Finally, instead of having their filthy trained monkeys get their grubby hands all over the food the eat and throwing their feces all over the place, they can get nice, hygenic trained monkey brains-in-jars with clean robotic arms to do their chores.
In the immortal words of Abe Simpson, "Oh son! This monkey's gonna to change my life!... Mmm, I can't wait to eat that monkey!"
We are now pleased to announce the GNU Food Commune. It came to our attention that hackers don't only need software and hardware, but food as well.
Soon to come, the distributed effort of the GNU Housing Projects, so that all hackers have high-quality places to keep their computers without being subject to undue pressure to create evil non-GNU software to pay their bills.
However, individual generosity is failing to pay for these expanded benefits. To these ends, we are forming the GNS Party (GNS is Not Socialism) and the backup GNR movement (GNR is Not a Rebellion) which will resort to GNV methods (GNV is Non-Violent). Resistance is GNUtile. Support our Brave GNU/World!
Well, it seems we're indeed just arguing because of a difference of semantics (and, indeed, yours are more standard; I've been deliberately using the term "military" very broadly to try and make people think about it from another direction).
But I think that this belief in the seperation of military and government is a huge part of the problem. That idea is at the heart of my original post.
The politicians were not entirely to blame for the failure in Vietnam.
Outsiders can't just step into a civil war and "win" it.
Sure, the US military could have gone in and wiped out all military forces that opposed them at any one time. There would have been massive civilian casualties, resulting in greater support for communism. The people of North Vietnam believed in communism, as did many in South Vietnam. If you think the P.R. problems were bad back home, think of what they were in Vietnam.
There was no way to win. This type of situation is like a hydra, where cutting off one head causes two more to grow. The best outcome a military solution could achieve would be a police-state under US martial law.
Even worse was the fact that the real enemies weren't in Vietnam. Fighting them indirectly was hopeless, each side could pour weapons in indefinitely. Fighting them directly was impossible, as nuclear devastation would result.
Sure, the politicians made mistakes, but it was an utterly hopeless situation. The military could destroy any target given to them, but nothing was to be gained by such destruction.
Again false. Task Force Ranger was good to go within minutes after the original force returned home.
More confusion in the discussion. I meant within the larger context, they lost political support for future action.
In fact, casualties were predicted.
Yes, but they were underestimated. But I think perhaps that the estimates were based on support that they didn't have. They wanted, and should have had, close air support and tanks on standby.
Furthermore, an earlier plan involving the use of Delta Force resulted in the evaluation that they could just go in and pick up whoever they wanted off the streets. They later changed their minds, but that bold statement probably stuck in the politicians' mind. If that initial evaluation had been less optimistic, the abduction strategy would probably never have been considered.
It reminds me faintly of Dieppe (it's a Canadian thing, you might not recognize the reference, but it's an interesting example of a world-class fuckup), in the way that planned-on support was stripped away a bit at a time (though the results were very different).
At least one Ranger bled to death while their commander took 6 hours to beg in non-US UN armor, and another 6 for them to get there. Successful or not, there were some major screwups.
I didn't really know anything about the Somalia operation, I was going by what you said, which was that they aborted the mission. Now I've looked up a few concise histories of it, so I can work with facts other than the ones you mentioned.
It changes little. While they accomplished their narrowly defined objective (abducting a single man), they failed in their implied objective of retaining their capability to continue to act in the area, and the root objective of making it possible for the food shipments to be fairly distributed.
Let's not forget that this was in the context of a humanitarian mission, and killing Somali soldiers was something that they were supposed to keep to a minimum. Those high kill counts do not speak in their favor. Americans cause an amazingly high number of casualties during "humanitarian" missions.
All this aside from the inherent incompetence of ordering the abduction. If the military high command had adequately predicted the casualties that the operation would cost for the politicians, the order would surely not have been given.
They won the battle in such a way that it lost them the war. Claiming success is like applauding a chess player who says "I set out to capture his pawn and I did" when he is mated on the next move. The US also won many battles in Vietnam, and their kill ratios were very impressive despite low morale and drafted troops. Whenever they set a short-term objective, they accomplished it. They still lost the war, because they didn't know what the hell their objectives really were.
I don't blame the soldiers involved. They followed orders successfully. However, I do not agree with your seperation of the US military and the US political system. The US political system is the top-level command of the US military. I'm not disputing that the US military is very competent at certain, well-specified tasks, but rather pointing out that they rarely achieve a useful result. Because they lack clear, consistent motivation throughout the command structure, one level is always manufacturing disaster for another level.
