You just said it troll. *soldiers* What makes a someone a terrorist is specifically attacking civilians for the express purpose of *terrorizing* them into submission. Hence the word. It is killing specifically *defenseless* men, women, and children.
To equate overthrowing an oppressive government by killing their well-armed soldiers with killing 3000 defenseless civilians is moral equivancy at its worst.
And, BTW, if I remember right the British fought back instead of just surrendering and returning home.
Brian Ellenberger
Re:American Culture Not That Bad
on
The Last Place
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yeah, right past the "tolerant" americans holding their picket signs, their list from the Nuremberg Files, and their tote bag full of weapons which has "choose life" printed on the outside.We're so "tolerant" that 4% of our state governments allow gay marriage. And then there's always the issue of dealing with our "tolerant" neo-nazis, Aaron McKinneys, and "tolerant" churches and conservative groups?For example, what about a black family living in an all-white community in a southern state
And then there are those ignorant people who stereotype all pro-lifers as violent abortion clinic-bombers, evangelical churches as neo-nazi gay bashers, and white southerns as racists.
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts
on
Copyright as Cudgel
·
· Score: 2
>Sometimes they use the moniker "tort reform." >Othertimes, they talk about "greedy lawyers" >and "runaway lawsuits" that inevitably hurt
I guess you haven't heard about the fat guy suing McDonalds's for making him fat.:)
I have no love for HP. They sell their ink cartridges for *way* too much and then put a bunch of anti-ink refilling technologies into their printers so that it is not worth the trouble of trying to refill them yourself.
If Dell undersells HP on the ink by a large amount, HP is going to be in trouble. And they can do it too. Unlike HP, Dell doesn't need to rely on ink for 1/2 of its profits.
>Maybe we should review our concept of freedom, >and mainly our concept of democratic government.
Everytime any civilization has gone down that road of "reviewing democratic government" it ends up turning into a dictatorship. Democracy is messy and ugly. There is alot of politics and interests mucking everything up and bending the system to their beliefs. And sometimes democracy goes against what you think is right.
I hate to tell you this but that is the way it is *supposed* to work. It is supposed to be messy! Yea, it would be alot easier if we had a dictator that always made the right choices, but that is never what dictators turn out to be like.
So the majority of the people could care less about the DMCA or whether DVDs have regions. So what. Boo hoo. You didn't get your way. Most people are geeks and care alot more about crime/poverty/education and everything else that actually means something. Not being able to view London DVDs on their home player does not appear on the top of anyone's "Biggest Problems" list.
So what would you do? Throw elected government away? Or maybe stop the "evil lobbyists"? But what about the First Amendment? Or "campaign finance reform"? Oh, then there is that First Amendment again. Nothing like putting a gag order on the ACLU or NAACP a month before the election or limiting the amount of emails an organzation sends out to 500 (yes, both in our newly passed reform act).
Anyway I'm rambling. Point being, democracy is the best we can do right now.
Come on. He is complaining about being ID'ed? I have been flying fairly regularly and as far as I can remember the airlines have been ID'ed people. Heck, I remember my younger brothers who were in Jr. High needing to get Photo IDs to go from Pittsburgh to LA and back to visit me in college back in '96.
So what is the problem, other than an excuse to pull out some lame "Bush and Ashcroft are Nazis" routine.
>Scarily enough, it goes on in the U.S. too. Take >a good, long hard look at Walmart Corp. They are >one of the nation's largest redistributors of >magazines and other periodicals... so large, in >fact, that if Walmart refuses to carry a >magazine for a month, it can break a publication >financially.
>Walmart has been known to refuse to sell books, >games, CD's and magazines that had any kind of >content deemed innapropriate.
I'm sorry, but some people (including myself) shop at Warmart specifically because they have this policy. I love being able to walk around and not being bombarded with the latest "shock" CDs and soft porn "fashion" magazines.
I'm sick of people on Slashdot abusing the term "freedom". Freedom is Wal-mart choosing not to buy crap CD's and magazines and freedom is me shopping at Wal-mart because I don't want anything to do with that stuff.
