mockery of the pride he took in his job fifty years ago...a mockery of the American spirit of tolerance and strength.
Well, yeah. If the system didn't pick up known terrorists, than obviously, it should be retooled until it works. That's elementary stuff, man. If I wrote an applescript to find every AAC file on my hard drive by led zepplin, and it didn't find one, I'd have to rewrite it, wouldn't I?
You make it seem like basic unit testing is some kind of marketting gimmick.
Of course, for unbiased statistics and thoughtful debate on Marijuana, we should always look to NORML.
Jesus, how about some peer review, man? What do the DOH and Johns Hopkins say about the legalization of marijuana? Or are we to ignore their numbers because they're in league with the prohibtionists?
We'll never know...the current regime is slowly working its way back to Taliban levels of gender based repression. But I'll bet you never saw that on Fox News.