The top-level command, the politicians, saw the "snatch and grab" as a disaster, while the ranked military officers saw it as a success (sure, we told you it would be easy, but we did it! Don't blame us!). How much more screwed up could that be?
Worst of all, at the very heart of the problem is that the situation in Somalia was partly caused by the US. Just as the US supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power, they supported one Somali warlord or another during the cold war to prevent the rise of communism in favor of violent anarchy. The politics that lead to the famine (Somalia being agriculturally self-sufficient to the point where it would normally have weathered the drought) were a direct result of earlier US (to the tune of nearly, if not more than, a billion dollars in aid to certain warlords) and Russian intervention. Furthermore, early in the relief efforts, the US military treated Aidid and other warlords as legitimate local authorities. They created the situation they meant to end, and ultimately defeated themselves.
Yay! Rah-Rah Rangers! They killed over a thousand Somalis with a 50:1 kill ratio!
Only... They aborted the mission.
the US military has a long track record of beating hell out of truly committed enemies.
On the contrary, the US military has a long track record of inflicting terrible losses on 3rd world countries without actually managing to do what they set out to do: the defence of South Vietnam, the abduction of a Somali warlord, humanitarian protection of Yugoslav civilians, just a few examples of the many complete and utter failures with high "collateral damage".
With one gruesome stunt, the Somalis stopped the immense American war machine cold. Now that is a successful operation.
No, basically, they're orbiting each other, just not in neat orbits.
I hate when someone says "basically" and then says something that one in a hundred people will understand. People understand the idea of orbiting a lot better than the physics underlying it.
...of the food chain. So I like to eat cannibals, preferably those who prefer cannibals. Lately I've been snacking on the less vital portions of my limbs.
I would never bother with vegans, they are lower on the chain than decay bacteria.
...that the universe is actually both infinite and constantly expanding, with little bangs producing universlets in any sufficiently empty space. The speed of light is an absolute limit for matter, energy, or information and so for any two sufficiently distant points, you will never see one from the other (or, of course, be able to reach it), with areas not bound by gravity moving apart from each other to become lost to each other forever (which is why the sky isn't dazzlingly bright at night from all the infinitely-old galaxies).
It explains why our local universe is young, without positing anything so absurd as a time before time or a limit to the space out there (if there's 3-dimensions, there has to be a wall, if there's 4-dimensions, what happens if you take a step "sideways"? again, there has to be either infinity or a wall, beyond which there has to be less than nothing; adding dimensions is just hand-waving, adding complexity until you come up with a model beyond your capacity to criticize).
The moral? Exploit away! Strip mine planets and eat stars for fuel. There's plenty more where that came from, and if you expand out in all directions simultaneously at nearly the speed of light, nothing can ever catch you and your species will last forever in the ever-expanding shell. Sit in a bounded area and eventually someone tougher and with a better survival instinct will evolve in the baby universe next door and come to wipe you out (or the stars will just burn out and you'll die because you were too lazy to go get some fresh stars).
We're in the infancy of our corner of the universe, and it's only going to get more interesting from here on out. Think of it, always something new, no end to the adventures on new worlds, a physical universe as infinite as mathematics. Get your immortality pill and hop a ride on a hydrogen scoop A.S.A.P.
O what a generous god who made our universe without end!
From what I've read about modern military history, the goal of war is not to kill people, it is to destroy the combat effectiveness of the enemy's forces.
This kind of thinking is the reason why the U.S. military can't beat a truly committed enemy. It doesn't help that their idea of "combat effectiveness" is hopelessly self-referential (combat effectiveness is the ability to reduce combat effectiveness of an enemy).
The goal of war is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. Even uneducated barbarians know that.
All kidding aside, war is a means, not a goal. Was is the way you get something you want when nothing else will work. Principles like "we should avoid civilian casualties" and "a tank is worth more than a handgun" are not absolute.
The U.S. military works from several basic assumptions that hamstring them in many situations (and are forced on them by the "CNN factor"): they are trying to help the civilians in the area, their enemy is an evil dictator whose people hate him, and they want the area to be peaceful. These assumptions often conflict with, and even contradict, the only possible logical purposes of their attacks, leading to confusion and apparent incompetence.
It is very dangerous to have such sweeping absolutes out in the open for all your enemies to see and exploit. People in more than one area that has not profited from their interaction with the U.S. have compared the American military, with their submarines, stealth planes, and nightfighting gear, to vampires. The analogy is a very appropriate one, not only because their strange-seeming motivations and their terrifying night-attack tactics, but because they are invulnerable to the normal, direct methods of attack and must be fought according to bizarre and seemingly arbitrary rules that make them curiously easy for most to ward off, if not kill.
