We won a chance at a better future with a democratic Iraq leading the Persian Gulf area away from tyranny and dictatorship.
Get real. There will never be democracy in Iraq. You can't have a democracy in a country where all three of the principle ethnic groups FUCKING HATE EACH OTHER. They don't want democracy. They want civil war. We can stay there and fuck around for another twenty years, but whether we leave now or in 2028 or 2128, there's going to be a bloodbath.
We also won the end of Saddam Hussein and his family. They were US enemies and enemies of our allies in the area.
Our enemies? LMAO. The American government created the Saddam Hussein regime, gave him the money, gave him those chemical weapons. You have a funny definition of "enemy."
No. The US didn't leave because the war would have been lost if we had left. If we had left, there was no chance of any favorable outcome. But there was a high probability of a fierce civil war with perhaps millions dead and a widening conflict that brought Iran and Turkey into it.
That's going to happen anyway. We're riding the ragged edge of it right now, and the moment American troops leave that's where it's heading. We have not reduced the likelihood of that event by one iota. You might be able to argue that we've delayed the inevitable by a few years, but I don't even know if I'd grant that.
So what's your answer? Stay there for a hundred years? Then what?
Not gonna happen. Iraq's not even really a "country" as we think of the concept. Iraq's really about four "countries" squashed together by the British in the early 20th century as an administrative convenience. And here's the funny part: All four of those "countries" fucking hate each other. In Iraqi history, there has been one-count-em-one "stable and strong government." One, in 80-odd years. Can you name it? No peeking!
That's right, it was run by Saddam Hussein, and it only worked in the first place because America put him there. So here ya go. We can install another strongman dictatorship and prop it up with guns and money (think good and hard about that one, it definitely had its pros and cons from a US foreign policy standpoint) or we can occupy it for the next hundred years and be the strongman dictatorship (the solution that foreign policy hawks seem to be favoring now) or we can leave and watch the country descend into bloody civil war (a brutal answer to be sure, but maybe the ultimate endgame in any event). One thing we cannot do is "nurture democracy" in Iraq.
If that were so, why didn't they use those resources to send the French, British etc packing?
There are major cultural differences there, and actually very similar to the cultural differences that enabled Europeans to conquer another anarchic, resource-rich continent: North America.
"War" meant something dramatically different to the Europeans than it did to the native Africans/native Americans. To those native cultures, war meant livestock raiding, sometimes slave-taking, sometimes "let's push these guys out of this chunk of land by the river so we can fish it." They simply couldn't understand (until it was far too late) that to the white man, war meant "We are going to enslave you all, and if we can't pull that off, we are going to kill you all."
Seems they already had problems (such as political/tribal divisions) that the colonisers exploited, rather than caused.
But in the context of pre-colonial life, those weren't problems. That was simply how the society functioned, and it worked well for a thousand years. Much more than the white man's technology or numerical superiority, it was a new paradigm that sealed pre-colonial man's fate.
My ass. I'm doing a fair bit better these days, but as a younger man I worked (and worked and worked and worked) without paying federal income tax. Instead I payed for a Social Security system that will not be there by the time I'm of retirement age because someone decided it would be way cooler to spend that money on a war. I also paid state income and sales tax (which is relevant to the discussion because my state had to lower the floor for income tax and raise the state sales tax because the federal government was strangling their funding). Yes, I paid my taxes too.
And yet we pour money into oil-related infrastructure and tax breaks for oil and auto companies. Don't try to tell me that the government's not in the business of molding people's behavior.
but I was thinking a better windows task bar would be just the icons of the running programs, but hovering or clicking brought up all the mini screen shots of just that application
You should try KDE 4. That's exactly how I have it set up.
The white man made the problems. Africa is the most resource-rich continent on the planet. The colonial system that the white man put in place, and the post-colonial governance systems modeled after said, are the cause of 100% of Africa's problems. The very least we can do is pony up some cash to help dig them out of the mess we left them in.
Today they're running a low-bandwidth version of their webpage; it doesn't have any ads on it. And yeah, as others have already said, CodeWeavers are the good guys. They're St. Paul MN based; they actually hosted a TCLUG installfest at their office last year.
Actually I had the annoyance of using Windows XP just yesterday. But I wasn't aware it came with any graphic arts programs. Do you do everything in Paint?
In Windows I can plug in a new device, it pops up a message saying it found new hardware, installs the proper driver (if needed) and it's ready for use within just a few seconds. In Linux if you plug in a new device, the system could freeze (USB devices in particular), it won't see it or it will want you to download and compile a driver along with every single dependency that driver needs.
Yeah, just like that except exactly the opposite. No wonder you post AC.
With regards to #1, you can run SuperKaramba applets and Screenlets as Plasmoids. The weather and moon phase Plasmoids do exist but you have to go to kde-look.org and install them yourself. But I must say that I am distressed by the lack of enthusiasm that applet developers have so far displayed toward Plasma. You're right that that list isn't as long as it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Bookies don't gamble. They set the odds to make sure the house wins regardless who wins the underlying bet.
Sounds qualified for government to me.
The President of the United States of America is the single person recognized as the "leader" of the world.
ORLY?
We won a chance at a better future with a democratic Iraq leading the Persian Gulf area away from tyranny and dictatorship.
Get real. There will never be democracy in Iraq. You can't have a democracy in a country where all three of the principle ethnic groups FUCKING HATE EACH OTHER. They don't want democracy. They want civil war. We can stay there and fuck around for another twenty years, but whether we leave now or in 2028 or 2128, there's going to be a bloodbath.