What freedom is not is self-righteous individuals like yourself taking it upon themself to tell Wal-Mart and the millions of people who shop there what to do. Just don't shop there.
And its not like there isn't competition or other choices (KMart, Target, the mini-mart, the Internet).
>Actually I wish the entire idea of a forced Pledge of Allegiance would be done away with.
You haven't been forced to say the Pledge since 1943. See West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) (USSC+)
>It's no wonder that Europe and Japan create >fancy new technology and implement it left and >right (maglev trains, alternative fuel cars, >etc), while America sticks to inventing weapons >of war, new food additives, and new ways to >patent/copyright information so that nobody can
Yea, I love those awesome flying cars they have in Japan that run on H2O and cause zero polution!
Seriously dude, what the heck are you talking about? Do you actually think the rest of the world is lightyears ahead of us in technology? I mean, if there were all these magical things Japan and Europe invented don't you think they would be making a killing selling them to us? Come on.
There are societal/economical reasons why things like maglev trains don't work as well here. Things like wanting the freedom of your own house and wanting to drive where you want to when you want to.
As for those evil Americans "inventing weapons of war", well guess what---your using one of those "weapons" right now. The Internet started as DARPANET--A Defense Department network designed to keep communication going during nuclear attack.
>Walmart is notorious for demanding that magazine >covers and CD covers be changed if they are >going to carry it. They are down to make money, >and by opting to force magazines to self-censor, >I don't really think choice has much to do with >this story.
That's not censorship, that's is choice. Don't like it, go to Target or KMart. I personally love the Wal-Mart policy and shop there because if it. But that's my choice.
I mean, there is alot of crap out there in this country. Which is fine, it is a free country. But just because you create crap doesn't mean people or corporations have to buy it! That's the other part of a free country.
Don't you think it is pretty arrogant of you to basically say, "I don't care what Wal-Mart or its loyal customers say, you must carry these soft-porn magazines and raunchy CDs"?
I'm sorry, but high school sucks enough without arrogant liberals like yourself trying to suck every last pleasure out of life. Come on, being able to get a freakin SODA POP at school shouldn't be a controversy.
"raise money for the school (and large companies)."
Or maybe they are there because people enjoy drinking soda. Please stop seeing life through a narrow Marxist lense. Gosh, Heaven forbid people buying things and enjoying them. Must be a conspiracy...
>And it shouldn't be - the only thing whites have >brought to Africa is racism and their own forms >of control over the lands true owners.
Hmm, isn't this an example of a racist statement?
Being "white" or "black" is just skin pigmentation. To say that having "white" pigments causes one to bring racism to Africa is completely non sequitor.
And to divide up continents simply based on skin pigmentation is even more ludicrous! What intrinsically about the land mass of Africa would cause you to come to the logical conclusion that only people with darker pigmentation should be there?
No they are not fair, but they are probably the only way of assessing whether or not a student in a lower level course (sophomore or below) has really learned the material.
This goes back to a previously Slashdot article on getting help on your Computer Science programs. Someone in a beginning CS course can probably "get by" on their programs by getting help (honestly or cheating) and/or by using the internet/books for examples and hacking away at the code. The only way to really assess whether the student has learned anything themselves is to sit them down in a closed atmosphere and see if the student really knows something by giving them a test.
Now my experience has been that in upper level classes the amount of code writing done on tests is greatly reduced. This is because being able to "get by" on the more difficult assignments is harder and there is enough material of greater complexity to test the student on higher level concepts without requiring getting into detailed code. The student is still expected to write pseudocode however, but this is more to show that you can solve a particular problem (say creating an algorithm) than testing your ability to write C code.
The ability to write code/pseudocode outside the computer is not a useless skill. In my experience I have done alot of whiteboard coding in groups on different projects when brainstorming solutions to problems. I have also had to do it on interviews to show I knew my stuff.