However, with no chance of a seriously damaging defeat near home ground, the American military will doubtless remain complacently ignorant of how they are perceived, and in particular, how well their limitations are understood.
Nobody who goes through the trouble to join ICANN wants bad PR for the internet.
Having an.xxx domain is implicit approval of pornography as a normal and major part of the internet. Mucho bad PR. It's one thing to support freedom and say people can put whatever they want on a.com site, then you have culpable deniability "Sure, I hate what they're doing, but I support freedom of expression!", but officially recognizing and aiding the porn industry makes you part of it (in many eyes). Just imagine if the FCC designated a certain amount of radio bandwidth specifically for the broadcast of pornography; the public at large can't see much difference.
Having a.kids domain implies that the rest of the internet is inappropriate for children. Furthermore, when the.kids domain is abused (and it would be inevitable) it would make the internet look even worse.
Either way, it would mean bad PR and more calls for government interference.
The other problem is that all these places that have their great domain names as one of their biggest assets would have to move to the more appropriate TLDs and maybe take their chances on whether they can get a good name again.
"It was felt that having seperate.xxx and.kids TLDs would cause confusion due to an arbitrary division of overlapping interest areas."
"...kids like porn as much as anybody..."
"...we recommend that.net be used for bondage pages."
"We were very worried about misuse of the.kids TLD, such as the evil brainwashing of the Disney Corporation and various churches..."
"Misuse of the.xxx domain was a concern... we felt that it was highly likely to be used for bikini shots, beauty nudes, and soft-core pornography that doesn't even show penetration... the distinction between X-rated and XXX is not likely to be respected, and even mere R-rated material may be included..."
It should read, "All you geeks who got incredibly rich from IPO dollars should feel empowered and important after reading this..."
We apologize for this minor typo, and hope that this doesn't make any of you little people feel bad when you think of us slashdot people throwing big wads of Andover cash at each other.
We were like you once, before God recognized his Chosen people and raised us above the slime. You should be thankful that you don't have to deal with the terrible problem of what to do once you're rich beyond having to work. This man was one of the lucky ones, who learned that he could still make a difference in the world by selling an addictive intoxicant, and wasn't bound to a hopeless life of doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
That is exactly what I intended to do, and I was relying on the media portraying me as someone out to save the world. Now that they have been warned, they will not give me the good P.R. I require to purchase the restricted parts for that huge laser.
Drat, zounds, and bebother your meddlings!
One day we will meet again, my nemesis. One day...
I have no problem with the state gov'ts appointing senators and voting for the president. IMHO, this would work just fine, and would have preserved the power of the states so that "President" wouldn't be such an important role. It would also cut down on the average citzen's democratic responsibilities so they could focus more on making the correct choice of state government.
However, since the so-called "states" have become little more than provinces of the Federal State of America, with no power to secede from or directly control the federal government, it is unrealistic to speak of going back to this older way of thinking (unless everybody suddenly wakes up and says, "Hey, we had a pretty good system, why did we change it?" - unlikely!).
There's a very simple way to cure the Electoral College problem: allow electoral votes to be split into percent votes (IOW, split each vote into a hundred votes). The states can then be coerced into splitting the votes along the lines of the popular vote in the same manner that the feds force all the changes that aren't strictly constitutionally kosher (I'm sure the public would be behind it, and the constitution has always lost out to public opinion in the past). This would prevent the abuses you mentioned, since the feds would still control the number of E.C. votes handed to each state, according to the census.
This would not be a substantial loss of state sovereignity (that took place long ago), just a superficial one.
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True enough, but that doesn't make things better.
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No, they are not. Wyoming has less than 450,000 people and gets 3 electors, while California has over 30,000,000 people and gets 54 electors. I leave the math as an exercise to the reader because I'm too lazy.
Yes, each state gets an extra 2 votes, which does make smaller states more important. I forgot that. Nonetheless, the electoral college system makes whole regions irrelevant in the larger states, if they are in the minority: their vote is cast with the majority whether they like it or not. At the very least it would make more sense for every state to split up their votes at the congressional district level.
So by this system, at times the smaller states have influence far out of proportion to their populations, and at other times they are made completely irrelevant because one candidate can get over 50% support in a small number of populous states.
If anything, this just makes the results more random and unfair.
