It was obvious before, during, and after the war with Iraq that fighting them would *decrease* our supply of oil, not increase it. If we wanted more oil, we'd simply continue buying the same Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil from Saddam Insane
At what price, and with what reliability?
OK, so it was a PR exercise. Pick your reason, but defending a monarchy from a dictorship that was previously being supported against a theocracy, all in the name of God and Freedom is laughable.
Yes, the US government engineers the deaths of innocents to further their politican careers and stimulate the US economy. Generally this happens by prolonging regional conflicts through arms funding, but sometimes they have to step in and bomb the winner for a bit to even things out.
When one side invites a carrier group in, how do you think that the other side feels?
Further to that, the US is liked and respected by most of the world. It is also reviled and feared by hundreds of millions of people. It is possible to be loved and hated at the same time.
I do not defend the motives of the perpetrators. I revile, abhor and detest them and all that they stand for. I explain their motives, and suggest that the USA needs to become less hated, rather than more feared. Please understand the difference.
The USA suffered the inevitable consequences of its actions. The horror and the barbarity is shocking. Just as shocking as it is when it happens in other countries, out of sight of CNN.
and that we're going to get more of it
Probably
and should just take it because we're such bad people?
You don't have to. Show that you're a world leader. You can't make people stop hating you by bombing them into submission. You can make a choice, right here and now.
You can take the easy way out, and make the world so afraid of you that other countries will jail or kill anyone who is even likely to draw your attention. Every so often, you'll have to destroy a city or two, just to remind them that you mean business.
Or you can say that enough is enough, pull back the aircraft carriers, and let regional conflicts resolve themselves within that region. It will be tough, it will take a long time, and your arms industry and politicians will have to find other quick fixes to keep them in business.
Please understand that much of the world isn't jealous of the USA. It hates and fears it. The way you feel now, the revulsion, the outrage, the anger, that's how good, decent family folks in many countries have felt about the USA for years.
They don't want to be you, any more than you want to be them. They just want to see you dead, just as you want to see people who you disagree with you dead.
That's vile, isn't it? Well, welcome to the big wide world.
I love your generalizations and inaccuracies. This is the biggest piece of reactionary crap I've seen posted yet
The question was: why us?
My answer was to that question, and it is accurate. If you get involved in a conflict with two sides, at least one of them is going to hate you.
Your point that one side usually wants the US there is both completely correct and utterly irrelevant, as the other side doesn't, and as long as you keep policing the world, people will hate and fear you.
And I forgot to add: because many US citizens seem totally unable to comprehend that what they now find absolutely intolerable when applied to them was also absolutely intolerable when applied to others.
This looks like US bashing, but really it isn't. It's just that so many of us saw this coming for so long that we skipped straight past the shock and the outrage and thought: "Welcome to the way the rest of the world feels. Scared and vulnerable." It's a nasty feeling, isn't it?
Find a mouse that you can move with your fingers alone
Or just use a trackball and move one finger. I use one habitually (ok, ok, it's an M$ Intelliball), and absolutely love it. It's even possible to use it efficiently in FPS frag fests.
I may even have to upgrade an an optical trackball, just for the geek cachet.
where were our intelligence agencies? how much money do we give them every year to prevent such things?
Reportedly $37 billion to the NSA alone. Yes, more than education, more than NASA, more than everything except (uniformed) defence and health.
But bear in mind that US agencies, even the MiB ones, are limited in their responses. Even if they think that they know something is going down, they have strict rules of engagement that prevent them taking the Israeli route of torturing suspects, or just assasinating people when there's any probably cause that they're planning action.
Also, the CIA in particular has been under strict regulations since 1995 that make it hard for them to plant or use agents within foreign organisations. They are choked with red tape.
Should we give the NSA and CIA carte blanche to take preventative action (read: kill people , both foreign and domestic, just in case they're planning something)? Last week, I'd have said "No way!". Now, it's not so clear.
Because in the past fifty years, US government policy has killed millions of civilians worldwide, all to keep career politicians in office. Everything that you feel now, shock, revulsion, anger, is the same genuine feeling that has existed for years in Beiruit and Baghdad, in North Korea and Vietnam and Cuba, in every place else that has suffered US bombs and US sanctions.
Because the US parks carrier battle groups on peoples' doorsteps all over the world, threatens civilian populations, then hangs out the signs saying "Make us go away. Just try."
Because, in the cause of "freedom", the US supported a dictatorship (Iraq) against a theocracy (Iran) then switched sides to defend a monarchy (Kuwait) because it had more oil. There's no principle at work there, just cynical pragmatism.
