You've confused my points; the first was that almost every intel agency in the civilised world was convinced that Iraq had and was producing WMDs. It appears that they may have been wrong--although that's still very far from certain--and if that's the case, it will be a very interesting question to explore.
My second point was that Iraq did have and use chemical weapons; it's highly unlikely that a regime of Hussein's kind would suddenly have a great humanitarian awakening on the subject. If it were running out, surely it would want more?
It's not that we had to prove that Hussein was dangerous; it's that we had to show that he was dangerous enough for those countries to join us in going to war with him. As for why many countries were unwilling to help, that's simple politics. France & Germany were making loads of money off of Hussein--what do they care if hundreds of thousands die? Plus there's also domestic pressures to consider: both countries have substantial Mohammedan populations and, at least in the case of France, have proven unable to control them. Hussein in his later years donned the cloak of loony-Mohammedanism, and the French at least no doubt feared an uprising. Plus, as a matter of policy they do not go along with the US--they fear being what they are, which is a second-rate power. The only way they can maintain even a semblance of importance is to obstruct the first-rate powers wherever possible. It makes perfect sense from their perspective, and I cannot really blame them.
Re:Removing fingerprints doesn't work
on
Our Man In Black
·
· Score: 1
Well, it's a pity that the intelligence agencies of dozens of countries didn't have your expert analysis available to them. Like a bunch of idiots, they all believed that Iraq did have WMD. Of course, that may because it did have them, and use them, less than twenty years ago in his war with Iran.
And Iraq wasn't 'under decades' of sanctions; it was under them since the beginning of the Gulf War.
Why would the fact that the military use Linux make one question Iraq any more than before? Surely, if one opposes it then one will continue to oppose it, and if one supports it then one will continue to support it. I cannot see someone saying 'well, Saddam is out of power, the Iraqis are better off but wait a minute--they used free software to do this! What a bunch of jerks!'
As a programmer who values practicality above theoretical purity, I don't really understand how something as incredibly useful as MySQL can be so "poor."
Because, until fairly recently, it was quite likely that one's data would eventually become corrupt. This is no longer the case, but MySQL still doesn't offer all that PostgreSQL does.
This is true because the currently popular cars are less-regulated SUVs and trucks. Not that it matters--if folks wish to waste their money on gas, far be it from to complain. Sure it drives up prices, but so too does demand for any commodity. If everyone else quite eating beef it'd be much cheaper when I wanted to eat it:-)
Have you even a rudimentary grasp of economic? If many jobs are outsourced, then there will be many people out of work. If new jobs are not created (a big if, considering that history shows that they always are), then people will be willing to work for less (better to make $50,000/year rather than $0, even if one would like $120,000). Wages in the US would decrease until competitive elsewhere.
It would never get to the point that the plumber would be poorly off.
It is helping out: it means that a patient can find a less expensive physician. Don't you know, offshore outsourcing is only bad when you are the one overcharging your customers?
Adam Cadre's Photopia is one of only two works (the other is Kipling's The Light That Failed) which has ever made me cry when first I read it. An absolutely amazing example of art: it is a must for anyone who considers himself a student.
I track my 401(k), stocks and other assets with GnuCash. I do my taxes online. I reconcile by hand, and I neverused Quicken. GnuCash works well for me.
Is it true though? Note that he doesn't (in this instance) say, 'if and only if your program is free software, it is basically ethical.' That is, he is saying free software implies ethics. This is trivially false: a piece of software to manage genocide is unethical, despite its freedom.
But the more limited statement--that if software is otherwise ethical is free, then it is ethical--is true. Free software is always more ethical than its proprietary counterpart. I don't say that proprietary software is unethical, but that it's less ethical.
One should note, though, that while the South oppressed about a third of its population, the Yankees oppressed all of its population.
Hmm, I must have been sleeping in history class when they told us about white Virginians having their daughters raped by Massachusetts plantation owners or sold to some racist Pennsylvanian.
Read about Sherman's March to the Sea sometime. Rapine galore, of whites and of blacks alike. One of the nastier incidents in the 19th century.