With regards to the SW vs. Spider-Man, I'm reminded about what the Green Goblin tells Spidey in the movie. He basically tells him that it is no use being the good guy because everyone will try and tear you down anyway. People like building someone up and then tearing them down.
The new SW movies are evidence of that. Far too many of the "fans" are just out there to tear down SW with any nitpick they can come up with and build up a new "hero". Sure there are many problems with the new SW films. But there are many problems with the old ones as well (whiney Luke, bad dialog, etc).
I think people are too quick to tear down SW. It is a movie, not a religion. And it is a film for everyone, not just geeks. I think the general public likes the new SW films more than the hardcore geeks like to admit. I showed the Phantom Menace to my mother-in-law on Friday and she loved it. So much that our whole family saw AOTC on Sunday. The exit polls show people rating AOTC as a A-. I bet the minus comes from SW "fans".
In fact, the hardcore SW fans are hurting SW more than anything. By dressing up and standing in line and such they are threatening to reduce SW to simple geekdom (see Star Trek). Normal people generally avoid geekdom, and I bet alot of people are turned off on SW just because of the so-called-fans.
My final rant is that if Lucas was in it SOLELY for the money he would have made 10 SW films by now and 7 of them would be cheap crappy films (see Star Trek). Also he would have shown them on as many screens as possible instead of limiting them to the ones with digital sound. Sure he likes a profit as much as anyone, but he is also SW's biggest and best fan.
Meanwhile, I'm waiting to see how much the Slashdot crowd turns on Spider-Man 2 and the Matrix Reloaded.
ID Software does this all the time. Think back to Quake? Instead of making another Doom, John and the boys wrote a game that forced you to go out and get a 3D video card to enjoy the game. Looking at the incredible advances in 3D video cards, aren't you glad he forced people to upgrade? How many 3D video games still support software rendering? In the end I don't think it was "penalizing his audience" in any way.
Lucas's primary goal with the Star Wars films was not just making movies but pushing the moviemaking technology. And that will always be his biggest accomplishment.
I thought this was wierd, so I did some checking on this guy. I looked for him on MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty list, but couldn't find him. So I looked him up in the
people directory and found this:
name: Madnick, Stuart E
email: smadnick@MIT.EDU
phone: (617) 253-6671
address: E53-321
department: School Of Mgmt
title: J N Maguire Prof Of Info Tech
url: http://mit.edu/smadnick/www/home.html
His department is not EECS, it is the School of Management! His research is in areas such as Total Data Quality Management and Productivity From Information Technology. Here is a bio description from his web page:
http://mit.edu/smadnick/www/home.html
Madnick finds ways to integrate information systems, giving organizations a more global view of their operations. He is leading a project that develops new technologies for gathering and analyzing information from many different sources, including conventional databases and the World Wide Web. He is also testing these new technologies in industries such as financial services, manufacturing, logistics, and transportation.
Microsoft basically found anyone from MIT they could because it is MIT. I'm surprised they didn't find a janitor from MIT to testify.
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.
on
Wipout Essay Results
·
· Score: 1
I'm sorry, but that's a strawman argument. The percentage of babies and children dying of AIDS is extremely small. And the gay comment is another strawman. I mentioned nothing about gays. AIDS is an equal opportunity killer of people who are stupid about sex.
And finally the blame for the children's AIDS should go to the stupid parents and NOT the drug companies!
Brian Ellenberger
Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500
on
Wipout Essay Results
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
No, 2,500 AIDS victims pulled the trigger on themselves by making stupid decisions about sex.
Then the drug companies come along to help and they are attacked by bad Marxist panderings like this.
Guess what, AIDS is an extremely tough disease and extremely expensive to fight. Extremely expensive. And the government's contributions don't even come close to the cost of developing AIDS drugs. And for every drug and research project that succeeds, many many more fail.
If the drug companies were really in some big capitalist consipracy to screw over the world they wouldn't have picked AIDS (a preventable disease) to do it with. They would be screwing you over with the polio and smallpox. Instead, the evil drug companies pretty much eliminated those diseases from the planet.