Arguably, the Electorial college is made up of well educated, intelligent people who can comprehend the instructions on a ballot.
But they are selected for loyalty by the party they are supposed to be voting for. Who they are voting for is a foregone conclusion, and in reality they are nothing more than minor functionaries in a vote-pooling system. Any argument for this system based on them changing their votes against what they promised is ridiculous and should be ignored.
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"Insightful"? not "funny"?
on
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Is this a joke? I thought it was funny, until I saw the "+5 insightful" and the serious replies. It seemed like fairly amusing mockery of the braindead illogic surrounding the American election.
* Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored
How so? Electoral college votes are still directly proportional to population, they just lump the whole state together when one candidate gets ahead of the others. The electoral college makes the state of residence of each voter relevant, so the candidates campaign on a state-by-state basis, rather than a voter-by-voter basis.
Unless the race for electoral college votes is very close, the small states are virtually ignored. More importantly, once a candidate gets over 50% of the vote in one state, he can ignore all the other voters in that state; they can neither harm him nor help him.
* In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote... they can break ranks and vote whichever way they want to. Remember, a candidate needs 50% of the electoral college to win, or else it goes to the House of Representatives - so in the case of a close election, a few defecting electors can change the process drastically. Not what we want to happen in a normal election, but it's there as a safety.
There is only a short span of time between the popular vote and the electoral vote. Electors are carefully selected for their party loyalty. The electors never have and never will change their votes when it makes a difference. In the case that something truly awful happens (the president starts committing crimes), the Congress will kick the president out.
Besides, valid or not, this argument amounts to "Thanks to the wonders of the electoral college system, the votes of an entire state may be completely ignored when a relatively minor functionary disagrees with their choice! Isn't that great?"
* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way. You vote for a small portion of the big vote, but you have a much bigger contribution to your portion of the vote compared to if you just had a general popular election.
Nice doublethink. The total power of all votes is constant: they select a President. The only way for a vote to become more powerful is for it to take power from another vote. So, you're arguing that unequal distribution of the value of votes is a good thing?
* Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown popularity contest. Basically, if we go to a direct-election system, we might as well change the position's title from "president" to "homecoming king".
Wow, this is almost profound in its utterbaselessness. What on Earth makes an electoral college system less about popularity?
Folks, the success of the Electoral College is PROVEN by this election... In an election this close, between two candidates that are both unsatisfactory, it's probably best that something random and meaningless decides it
If serious, this is quite possibly the most moronic political comment I've ever read. The Electoral College strongly contributed to the two-party lock-in that forces you to choose "between two candidates that are both unsatisfactory" (remember "A vote for Nader is a vote against Gore!"?). This was a freak election, for both the popular and electoral votes to be so close. With so many states at 48%-52%, it could easily have turned out that one side had a strong majority (over 60% or even 70%) of electoral college votes, though the other had a slight majority in the popular vote.
If nothing else, consider that even with a "two party" system, a candidate can be elected with just over a quarter of the popular vote: just over half of the population in only those states needed to get just over half the E.C. votes.
Such strong pressure to keep to a 2-party system is natural because it gets so much worse with more parties. The formula for the fraction of the popular vote just less than what is needed to win (where V is the votes needed and N is the number of parties) is: V = 1/(2N)
So if there were 4 strong parties (let's say that Green and Libertarian came forward), one could win with only an eighth of the voting population behind him, if his supporters are well-distributed. If a dozen parties were seriously considered and everyone "votes their conscience", some crackpot with a well-distributed 5% of the population behind him could get a clear electoral vote majority, even though another candidate gets over 50% of the popular vote.
So if the majority of any state chose anything but support of the 2-party system, they are giving up a decent probability of having the electoral vote reflect the popular vote in favor of a completely random result based on distribution, not quantity, of support.
Now try and tell me that the Electoral College isn't at the root of the 2-party system, and the necessity of choosing the lesser of two evils.
AOL are in concern with our representative, and his difficult grammar. This happening to our customer did not help, and the correction will be taken under immediately.
Thank you for bearing with our in this trouble. AOL is still your best choose for wanting the best.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I'll light a chipmunk for Bobo.
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Finally, instead of having their filthy trained monkeys get their grubby hands all over the food the eat and throwing their feces all over the place, they can get nice, hygenic trained monkey brains-in-jars with clean robotic arms to do their chores.
... Mmm, I can't wait to eat that monkey!"
In the immortal words of Abe Simpson, "Oh son! This monkey's gonna to change my life!