I don't side with the slaveholders--I believe that slavery as it was practised in the American South was very, very wrong. I would oppose it, did it still exist.
And no, the issue was not about whether or not slavery would survive. Had the proper Constitutional procedures been followed, I doubt not that the South would have aquiesced to the abolition of slavery. The issue had to do with the government funding Yankee industry with Southern taxes, among other things.
I'm glad that slavery is no more. If the War Between the States had been about slavery, then maybe one could argue that more than half a million lives were worth that end. But, of course, it wasn't about slavery.
Of course I think that slavery was a rotten thing. One should note, though, that while the South oppressed about a third of its population, the Yankees oppressed all of its population. Millions more were enslaved and forced into servitude by the Union, for to be unable to secede is slavery and servitude.
The South didn't go 'to war to fight for the right to rape, murder, and enslave black people'; it seceded from the Union for a host of reasons, only one of which was slavery. The larger issues were of federalism vs. centralism. The Union started the war, and it did so not to free the slaves but to enslave the South (note that those slave states which did not secede kept their slaves past the end of the war).
I honour those Southerners who fought for federalism; for the Republic Washington founded; for their homes; for freedom.
I have yet to see an explanation that doesn't involve slavery that doesn't also reek of Southern apologia.
What's wrong with that? As you yourself note, there were a whole host of issues bubbling up at one time--slavery was merely a (not the) proximate cause.
Hit by Uninsured Driver
What are the odds? If they are 1 in 1,000, and insurance costs more than $7.50, then destruction of the $7,500 car isn't worth it. Likewise for the rest of the costs involved.
Hitting Someone Else
Again, what are the odds? If I have a 1 in 1,000 chance of hitting someone and losing all my assets, and my assets are $20,000, then keeping a Jackson in the bank is sufficient to account for the odds; I'm better served using the rest of my money for other purposes.
Car Theft
A common misconception. Liability insurance does nothing whatsoever in the case of theft; that is a separate concern. In my own case, I have reasonable liability insurance (slightly above the state-mandated minima) and have chose not to go with any theft or self-inflicted damage coverage, since the cost thereof over three years exceeded the value of my vehicle. Once again, multiply the cost by the probability.
Being Attacked by Someone Else
Not only is this really a sub-case of (2), it is also an offensive libel against the many responsible gun-owners out there. Once again, though, it comes down to multiplying probability by cost.
Insurance is usually an inherently stupid game to play: you bet that the insurance company will spend more on you than you will on them; they bet you will spend more on them than they will spend on you. Which do you think will win?
Insurance does have its place, though: when the (perceived) costs are sufficiently high, it makes a lot of sense. Were I married, I would consider the cost of my wife having to work to support herself sufficiently high that I would wish to have insurance such that she would be able to live well in the event of my death. Likewise for health insurance &c.
But as a single guy, it makes no sense whatsoever for me to waste money on health insurance, life insurance or the rest. I save a large portion of my salary, and take my chances. In the long run, the odds are extremely good that I'll come out well ahead. If not, well that's life.
Abraham Lincoln, you know that lawyer from way back, I think humanity was better off because of him.
Right, a man who through his megalomania managed to slay more Americans than every single American war put together, and who violated several basic human and civil rights, has done wonders for 'humanity' (which is a virtue or quality, not a group--I believe that you meant mankind). Also, up is down and right is left.
this is one of those situations where the answer is in the question: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
'Socialism' is just another term for Marxism, aka communism. It was coined as a more palatable alternative. There's no fundamental difference: the one is merely a soft sell of the other; both are incredibly foolish, ineffective, dehumanising and inherently wrong & incorrect.
It's damned difficult to be happy without prosperity. Indeed, the latter is pretty much a pre-condition for the former. Bhutan's statement is nothing more than an admission of failure: 'Well, we couldn't make things better, but let's pretend they are, anyway.'
If you're descreasing the GDP, then you're not a decent human being; instead, you are working to decrease the wuality of live of hundreds of millions of men, women & children. Economic progress is the only quantifiable progress there is.