I'd go on, but you either know this by now, or you don't. The US is hated on a deep and personal level by large parts of the world. Fear has kept them in check. Now you either need to crank up the fear again, or work on the hatred.
As a post graduate qualified, published commercial author, I have learned vague concepts like:
Flamebait is rarely accidental, and never so when the baiter has their counter-strike already prepared.
When to boldly set aside the rules for dramatic effect.
How to make a point through terseness and style rather than through bombastic verbosity.
Re:Import games
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Does this mean they can start allowing import games to be sold
Read the article. The only thing tested here was eBay's takedown procedure, which the complainant arrogantly refused to follow. This ruling sets no precedents, not changes the situation one bit.
Re:eBay is and old idea on new Tech, not so with N
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The reason the judge ruled this way in this case [...] is simple: eBay is online auctions, and auctions have been around foreve
Utter twaddle. Read the article. The reason for the loss was that it was an ill advised suit. The complainant refused to comply with eBay's take-down procedure, launched straight into an arrogant lawsuit, and got (rightly) reamed for it.
Re:This really means little...
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 5, Informative
more importantly is that the judge threw out this case
You must be reading a different article, because the one linked to talks about a "ruling". The "dismissal" mentioned is a sloppy non-legal refernece to the request for damages, not of the case itself.
Hint to moderators: read the referenecs before moderating comments "insightful" or "informative".
Why do we need all the Big BrotherTM crap? How the hell is that supposed to help anything
Because driving pullovers are the primary means of catching not just DUI's, but of grabbing people with outstanding warrants, bail jumpers, parole busters and of course meeting your all important "War on Drugs" quota. The more excuses there are for pulling you over and making you prove your innocence, the better it makes the monthly arrest sheets look.
Hmm, I wonder if they can produce a version that detects "Driving a Vehicle Innapropriate for your Ethnicity and Expected Legal Earnings" or "Driving in an Inappropriate Neighborhood for your Ethnicity or Social Status"? That would save the police from having to go through the farce of inventing violations and excuses for stop-and-searches.
at least two US Islamic groups, including the Holy Land Foundation, across the street from Infocom, confirmed they have been served subpoenas for documents related to Infocom
It now looks like the gubmint reckons that the ISP is primarily a front for the Holy Land Foundation, not a common carrier. Interesting case, interesting precedent.
media tied the FBI angle to the arab news agency and let all the lemmings jump to wild conclusions....
Why would the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force be raiding a server shop? Some of the articles are very clear in their statements. I know media types are notoriously hysterical, but when they're not sure about something, they tend to go hog wild on the "allegedlys".
Infocom Corporation was the target of the raid by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force. Infocom runs computer Web sites for more than 500 companies around the world.
The government believes Infocom has ties to the Holy Land Foundation, which is located across the street.
The U.S. government has been investigating the Holy Land Foundation for some time, believing that it has ties to Hamas, a Palestinian organization which engages in terrorist activities against Israel
A lonely post below makes the salient point that the Steve Jackson Games case set the precedent that unless the ISP itself was accused of a felony, the data should have been subpoenaed, not physically seized.
Also, I'd be very interested to know why it takes 80 agents to raid a server farm. What were they expecting? "You can have my root password when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"?
So it looks like either the ISP itself was a hotbed of scum like terrorist, paedophles and hard core Linux users, or the FBI has (once again) got it badly wrong. As they have chosen to have no transparency or (immediate) accountability, I'm going to judge on their past behaviour and assume the latter.
Since the warrant is sealed, we shouldn't be too quick to jump to the conclusion that the raid is somehow directed at the Muslim clients
Since the warrant is sealed, and there is no transparency or (immediate) accountability, we should (IMHO) assume the worst. Remember, this is the FBI, an agency that boasts about its ability to lie and socially engineer. Also, why does it take 80 agents to shut down a hosting shop? What were they expecting, "You can have my root password when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"?
The device will finally turn the idea of digital convergence into a living room reality
What, again? Like the PS2, TiVO, like enhanced cable decoders, TV out cards, and (oh, yeah) the X-box did?
The X-box already has the spec to do all this, so what Microsoft are really saying is that they failed to figure out how to sell services on the back of it. HomeStation looks just like what the X-box was supposed to be (with a bigger hard drive), plus the breathing space to let the software and network guys actually get it right this time.
So lets say that X-box sells well, and two years down the line, M$ start marketing HomeStation with essentially the same hardware, but ongoing costs. They're going to have a hard time persuading people to throw their X-boxen in the cellar and pay out again for a new box that does exactly the same thing. Yes, it also does what a TiVO does, but the point is that in two year's time, anyone who wants and X-box or a TiVO is already going to have one (or both), and it's going to be hard to persuade them to pay out again just to save themselves half a cubic foot or so of real estate.