--------
We are now pleased to announce the GNU Food Commune. It came to our attention that hackers don't only need software and hardware, but food as well.
Soon to come, the distributed effort of the GNU Housing Projects, so that all hackers have high-quality places to keep their computers without being subject to undue pressure to create evil non-GNU software to pay their bills.
However, individual generosity is failing to pay for these expanded benefits. To these ends, we are forming the GNS Party (GNS is Not Socialism) and the backup GNR movement (GNR is Not a Rebellion) which will resort to GNV methods (GNV is Non-Violent). Resistance is GNUtile. Support our Brave GNU/World!
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I appreciate your effort in explaining it to me.
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Well, it seems we're indeed just arguing because of a difference of semantics (and, indeed, yours are more standard; I've been deliberately using the term "military" very broadly to try and make people think about it from another direction).
But I think that this belief in the seperation of military and government is a huge part of the problem. That idea is at the heart of my original post.
The politicians were not entirely to blame for the failure in Vietnam.
Outsiders can't just step into a civil war and "win" it.
Sure, the US military could have gone in and wiped out all military forces that opposed them at any one time. There would have been massive civilian casualties, resulting in greater support for communism. The people of North Vietnam believed in communism, as did many in South Vietnam. If you think the P.R. problems were bad back home, think of what they were in Vietnam.
There was no way to win. This type of situation is like a hydra, where cutting off one head causes two more to grow. The best outcome a military solution could achieve would be a police-state under US martial law.
Even worse was the fact that the real enemies weren't in Vietnam. Fighting them indirectly was hopeless, each side could pour weapons in indefinitely. Fighting them directly was impossible, as nuclear devastation would result.
Sure, the politicians made mistakes, but it was an utterly hopeless situation. The military could destroy any target given to them, but nothing was to be gained by such destruction.
Again false. Task Force Ranger was good to go within minutes after the original force returned home.
More confusion in the discussion. I meant within the larger context, they lost political support for future action.
In fact, casualties were predicted.
Yes, but they were underestimated. But I think perhaps that the estimates were based on support that they didn't have. They wanted, and should have had, close air support and tanks on standby.
Furthermore, an earlier plan involving the use of Delta Force resulted in the evaluation that they could just go in and pick up whoever they wanted off the streets. They later changed their minds, but that bold statement probably stuck in the politicians' mind. If that initial evaluation had been less optimistic, the abduction strategy would probably never have been considered.
It reminds me faintly of Dieppe (it's a Canadian thing, you might not recognize the reference, but it's an interesting example of a world-class fuckup), in the way that planned-on support was stripped away a bit at a time (though the results were very different).
At least one Ranger bled to death while their commander took 6 hours to beg in non-US UN armor, and another 6 for them to get there. Successful or not, there were some major screwups.
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I didn't really know anything about the Somalia operation, I was going by what you said, which was that they aborted the mission. Now I've looked up a few concise histories of it, so I can work with facts other than the ones you mentioned.
It changes little. While they accomplished their narrowly defined objective (abducting a single man), they failed in their implied objective of retaining their capability to continue to act in the area, and the root objective of making it possible for the food shipments to be fairly distributed.
Let's not forget that this was in the context of a humanitarian mission, and killing Somali soldiers was something that they were supposed to keep to a minimum. Those high kill counts do not speak in their favor. Americans cause an amazingly high number of casualties during "humanitarian" missions.
All this aside from the inherent incompetence of ordering the abduction. If the military high command had adequately predicted the casualties that the operation would cost for the politicians, the order would surely not have been given.
They won the battle in such a way that it lost them the war. Claiming success is like applauding a chess player who says "I set out to capture his pawn and I did" when he is mated on the next move. The US also won many battles in Vietnam, and their kill ratios were very impressive despite low morale and drafted troops. Whenever they set a short-term objective, they accomplished it. They still lost the war, because they didn't know what the hell their objectives really were.
I don't blame the soldiers involved. They followed orders successfully. However, I do not agree with your seperation of the US military and the US political system. The US political system is the top-level command of the US military. I'm not disputing that the US military is very competent at certain, well-specified tasks, but rather pointing out that they rarely achieve a useful result. Because they lack clear, consistent motivation throughout the command structure, one level is always manufacturing disaster for another level.
The top-level command, the politicians, saw the "snatch and grab" as a disaster, while the ranked military officers saw it as a success (sure, we told you it would be easy, but we did it! Don't blame us!). How much more screwed up could that be?