That said, it's not the only progress. And as it happens SCO's actions decrease the well-being of all and are immoral and indecent to boot.
Cubic zirconium looks just as good. Many other gems that cost less actually look better.
I don't know about cubic zirconium, but certainly rubies & sapphires look very cool--and the star variety far surpass any diamond IMHO. Emeralds are pretty sweet too. For that matter, there are a good number of lesser-known gems which look pretty damn good. Still, diamonds do have their appeal, although they're not what I'd buy were I a woman after jewelry.
Even if you have specially trained eyes that can actually tell the difference, and you have some strange need for the diamonds, then modern industrially produced diamonds are actually more pure then mined ones.
IMHO there is something very, very cool about something which has been gestated in the earth for millions of years. Man-made cannot match that.
That said, I want to buy some sapphire bar stock:-)
You can put a macron ('long') or 'short' (forget what it's properly called) marker on any character? You can put a hat or circumlex on any character? You can type any of approx. a hundred mathematical symbols?
Yes, yes, for the love of god yes. Why do you keep asking? The diacriticals can be accessed via dead keys on the keyboard. The non-keyboard symbols are available via the glyph palette.
Here's where I begin to doubt you. I have never seen any system other than TeX and its derivatives which enables one to hang diacritics off of anything, instead of a few characters (for example, normally there are only glyphs for umlauted vowels, not for umlauted consonants). What OS & software is this? Will this composition work with any fonts? Is it intelligent about adjusting the vertical space between diacritic and stem?
Only because the government forces those prices to be lower. The American consumer pays for research and development enjoyed by the rest of the world's price-controlled regimes.
A drug to prolong one's life should be filthy expensive: for most of us, our lives are our most valuable assets. Man has tried for centuries to extend his lifespan: now that we can, why do we expect that it should be cheap or free?
I can type those "funky Roman ligatures" just by using dead keys on my keyboard.
You can put a cedilla on any character? You can umlaut any character? You can put a macron ('long') or 'short' (forget what it's properly called) marker on any character? You can put a hat or circumlex on any character? You can type any of approx. a hundred mathematical symbols?
I'd like to see your keyboard.
You don't get much funkier than Vietnamese...
Utter nonsense. Play with Eastern European languages or philology or mathematics sometime.
Why aren't pdflatex or dvipdf appropriate? Enlighten me--I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really like to know why.
If TeX can't handle taking an RGB image from, say, a digital camera and transforming the color data into a given CMYK space using a user-specified transform profile, it's NOT USEFUL FOR MODERN PRINT PRODUCTION.
That's not its job. There are (or could be) tools to transform RGB into CMYK. That's not the job of a text layout program.
Unix Philosophy 101: many small tools, each of which does one job and does well. This ain't Windows, where the antiphilosophy (it's hardly the love of wisdom...) is that there should be one giant tool which does a few things really well, several alright and many poorly.
No desire to use DocBook. I want to use a different schema. I am shit-outta-luck. Ergo, TeX is not a good tool.
It is possible to transform XML into LaTeX, just as it is possible to transform XML into anything. That there does not exist a tool to do this for you is not the issue. If you want it, write it or pay someone to write it for you. Don't expect the rest of the world to do this for you for free.
Have your publishing system detect the edges of the illustration and wrap text accordingly. TeX cannot do this...
Nope, it can, as was noted by another poster. That you don't know how to do it with TeX/LaTeX is immaterial.
[re. my admission of ignorance on one point] Look, man, if you don't have any idea what we're talking about, why did you feel compelled to spout off?
Because while I know less than you about certain things, I know more than you about others. Honesty compels me to point out where I know less as well as where I know more.
Slashdot Mirror
My second point was that Iraq did have and use chemical weapons; it's highly unlikely that a regime of Hussein's kind would suddenly have a great humanitarian awakening on the subject. If it were running out, surely it would want more?