Except for the fact that the #2 bad guy in the books and the one of the biggest turncoats in Middle Earth history is a wizard named Saruman the *WHITE*....
While Gandalf was known throughout most of his like as Gandalf the *GRAY*.
Re:Pax Americana
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The difference is that the Cuban problem is a political problem, not a military problem. We could measure in hours the amount of time it would take for us to take Castro out. And incase you didn't notice we WON the only Cuban conflict that mattered--the Cuban Missle Crisis. The reason that Castro is still in power is political not military.
Yugoslavia was a military problem. Good old Milo was killing a whole bunch of Muslims and wasn't listening to "reason". And for all of "Europe's Power" they couldn't do a darn thing about it.
Brian
Re:Pax Americana
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Um, it would take *alot* longer than 10 years for that to happen. Remember Yugoslav? If the EU can't even take care of a problematic country in their own back yard, how the heck are they going to project their power anywhere?
For example, a great deal of America's power comes from its Aircraft Carriers. It would take them alot longer than 10 years to build anything equivalent to our fleet. And even, they tend to do stupid things like spend billions on a carrier that isn't even long enough and broke its port propeller on its first long-distance trials:
And Luxembourg would be beating the US in research dollars if it had 250 million people!
The main problem with your argument is that total GNP can't be directly converted to money. Feeding and clothing a billion people isn't easy and there isn't much to skim off of that per capita GDP of $3,600. You can't just say, "Well Mr. Farmer eat 5% less and sell the rest and give us the money for more research." It isn't that simple. Can the person afford to eat 5% less? Who will buy the extra food? What about the infrastructure to get the food to sell to somebody?
And note that 50% of Chinese are employed in agriculture.
Perhaps a better (but still simplistic) formula is per capita GNP X number of people.
Slashdot Mirror
Now will this be enforced on the World Wide Internet or just the European one?
Brian Ellenberger
>killed HER MAJESTY'S soliders
You just said it troll. *soldiers* What makes a someone a terrorist is specifically attacking civilians for the express purpose of *terrorizing* them into submission. Hence the word. It is killing specifically *defenseless* men, women, and children.
To equate overthrowing an oppressive government by killing their well-armed soldiers with killing 3000 defenseless civilians is moral equivancy at its worst.
And, BTW, if I remember right the British fought back instead of just surrendering and returning home.
Brian Ellenberger
Yeah, right past the "tolerant" americans holding their picket signs, their list from the Nuremberg Files, and their tote bag full of weapons which has "choose life" printed on the outside. We're so "tolerant" that 4% of our state governments allow gay marriage. And then there's always the issue of dealing with our "tolerant" neo-nazis, Aaron McKinneys, and "tolerant" churches and conservative groups? For example, what about a black family living in an all-white community in a southern state
And then there are those ignorant people who stereotype all pro-lifers as violent abortion clinic-bombers, evangelical churches as neo-nazi gay bashers, and white southerns as racists.
Brian Ellenberger>Sometimes they use the moniker "tort reform." >Othertimes, they talk about "greedy lawyers" >and "runaway lawsuits" that inevitably hurt
:)
I guess you haven't heard about the fat guy suing McDonalds's for making him fat.
Brian Ellenberger
I have no love for HP. They sell their ink cartridges for *way* too much and then put a bunch of anti-ink refilling technologies into their printers so that it is not worth the trouble of trying to refill them yourself.
If Dell undersells HP on the ink by a large amount, HP is going to be in trouble. And they can do it too. Unlike HP, Dell doesn't need to rely on ink for 1/2 of its profits.
Brian Ellenberger
>Maybe we should review our concept of freedom, >and mainly our concept of democratic government.
Everytime any civilization has gone down that road of "reviewing democratic government" it ends up turning into a dictatorship. Democracy is messy and ugly. There is alot of politics and interests mucking everything up and bending the system to their beliefs. And sometimes democracy goes against what you think is right.
I hate to tell you this but that is the way it is *supposed* to work. It is supposed to be messy! Yea, it would be alot easier if we had a dictator that always made the right choices, but that is never what dictators turn out to be like.