Worst of all, at the very heart of the problem is that the situation in Somalia was partly caused by the US. Just as the US supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power, they supported one Somali warlord or another during the cold war to prevent the rise of communism in favor of violent anarchy. The politics that lead to the famine (Somalia being agriculturally self-sufficient to the point where it would normally have weathered the drought) were a direct result of earlier US (to the tune of nearly, if not more than, a billion dollars in aid to certain warlords) and Russian intervention. Furthermore, early in the relief efforts, the US military treated Aidid and other warlords as legitimate local authorities. They created the situation they meant to end, and ultimately defeated themselves.
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Yay! Rah-Rah Rangers! They killed over a thousand Somalis with a 50:1 kill ratio!
Only... They aborted the mission.
the US military has a long track record of beating hell out of truly committed enemies.
On the contrary, the US military has a long track record of inflicting terrible losses on 3rd world countries without actually managing to do what they set out to do: the defence of South Vietnam, the abduction of a Somali warlord, humanitarian protection of Yugoslav civilians, just a few examples of the many complete and utter failures with high "collateral damage".
With one gruesome stunt, the Somalis stopped the immense American war machine cold. Now that is a successful operation.
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It makes Street Fighter games realistic right down to the concussion!
Go ahead, try doing 12 dragon punches in rapid succession.
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Prove that this doesn't prove my theory.
Incidentally, it was neither a troll nor serious.
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No, basically, they're orbiting each other, just not in neat orbits.
I hate when someone says "basically" and then says something that one in a hundred people will understand. People understand the idea of orbiting a lot better than the physics underlying it.
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...of the food chain. So I like to eat cannibals, preferably those who prefer cannibals. Lately I've been snacking on the less vital portions of my limbs.
I would never bother with vegans, they are lower on the chain than decay bacteria.
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Can't it be possible that the light travels in a cirkle?
Possible, but unlikely. I've ridden in a cirkle once, and it was terribly uncomfortable.
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...that the universe is actually both infinite and constantly expanding, with little bangs producing universlets in any sufficiently empty space. The speed of light is an absolute limit for matter, energy, or information and so for any two sufficiently distant points, you will never see one from the other (or, of course, be able to reach it), with areas not bound by gravity moving apart from each other to become lost to each other forever (which is why the sky isn't dazzlingly bright at night from all the infinitely-old galaxies).
It explains why our local universe is young, without positing anything so absurd as a time before time or a limit to the space out there (if there's 3-dimensions, there has to be a wall, if there's 4-dimensions, what happens if you take a step "sideways"? again, there has to be either infinity or a wall, beyond which there has to be less than nothing; adding dimensions is just hand-waving, adding complexity until you come up with a model beyond your capacity to criticize).
The moral? Exploit away! Strip mine planets and eat stars for fuel. There's plenty more where that came from, and if you expand out in all directions simultaneously at nearly the speed of light, nothing can ever catch you and your species will last forever in the ever-expanding shell. Sit in a bounded area and eventually someone tougher and with a better survival instinct will evolve in the baby universe next door and come to wipe you out (or the stars will just burn out and you'll die because you were too lazy to go get some fresh stars).
We're in the infancy of our corner of the universe, and it's only going to get more interesting from here on out. Think of it, always something new, no end to the adventures on new worlds, a physical universe as infinite as mathematics. Get your immortality pill and hop a ride on a hydrogen scoop A.S.A.P.
O what a generous god who made our universe without end!
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Whatever the cost is, I'd pay to see some robot on robot action if they're anything like Sorayama's work.
Oooo, baby! Shake those servos!
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You have done a real bang-up job on the software design, but would you mind posting the implementation?
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From what I've read about modern military history, the goal of war is not to kill people, it is to destroy the combat effectiveness of the enemy's forces.
This kind of thinking is the reason why the U.S. military can't beat a truly committed enemy. It doesn't help that their idea of "combat effectiveness" is hopelessly self-referential (combat effectiveness is the ability to reduce combat effectiveness of an enemy).
The goal of war is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. Even uneducated barbarians know that.
All kidding aside, war is a means, not a goal. Was is the way you get something you want when nothing else will work. Principles like "we should avoid civilian casualties" and "a tank is worth more than a handgun" are not absolute.
The U.S. military works from several basic assumptions that hamstring them in many situations (and are forced on them by the "CNN factor"): they are trying to help the civilians in the area, their enemy is an evil dictator whose people hate him, and they want the area to be peaceful. These assumptions often conflict with, and even contradict, the only possible logical purposes of their attacks, leading to confusion and apparent incompetence.