Re: You've got to be kidding!
on
Rent-a-Game
·
· Score: 2
Got 1.2 Mbps download? Start time on Thief 2 is 55 minutes!
Also, from the article: Exent had broken up the rentable programs into chunks that were streamed to a user's PC when they needed them. The chunks sat in the working memory of the user's machine and were never written to the hard disk, making the software almost impossible to pirate
What's that smell? Is the powerful and obnoxious odour of mendacity? I think it is, because either you'd need a Gb of RAM, or you'd need to wait another 20 minutes for each level to load, and anyway, you could still alt-tab, load something massive, and have the whole lot paged to your hard drive swap.
All that said, I might give this a try and see if it's more convenient than trialling games from Usenet (and yes, I do trial them, and pay for what I want to keep, or just wait six months for the title to go budget).
Slashdot Mirror
At what price, and with what reliability?
OK, so it was a PR exercise. Pick your reason, but defending a monarchy from a dictorship that was previously being supported against a theocracy, all in the name of God and Freedom is laughable.
You'd be hated and feared a lot less, which is largely the same thing.
The USA suffered the inevitable consequences of its actions. The horror and the barbarity is shocking. Just as shocking as it is when it happens in other countries, out of sight of CNN.
Probably
You don't have to. Show that you're a world leader. You can't make people stop hating you by bombing them into submission. You can make a choice, right here and now.
You can take the easy way out, and make the world so afraid of you that other countries will jail or kill anyone who is even likely to draw your attention. Every so often, you'll have to destroy a city or two, just to remind them that you mean business.
Or you can say that enough is enough, pull back the aircraft carriers, and let regional conflicts resolve themselves within that region. It will be tough, it will take a long time, and your arms industry and politicians will have to find other quick fixes to keep them in business.
It's your choice.
Please understand that much of the world isn't jealous of the USA. It hates and fears it. The way you feel now, the revulsion, the outrage, the anger, that's how good, decent family folks in many countries have felt about the USA for years.
They don't want to be you, any more than you want to be them. They just want to see you dead, just as you want to see people who you disagree with you dead.
That's vile, isn't it? Well, welcome to the big wide world.
The question was: why us?
My answer was to that question, and it is accurate. If you get involved in a conflict with two sides, at least one of them is going to hate you.
Your point that one side usually wants the US there is both completely correct and utterly irrelevant, as the other side doesn't, and as long as you keep policing the world, people will hate and fear you.
And I forgot to add: because many US citizens seem totally unable to comprehend that what they now find absolutely intolerable when applied to them was also absolutely intolerable when applied to others.
This looks like US bashing, but really it isn't. It's just that so many of us saw this coming for so long that we skipped straight past the shock and the outrage and thought: "Welcome to the way the rest of the world feels. Scared and vulnerable." It's a nasty feeling, isn't it?
Or just use a trackball and move one finger. I use one habitually (ok, ok, it's an M$ Intelliball), and absolutely love it. It's even possible to use it efficiently in FPS frag fests.
I may even have to upgrade an an optical trackball, just for the geek cachet.
Reportedly $37 billion to the NSA alone. Yes, more than education, more than NASA, more than everything except (uniformed) defence and health.
But bear in mind that US agencies, even the MiB ones, are limited in their responses. Even if they think that they know something is going down, they have strict rules of engagement that prevent them taking the Israeli route of torturing suspects, or just assasinating people when there's any probably cause that they're planning action.
Also, the CIA in particular has been under strict regulations since 1995 that make it hard for them to plant or use agents within foreign organisations. They are choked with red tape.
Should we give the NSA and CIA carte blanche to take preventative action (read: kill people , both foreign and domestic, just in case they're planning something)? Last week, I'd have said "No way!". Now, it's not so clear.
As an aside, waiting to shoot down a passenger airliner isn't combat air patrol by any stretch of the imagination.
I mention this as it's indicative of how inadequate our current military is geared to deal with this sort of threat.
Because in the past fifty years, US government policy has killed millions of civilians worldwide, all to keep career politicians in office. Everything that you feel now, shock, revulsion, anger, is the same genuine feeling that has existed for years in Beiruit and Baghdad, in North Korea and Vietnam and Cuba, in every place else that has suffered US bombs and US sanctions.
Because the US parks carrier battle groups on peoples' doorsteps all over the world, threatens civilian populations, then hangs out the signs saying "Make us go away. Just try."
Because, in the cause of "freedom", the US supported a dictatorship (Iraq) against a theocracy (Iran) then switched sides to defend a monarchy (Kuwait) because it had more oil. There's no principle at work there, just cynical pragmatism.