So the majority of the people could care less about the DMCA or whether DVDs have regions. So what. Boo hoo. You didn't get your way. Most people are geeks and care alot more about crime/poverty/education and everything else that actually means something. Not being able to view London DVDs on their home player does not appear on the top of anyone's "Biggest Problems" list.
So what would you do? Throw elected government away? Or maybe stop the "evil lobbyists"? But what about the First Amendment? Or "campaign finance reform"? Oh, then there is that First Amendment again. Nothing like putting a gag order on the ACLU or NAACP a month before the election or limiting the amount of emails an organzation sends out to 500 (yes, both in our newly passed reform act).
Anyway I'm rambling. Point being, democracy is the best we can do right now.
Brian Ellenberger
Come on. He is complaining about being ID'ed? I have been flying fairly regularly and as far as I can remember the airlines have been ID'ed people. Heck, I remember my younger brothers who were in Jr. High needing to get Photo IDs to go from Pittsburgh to LA and back to visit me in college back in '96.
So what is the problem, other than an excuse to pull out some lame "Bush and Ashcroft are Nazis" routine.
Brian Ellenberger
>Scarily enough, it goes on in the U.S. too. Take >a good, long hard look at Walmart Corp. They are >one of the nation's largest redistributors of >magazines and other periodicals... so large, in >fact, that if Walmart refuses to carry a >magazine for a month, it can break a publication >financially.
>Walmart has been known to refuse to sell books, >games, CD's and magazines that had any kind of >content deemed innapropriate.
I'm sorry, but some people (including myself) shop at Warmart specifically because they have this policy. I love being able to walk around and not being bombarded with the latest "shock" CDs and soft porn "fashion" magazines.
I'm sick of people on Slashdot abusing the term "freedom". Freedom is Wal-mart choosing not to buy crap CD's and magazines and freedom is me shopping at Wal-mart because I don't want anything to do with that stuff.
What freedom is not is self-righteous individuals like yourself taking it upon themself to tell Wal-Mart and the millions of people who shop there what to do. Just don't shop there.
And its not like there isn't competition or other choices (KMart, Target, the mini-mart, the Internet).
Brian Ellenberger
Piloting a balloon solo around the world. That is incredible---if this was 1899!! :)
Brian Ellenberger
>Actually I wish the entire idea of a forced Pledge of Allegiance would be done away with. You haven't been forced to say the Pledge since 1943. See West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) (USSC+)
Trust me, that will change once you read the plot. It sounds like a bad first season reject . Or perhaps more like a bad soap opera plot...
Brian Ellenberger
>It's no wonder that Europe and Japan create >fancy new technology and implement it left and >right (maglev trains, alternative fuel cars, >etc), while America sticks to inventing weapons >of war, new food additives, and new ways to >patent/copyright information so that nobody can
Yea, I love those awesome flying cars they have in Japan that run on H2O and cause zero polution!
Seriously dude, what the heck are you talking about? Do you actually think the rest of the world is lightyears ahead of us in technology? I mean, if there were all these magical things Japan and Europe invented don't you think they would be making a killing selling them to us? Come on.
There are societal/economical reasons why things like maglev trains don't work as well here. Things like wanting the freedom of your own house and wanting to drive where you want to when you want to.
As for those evil Americans "inventing weapons of war", well guess what---your using one of those "weapons" right now. The Internet started as DARPANET--A Defense Department network designed to keep communication going during nuclear attack.
Brian Ellenberger
>Walmart is notorious for demanding that magazine >covers and CD covers be changed if they are >going to carry it. They are down to make money, >and by opting to force magazines to self-censor, >I don't really think choice has much to do with >this story.
That's not censorship, that's is choice. Don't like it, go to Target or KMart. I personally love the Wal-Mart policy and shop there because if it. But that's my choice.
I mean, there is alot of crap out there in this country. Which is fine, it is a free country. But just because you create crap doesn't mean people or corporations have to buy it! That's the other part of a free country.