It is very dangerous to have such sweeping absolutes out in the open for all your enemies to see and exploit. People in more than one area that has not profited from their interaction with the U.S. have compared the American military, with their submarines, stealth planes, and nightfighting gear, to vampires. The analogy is a very appropriate one, not only because their strange-seeming motivations and their terrifying night-attack tactics, but because they are invulnerable to the normal, direct methods of attack and must be fought according to bizarre and seemingly arbitrary rules that make them curiously easy for most to ward off, if not kill.
However, with no chance of a seriously damaging defeat near home ground, the American military will doubtless remain complacently ignorant of how they are perceived, and in particular, how well their limitations are understood.
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"67% of all statistics are made up."
83% of slashdot.org readers already knew that.
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Nobody who goes through the trouble to join ICANN wants bad PR for the internet.
.xxx domain is implicit approval of pornography as a normal and major part of the internet. Mucho bad PR. It's one thing to support freedom and say people can put whatever they want on a .com site, then you have culpable deniability "Sure, I hate what they're doing, but I support freedom of expression!", but officially recognizing and aiding the porn industry makes you part of it (in many eyes). Just imagine if the FCC designated a certain amount of radio bandwidth specifically for the broadcast of pornography; the public at large can't see much difference.
.kids domain implies that the rest of the internet is inappropriate for children. Furthermore, when the .kids domain is abused (and it would be inevitable) it would make the internet look even worse.
Having an
Having a
Either way, it would mean bad PR and more calls for government interference.
The other problem is that all these places that have their great domain names as one of their biggest assets would have to move to the more appropriate TLDs and maybe take their chances on whether they can get a good name again.
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"It was felt that having seperate .xxx and .kids TLDs would cause confusion due to an arbitrary division of overlapping interest areas."
.net be used for bondage pages."
.kids TLD, such as the evil brainwashing of the Disney Corporation and various churches..."
.xxx domain was a concern ... we felt that it was highly likely to be used for bikini shots, beauty nudes, and soft-core pornography that doesn't even show penetration ... the distinction between X-rated and XXX is not likely to be respected, and even mere R-rated material may be included..."
"...kids like porn as much as anybody..."
"...we recommend that
"We were very worried about misuse of the
"Misuse of the
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It should read, "All you geeks who got incredibly rich from IPO dollars should feel empowered and important after reading this..."
/. management.
We apologize for this minor typo, and hope that this doesn't make any of you little people feel bad when you think of us slashdot people throwing big wads of Andover cash at each other.
We were like you once, before God recognized his Chosen people and raised us above the slime. You should be thankful that you don't have to deal with the terrible problem of what to do once you're rich beyond having to work. This man was one of the lucky ones, who learned that he could still make a difference in the world by selling an addictive intoxicant, and wasn't bound to a hopeless life of doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
Sincerely,
The
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You have foiled my plans again!
That is exactly what I intended to do, and I was relying on the media portraying me as someone out to save the world. Now that they have been warned, they will not give me the good P.R. I require to purchase the restricted parts for that huge laser.
Drat, zounds, and bebother your meddlings!
One day we will meet again, my nemesis. One day...
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I have no problem with the state gov'ts appointing senators and voting for the president. IMHO, this would work just fine, and would have preserved the power of the states so that "President" wouldn't be such an important role. It would also cut down on the average citzen's democratic responsibilities so they could focus more on making the correct choice of state government.
However, since the so-called "states" have become little more than provinces of the Federal State of America, with no power to secede from or directly control the federal government, it is unrealistic to speak of going back to this older way of thinking (unless everybody suddenly wakes up and says, "Hey, we had a pretty good system, why did we change it?" - unlikely!).
There's a very simple way to cure the Electoral College problem: allow electoral votes to be split into percent votes (IOW, split each vote into a hundred votes). The states can then be coerced into splitting the votes along the lines of the popular vote in the same manner that the feds force all the changes that aren't strictly constitutionally kosher (I'm sure the public would be behind it, and the constitution has always lost out to public opinion in the past). This would prevent the abuses you mentioned, since the feds would still control the number of E.C. votes handed to each state, according to the census.
This would not be a substantial loss of state sovereignity (that took place long ago), just a superficial one.
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No, they are not. Wyoming has less than 450,000 people and gets 3 electors, while California has over 30,000,000 people and gets 54 electors. I leave the math as an exercise to the reader because I'm too lazy.