It's not that we had to prove that Hussein was dangerous; it's that we had to show that he was dangerous enough for those countries to join us in going to war with him. As for why many countries were unwilling to help, that's simple politics. France & Germany were making loads of money off of Hussein--what do they care if hundreds of thousands die? Plus there's also domestic pressures to consider: both countries have substantial Mohammedan populations and, at least in the case of France, have proven unable to control them. Hussein in his later years donned the cloak of loony-Mohammedanism, and the French at least no doubt feared an uprising. Plus, as a matter of policy they do not go along with the US--they fear being what they are, which is a second-rate power. The only way they can maintain even a semblance of importance is to obstruct the first-rate powers wherever possible. It makes perfect sense from their perspective, and I cannot really blame them.
Damn, that was a good show...
And Iraq wasn't 'under decades' of sanctions; it was under them since the beginning of the Gulf War.
Why would the fact that the military use Linux make one question Iraq any more than before? Surely, if one opposes it then one will continue to oppose it, and if one supports it then one will continue to support it. I cannot see someone saying 'well, Saddam is out of power, the Iraqis are better off but wait a minute--they used free software to do this! What a bunch of jerks!'
Because, until fairly recently, it was quite likely that one's data would eventually become corrupt. This is no longer the case, but MySQL still doesn't offer all that PostgreSQL does.
This is true because the currently popular cars are less-regulated SUVs and trucks. Not that it matters--if folks wish to waste their money on gas, far be it from to complain. Sure it drives up prices, but so too does demand for any commodity. If everyone else quite eating beef it'd be much cheaper when I wanted to eat it:-)
It would never get to the point that the plumber would be poorly off.
It is helping out: it means that a patient can find a less expensive physician. Don't you know, offshore outsourcing is only bad when you are the one overcharging your customers?
You think John 'Stuff the First Amendment' McCain is principled? Only in the sense that his principles are wrong.
Adam Cadre's Photopia is one of only two works (the other is Kipling's The Light That Failed) which has ever made me cry when first I read it. An absolutely amazing example of art: it is a must for anyone who considers himself a student.
I track my 401(k), stocks and other assets with GnuCash. I do my taxes online. I reconcile by hand, and I neverused Quicken. GnuCash works well for me.
But the more limited statement--that if software is otherwise ethical is free, then it is ethical--is true. Free software is always more ethical than its proprietary counterpart. I don't say that proprietary software is unethical, but that it's less ethical.
Read about Sherman's March to the Sea sometime. Rapine galore, of whites and of blacks alike. One of the nastier incidents in the 19th century.
I don't side with the slaveholders--I believe that slavery as it was practised in the American South was very, very wrong. I would oppose it, did it still exist.
And no, the issue was not about whether or not slavery would survive. Had the proper Constitutional procedures been followed, I doubt not that the South would have aquiesced to the abolition of slavery. The issue had to do with the government funding Yankee industry with Southern taxes, among other things.
I'm glad that slavery is no more. If the War Between the States had been about slavery, then maybe one could argue that more than half a million lives were worth that end. But, of course, it wasn't about slavery.
The South didn't go 'to war to fight for the right to rape, murder, and enslave black people'; it seceded from the Union for a host of reasons, only one of which was slavery. The larger issues were of federalism vs. centralism. The Union started the war, and it did so not to free the slaves but to enslave the South (note that those slave states which did not secede kept their slaves past the end of the war).
I honour those Southerners who fought for federalism; for the Republic Washington founded; for their homes; for freedom.
Read some Hayek sometime, particularly The Road to Serfdom. My opinion of socialism is not formed of ignorance, but of education.
What's wrong with that? As you yourself note, there were a whole host of issues bubbling up at one time--slavery was merely a (not the) proximate cause.
Insurance is usually an inherently stupid game to play: you bet that the insurance company will spend more on you than you will on them; they bet you will spend more on them than they will spend on you. Which do you think will win?
Insurance does have its place, though: when the (perceived) costs are sufficiently high, it makes a lot of sense. Were I married, I would consider the cost of my wife having to work to support herself sufficiently high that I would wish to have insurance such that she would be able to live well in the event of my death. Likewise for health insurance &c.