Don't you think it is pretty arrogant of you to basically say, "I don't care what Wal-Mart or its loyal customers say, you must carry these soft-porn magazines and raunchy CDs"?
I'm sorry, but high school sucks enough without arrogant liberals like yourself trying to suck every last pleasure out of life. Come on, being able to get a freakin SODA POP at school shouldn't be a controversy.
"raise money for the school (and large companies)."
Or maybe they are there because people enjoy drinking soda. Please stop seeing life through a narrow Marxist lense. Gosh, Heaven forbid people buying things and enjoying them. Must be a conspiracy...
Brian Ellenberger
>And it shouldn't be - the only thing whites have >brought to Africa is racism and their own forms >of control over the lands true owners.
Hmm, isn't this an example of a racist statement?
Being "white" or "black" is just skin pigmentation. To say that having "white" pigments causes one to bring racism to Africa is completely non sequitor.
And to divide up continents simply based on skin pigmentation is even more ludicrous! What intrinsically about the land mass of Africa would cause you to come to the logical conclusion that only people with darker pigmentation should be there?
Brian Ellenberger
No they are not fair, but they are probably the only way of assessing whether or not a student in a lower level course (sophomore or below) has really learned the material.
This goes back to a previously Slashdot article on getting help on your Computer Science programs. Someone in a beginning CS course can probably "get by" on their programs by getting help (honestly or cheating) and/or by using the internet/books for examples and hacking away at the code. The only way to really assess whether the student has learned anything themselves is to sit them down in a closed atmosphere and see if the student really knows something by giving them a test.
Now my experience has been that in upper level classes the amount of code writing done on tests is greatly reduced. This is because being able to "get by" on the more difficult assignments is harder and there is enough material of greater complexity to test the student on higher level concepts without requiring getting into detailed code. The student is still expected to write pseudocode however, but this is more to show that you can solve a particular problem (say creating an algorithm) than testing your ability to write C code.
The ability to write code/pseudocode outside the computer is not a useless skill. In my experience I have done alot of whiteboard coding in groups on different projects when brainstorming solutions to problems. I have also had to do it on interviews to show I knew my stuff.
Brian Ellenberger
With regards to the SW vs. Spider-Man, I'm reminded about what the Green Goblin tells Spidey in the movie. He basically tells him that it is no use being the good guy because everyone will try and tear you down anyway. People like building someone up and then tearing them down.
The new SW movies are evidence of that. Far too many of the "fans" are just out there to tear down SW with any nitpick they can come up with and build up a new "hero". Sure there are many problems with the new SW films. But there are many problems with the old ones as well (whiney Luke, bad dialog, etc).
I think people are too quick to tear down SW. It is a movie, not a religion. And it is a film for everyone, not just geeks. I think the general public likes the new SW films more than the hardcore geeks like to admit. I showed the Phantom Menace to my mother-in-law on Friday and she loved it. So much that our whole family saw AOTC on Sunday. The exit polls show people rating AOTC as a A-. I bet the minus comes from SW "fans".
In fact, the hardcore SW fans are hurting SW more than anything. By dressing up and standing in line and such they are threatening to reduce SW to simple geekdom (see Star Trek). Normal people generally avoid geekdom, and I bet alot of people are turned off on SW just because of the so-called-fans.
My final rant is that if Lucas was in it SOLELY for the money he would have made 10 SW films by now and 7 of them would be cheap crappy films (see Star Trek). Also he would have shown them on as many screens as possible instead of limiting them to the ones with digital sound.
Sure he likes a profit as much as anyone, but he is also SW's biggest and best fan.
Meanwhile, I'm waiting to see how much the Slashdot crowd turns on Spider-Man 2 and the Matrix Reloaded.
Brian Ellenberger
ID Software does this all the time. Think back to Quake? Instead of making another Doom, John and the boys wrote a game that forced you to go out and get a 3D video card to enjoy the game. Looking at the incredible advances in 3D video cards, aren't you glad he forced people to upgrade? How many 3D video games still support software rendering? In the end I don't think it was "penalizing his audience" in any way.