We also won the end of Saddam Hussein and his family. They were US enemies and enemies of our allies in the area.
Our enemies? LMAO. The American government created the Saddam Hussein regime, gave him the money, gave him those chemical weapons. You have a funny definition of "enemy."
No. The US didn't leave because the war would have been lost if we had left. If we had left, there was no chance of any favorable outcome. But there was a high probability of a fierce civil war with perhaps millions dead and a widening conflict that brought Iran and Turkey into it.
That's going to happen anyway. We're riding the ragged edge of it right now, and the moment American troops leave that's where it's heading. We have not reduced the likelihood of that event by one iota. You might be able to argue that we've delayed the inevitable by a few years, but I don't even know if I'd grant that.
So what's your answer? Stay there for a hundred years? Then what?
Not gonna happen. Iraq's not even really a "country" as we think of the concept. Iraq's really about four "countries" squashed together by the British in the early 20th century as an administrative convenience. And here's the funny part: All four of those "countries" fucking hate each other. In Iraqi history, there has been one-count-em-one "stable and strong government." One, in 80-odd years. Can you name it? No peeking!
That's right, it was run by Saddam Hussein, and it only worked in the first place because America put him there. So here ya go. We can install another strongman dictatorship and prop it up with guns and money (think good and hard about that one, it definitely had its pros and cons from a US foreign policy standpoint) or we can occupy it for the next hundred years and be the strongman dictatorship (the solution that foreign policy hawks seem to be favoring now) or we can leave and watch the country descend into bloody civil war (a brutal answer to be sure, but maybe the ultimate endgame in any event). One thing we cannot do is "nurture democracy" in Iraq.
Say what you will about the United States but we've never blown up ships in the harbors of our Allies.
Bah. Amateur hour stuff. We're Americans, we've got ingenuity. We blow up our own ships in the harbors of our enemies and use it a pretext to declare war! How clever is that?
Wait a minute, there's something familiar about this...
If that were so, why didn't they use those resources to send the French, British etc packing?
There are major cultural differences there, and actually very similar to the cultural differences that enabled Europeans to conquer another anarchic, resource-rich continent: North America.
"War" meant something dramatically different to the Europeans than it did to the native Africans/native Americans. To those native cultures, war meant livestock raiding, sometimes slave-taking, sometimes "let's push these guys out of this chunk of land by the river so we can fish it." They simply couldn't understand (until it was far too late) that to the white man, war meant "We are going to enslave you all, and if we can't pull that off, we are going to kill you all."
Seems they already had problems (such as political/tribal divisions) that the colonisers exploited, rather than caused.
But in the context of pre-colonial life, those weren't problems. That was simply how the society functioned, and it worked well for a thousand years. Much more than the white man's technology or numerical superiority, it was a new paradigm that sealed pre-colonial man's fate.
My ass. I'm doing a fair bit better these days, but as a younger man I worked (and worked and worked and worked) without paying federal income tax. Instead I payed for a Social Security system that will not be there by the time I'm of retirement age because someone decided it would be way cooler to spend that money on a war. I also paid state income and sales tax (which is relevant to the discussion because my state had to lower the floor for income tax and raise the state sales tax because the federal government was strangling their funding). Yes, I paid my taxes too.
And yet we pour money into oil-related infrastructure and tax breaks for oil and auto companies. Don't try to tell me that the government's not in the business of molding people's behavior.
Research, motherfucker! Can you do it?
That's spectacular for you. Lots of other people can't open Word files they made last year.
Your mother.
but I was thinking a better windows task bar would be just the icons of the running programs, but hovering or clicking brought up all the mini screen shots of just that application
You should try KDE 4. That's exactly how I have it set up.
If a "crappy vendor driver" is able to bring the whole machine down, it is very much an OS issue.
The white man made the problems. Africa is the most resource-rich continent on the planet. The colonial system that the white man put in place, and the post-colonial governance systems modeled after said, are the cause of 100% of Africa's problems. The very least we can do is pony up some cash to help dig them out of the mess we left them in.
Damn straight it is. If you try to urinate outdoors when it's below -15F, it can actually freeze inside your penis and really fuck you up.
Today they're running a low-bandwidth version of their webpage; it doesn't have any ads on it. And yeah, as others have already said, CodeWeavers are the good guys. They're St. Paul MN based; they actually hosted a TCLUG installfest at their office last year.
Actually I had the annoyance of using Windows XP just yesterday. But I wasn't aware it came with any graphic arts programs. Do you do everything in Paint?
In Windows I can plug in a new device, it pops up a message saying it found new hardware, installs the proper driver (if needed) and it's ready for use within just a few seconds. In Linux if you plug in a new device, the system could freeze (USB devices in particular), it won't see it or it will want you to download and compile a driver along with every single dependency that driver needs.
Yeah, just like that except exactly the opposite. No wonder you post AC.
Not exactly. This may be a case of "Does more stuff=Uses more resources" while Vista is blatantly a case of "Does less stuff=Uses more resources."
With regards to #1, you can run SuperKaramba applets and Screenlets as Plasmoids. The weather and moon phase Plasmoids do exist but you have to go to kde-look.org and install them yourself. But I must say that I am distressed by the lack of enthusiasm that applet developers have so far displayed toward Plasma. You're right that that list isn't as long as it should be.
You're full of shit.
For Christ's sake. If you've got an install disc for XP just install VirtualBox and make a VM out of it. This is the 21st century.
You never need to install another OS because Windows works
No shit? What kind of "work" do you do?
If two ACs argue on /. do they make a sound?
What part of installing Windows XP requires my Microsoft Office disc?
The "using it for something when you're done" part.