But as a single guy, it makes no sense whatsoever for me to waste money on health insurance, life insurance or the rest. I save a large portion of my salary, and take my chances. In the long run, the odds are extremely good that I'll come out well ahead. If not, well that's life.
Right, a man who through his megalomania managed to slay more Americans than every single American war put together, and who violated several basic human and civil rights, has done wonders for 'humanity' (which is a virtue or quality, not a group--I believe that you meant mankind). Also, up is down and right is left.
that's because Russia wasn't communist.
this is one of those situations where the answer is in the question: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
'Socialism' is just another term for Marxism, aka communism. It was coined as a more palatable alternative. There's no fundamental difference: the one is merely a soft sell of the other; both are incredibly foolish, ineffective, dehumanising and inherently wrong & incorrect.
It's damned difficult to be happy without prosperity. Indeed, the latter is pretty much a pre-condition for the former. Bhutan's statement is nothing more than an admission of failure: 'Well, we couldn't make things better, but let's pretend they are, anyway.'
That said, it's not the only progress. And as it happens SCO's actions decrease the well-being of all and are immoral and indecent to boot.
I don't know about cubic zirconium, but certainly rubies & sapphires look very cool--and the star variety far surpass any diamond IMHO. Emeralds are pretty sweet too. For that matter, there are a good number of lesser-known gems which look pretty damn good. Still, diamonds do have their appeal, although they're not what I'd buy were I a woman after jewelry.
Even if you have specially trained eyes that can actually tell the difference, and you have some strange need for the diamonds, then modern industrially produced diamonds are actually more pure then mined ones.
IMHO there is something very, very cool about something which has been gestated in the earth for millions of years. Man-made cannot match that.
That said, I want to buy some sapphire bar stock:-)
Here's where I begin to doubt you. I have never seen any system other than TeX and its derivatives which enables one to hang diacritics off of anything, instead of a few characters (for example, normally there are only glyphs for umlauted vowels, not for umlauted consonants). What OS & software is this? Will this composition work with any fonts? Is it intelligent about adjusting the vertical space between diacritic and stem?
A drug to prolong one's life should be filthy expensive: for most of us, our lives are our most valuable assets. Man has tried for centuries to extend his lifespan: now that we can, why do we expect that it should be cheap or free?
You can put a cedilla on any character? You can umlaut any character? You can put a macron ('long') or 'short' (forget what it's properly called) marker on any character? You can put a hat or circumlex on any character? You can type any of approx. a hundred mathematical symbols?
I'd like to see your keyboard.
You don't get much funkier than Vietnamese...
Utter nonsense. Play with Eastern European languages or philology or mathematics sometime.
Why aren't pdflatex or dvipdf appropriate? Enlighten me--I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really like to know why.
If TeX can't handle taking an RGB image from, say, a digital camera and transforming the color data into a given CMYK space using a user-specified transform profile, it's NOT USEFUL FOR MODERN PRINT PRODUCTION.
That's not its job. There are (or could be) tools to transform RGB into CMYK. That's not the job of a text layout program.
Unix Philosophy 101: many small tools, each of which does one job and does well. This ain't Windows, where the antiphilosophy (it's hardly the love of wisdom...) is that there should be one giant tool which does a few things really well, several alright and many poorly.
No desire to use DocBook. I want to use a different schema. I am shit-outta-luck. Ergo, TeX is not a good tool.
It is possible to transform XML into LaTeX, just as it is possible to transform XML into anything. That there does not exist a tool to do this for you is not the issue. If you want it, write it or pay someone to write it for you. Don't expect the rest of the world to do this for you for free.
Have your publishing system detect the edges of the illustration and wrap text accordingly. TeX cannot do this...
Nope, it can, as was noted by another poster. That you don't know how to do it with TeX/LaTeX is immaterial.
[re. my admission of ignorance on one point] Look, man, if you don't have any idea what we're talking about, why did you feel compelled to spout off?
Because while I know less than you about certain things, I know more than you about others. Honesty compels me to point out where I know less as well as where I know more.