Yes, each state gets an extra 2 votes, which does make smaller states more important. I forgot that. Nonetheless, the electoral college system makes whole regions irrelevant in the larger states, if they are in the minority: their vote is cast with the majority whether they like it or not. At the very least it would make more sense for every state to split up their votes at the congressional district level.
So by this system, at times the smaller states have influence far out of proportion to their populations, and at other times they are made completely irrelevant because one candidate can get over 50% support in a small number of populous states.
If anything, this just makes the results more random and unfair.
Arguably, the Electorial college is made up of well educated, intelligent people who can comprehend the instructions on a ballot.
But they are selected for loyalty by the party they are supposed to be voting for. Who they are voting for is a foregone conclusion, and in reality they are nothing more than minor functionaries in a vote-pooling system. Any argument for this system based on them changing their votes against what they promised is ridiculous and should be ignored.
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Is this a joke? I thought it was funny, until I saw the "+5 insightful" and the serious replies. It seemed like fairly amusing mockery of the braindead illogic surrounding the American election.
... In an election this close, between two candidates that are both unsatisfactory, it's probably best that something random and meaningless decides it
* Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored
How so? Electoral college votes are still directly proportional to population, they just lump the whole state together when one candidate gets ahead of the others. The electoral college makes the state of residence of each voter relevant, so the candidates campaign on a state-by-state basis, rather than a voter-by-voter basis.
Unless the race for electoral college votes is very close, the small states are virtually ignored. More importantly, once a candidate gets over 50% of the vote in one state, he can ignore all the other voters in that state; they can neither harm him nor help him.
* In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote... they can break ranks and vote whichever way they want to. Remember, a candidate needs 50% of the electoral college to win, or else it goes to the House of Representatives - so in the case of a close election, a few defecting electors can change the process drastically. Not what we want to happen in a normal election, but it's there as a safety.
There is only a short span of time between the popular vote and the electoral vote. Electors are carefully selected for their party loyalty. The electors never have and never will change their votes when it makes a difference. In the case that something truly awful happens (the president starts committing crimes), the Congress will kick the president out.
Besides, valid or not, this argument amounts to "Thanks to the wonders of the electoral college system, the votes of an entire state may be completely ignored when a relatively minor functionary disagrees with their choice! Isn't that great?"
* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way. You vote for a small portion of the big vote, but you have a much bigger contribution to your portion of the vote compared to if you just had a general popular election.
Nice doublethink. The total power of all votes is constant: they select a President. The only way for a vote to become more powerful is for it to take power from another vote. So, you're arguing that unequal distribution of the value of votes is a good thing?
* Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown popularity contest. Basically, if we go to a direct-election system, we might as well change the position's title from "president" to "homecoming king".
Wow, this is almost profound in its utterbaselessness. What on Earth makes an electoral college system less about popularity?
Folks, the success of the Electoral College is PROVEN by this election
If serious, this is quite possibly the most moronic political comment I've ever read. The Electoral College strongly contributed to the two-party lock-in that forces you to choose "between two candidates that are both unsatisfactory" (remember "A vote for Nader is a vote against Gore!"?). This was a freak election, for both the popular and electoral votes to be so close. With so many states at 48%-52%, it could easily have turned out that one side had a strong majority (over 60% or even 70%) of electoral college votes, though the other had a slight majority in the popular vote.
If nothing else, consider that even with a "two party" system, a candidate can be elected with just over a quarter of the popular vote: just over half of the population in only those states needed to get just over half the E.C. votes.
Such strong pressure to keep to a 2-party system is natural because it gets so much worse with more parties. The formula for the fraction of the popular vote just less than what is needed to win (where V is the votes needed and N is the number of parties) is: V = 1/(2N)
So if there were 4 strong parties (let's say that Green and Libertarian came forward), one could win with only an eighth of the voting population behind him, if his supporters are well-distributed. If a dozen parties were seriously considered and everyone "votes their conscience", some crackpot with a well-distributed 5% of the population behind him could get a clear electoral vote majority, even though another candidate gets over 50% of the popular vote.
So if the majority of any state chose anything but support of the 2-party system, they are giving up a decent probability of having the electoral vote reflect the popular vote in favor of a completely random result based on distribution, not quantity, of support.
Now try and tell me that the Electoral College isn't at the root of the 2-party system, and the necessity of choosing the lesser of two evils.
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AOL are in concern with our representative, and his difficult grammar. This happening to our customer did not help, and the correction will be taken under immediately.
Thank you for bearing with our in this trouble. AOL is still your best choose for wanting the best.
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