I'd go on, but you either know this by now, or you don't. The US is hated on a deep and personal level by large parts of the world. Fear has kept them in check. Now you either need to crank up the fear again, or work on the hatred.
Allow medical supplies in clear plastic bags.
Supply some global context to back that up, or you're just supporting the shocked knee jerk reaction that the perpetrators wanted to generate.
As a post graduate qualified, published commercial author, I have learned vague concepts like:
Read the article. The only thing tested here was eBay's takedown procedure, which the complainant arrogantly refused to follow. This ruling sets no precedents, not changes the situation one bit.
Utter twaddle. Read the article. The reason for the loss was that it was an ill advised suit. The complainant refused to comply with eBay's take-down procedure, launched straight into an arrogant lawsuit, and got (rightly) reamed for it.
You must be reading a different article, because the one linked to talks about a "ruling". The "dismissal" mentioned is a sloppy non-legal refernece to the request for damages, not of the case itself.
Hint to moderators: read the referenecs before moderating comments "insightful" or "informative".
Because driving pullovers are the primary means of catching not just DUI's, but of grabbing people with outstanding warrants, bail jumpers, parole busters and of course meeting your all important "War on Drugs" quota. The more excuses there are for pulling you over and making you prove your innocence, the better it makes the monthly arrest sheets look.
Hmm, I wonder if they can produce a version that detects "Driving a Vehicle Innapropriate for your Ethnicity and Expected Legal Earnings" or "Driving in an Inappropriate Neighborhood for your Ethnicity or Social Status"? That would save the police from having to go through the farce of inventing violations and excuses for stop-and-searches.
Oh, wait, here's another.
It now looks like the gubmint reckons that the ISP is primarily a front for the Holy Land Foundation, not a common carrier. Interesting case, interesting precedent.
The mindless consumer, warm and happy in her/his fuzzy idyll of screwin' and chewin'.
Aw, poow wittle sowdier, is oo aww tiwed of the nasty, mean peopwe not bewieving oo?
On any significant scale, yes. Especially as Universities are increasingly obsessed with commercial and not academic results.
Why would the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force be raiding a server shop? Some of the articles are very clear in their statements. I know media types are notoriously hysterical, but when they're not sure about something, they tend to go hog wild on the "allegedlys".
A lonely post below makes the salient point that the Steve Jackson Games case set the precedent that unless the ISP itself was accused of a felony, the data should have been subpoenaed, not physically seized.
Also, I'd be very interested to know why it takes 80 agents to raid a server farm. What were they expecting? "You can have my root password when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"?
So it looks like either the ISP itself was a hotbed of scum like terrorist, paedophles and hard core Linux users, or the FBI has (once again) got it badly wrong. As they have chosen to have no transparency or (immediate) accountability, I'm going to judge on their past behaviour and assume the latter.
Since the warrant is sealed, and there is no transparency or (immediate) accountability, we should (IMHO) assume the worst. Remember, this is the FBI, an agency that boasts about its ability to lie and socially engineer. Also, why does it take 80 agents to shut down a hosting shop? What were they expecting, "You can have my root password when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"?
What, again? Like the PS2, TiVO, like enhanced cable decoders, TV out cards, and (oh, yeah) the X-box did?
The X-box already has the spec to do all this, so what Microsoft are really saying is that they failed to figure out how to sell services on the back of it. HomeStation looks just like what the X-box was supposed to be (with a bigger hard drive), plus the breathing space to let the software and network guys actually get it right this time.
So lets say that X-box sells well, and two years down the line, M$ start marketing HomeStation with essentially the same hardware, but ongoing costs. They're going to have a hard time persuading people to throw their X-boxen in the cellar and pay out again for a new box that does exactly the same thing. Yes, it also does what a TiVO does, but the point is that in two year's time, anyone who wants and X-box or a TiVO is already going to have one (or both), and it's going to be hard to persuade them to pay out again just to save themselves half a cubic foot or so of real estate.
Also, from the article: Exent had broken up the rentable programs into chunks that were streamed to a user's PC when they needed them. The chunks sat in the working memory of the user's machine and were never written to the hard disk, making the software almost impossible to pirate
What's that smell? Is the powerful and obnoxious odour of mendacity? I think it is, because either you'd need a Gb of RAM, or you'd need to wait another 20 minutes for each level to load, and anyway, you could still alt-tab, load something massive, and have the whole lot paged to your hard drive swap.
All that said, I might give this a try and see if it's more convenient than trialling games from Usenet (and yes, I do trial them, and pay for what I want to keep, or just wait six months for the title to go budget).