Lucas's primary goal with the Star Wars films was not just making movies but pushing the moviemaking technology. And that will always be his biggest accomplishment.
Brian Ellenberger
I thought this was wierd, so I did some checking on this guy. I looked for him on MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty list, but couldn't find him. So I looked him up in the people directory and found this:
name: Madnick, Stuart E email: smadnick@MIT.EDU phone: (617) 253-6671 address: E53-321 department: School Of Mgmt title: J N Maguire Prof Of Info Tech url: http://mit.edu/smadnick/www/home.html
His department is not EECS, it is the School of Management! His research is in areas such as Total Data Quality Management and Productivity From Information Technology. Here is a bio description from his web page:
http://mit.edu/smadnick/www/home.html Madnick finds ways to integrate information systems, giving organizations a more global view of their operations. He is leading a project that develops new technologies for gathering and analyzing information from many different sources, including conventional databases and the World Wide Web. He is also testing these new technologies in industries such as financial services, manufacturing, logistics, and transportation.
Microsoft basically found anyone from MIT they could because it is MIT. I'm surprised they didn't find a janitor from MIT to testify.
Brian EllenbergerI'm sorry, but that's a strawman argument. The percentage of babies and children dying of AIDS is extremely small. And the gay comment is another strawman. I mentioned nothing about gays. AIDS is an equal opportunity killer of people who are stupid about sex.
And finally the blame for the children's AIDS should go to the stupid parents and NOT the drug companies!
Brian Ellenberger
"Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
No, 2,500 AIDS victims pulled the trigger on themselves by making stupid decisions about sex.
Then the drug companies come along to help and they are attacked by bad Marxist panderings like this.
Guess what, AIDS is an extremely tough disease and extremely expensive to fight. Extremely expensive. And the government's contributions don't even come close to the cost of developing AIDS drugs. And for every drug and research project that succeeds, many many more fail.
If the drug companies were really in some big capitalist consipracy to screw over the world they wouldn't have picked AIDS (a preventable disease) to do it with. They would be screwing you over with the polio and smallpox. Instead, the evil drug companies pretty much eliminated those diseases from the planet.
Brian Ellenberger
Except for the fact that the #2 bad guy in the books and the one of the biggest turncoats in Middle Earth history is a wizard named Saruman the *WHITE*....
While Gandalf was known throughout most of his like as Gandalf the *GRAY*.
The difference is that the Cuban problem is a political problem, not a military problem. We could measure in hours the amount of time it would take for us to take Castro out. And incase you didn't notice we WON the only Cuban conflict that mattered--the Cuban Missle Crisis. The reason that Castro is still in power is political not military.
Yugoslavia was a military problem. Good old Milo was killing a whole bunch of Muslims and wasn't listening to "reason". And for all of "Europe's Power" they couldn't do a darn thing about it.
Brian
Um, it would take *alot* longer than 10 years for that to happen. Remember Yugoslav? If the EU can't even take care of a problematic country in their own back yard, how the heck are they going to project their power anywhere?
For example, a great deal of America's power comes from its Aircraft Carriers. It would take them alot longer than 10 years to build anything equivalent to our fleet. And even, they tend to do stupid things like spend billions on a carrier that isn't even long enough and broke its port propeller on its first long-distance trials:
http://www.romanchess.com/DeGaulle.htm http://www.pigdog.org/auto/laughable_technology/li nk/2357.html
And Luxembourg would be beating the US in research dollars if it had 250 million people!
The main problem with your argument is that total GNP can't be directly converted to money. Feeding and clothing a billion people isn't easy and there isn't much to skim off of that per capita GDP of $3,600. You can't just say, "Well Mr. Farmer eat 5% less and sell the rest and give us the money for more research." It isn't that simple. Can the person afford to eat 5% less? Who will buy the extra food? What about the infrastructure to get the food to sell to somebody?
And note that 50% of Chinese are employed in agriculture.
Perhaps a better (but still simplistic) formula is per capita GNP X number of people.
Brian