I find it interesting that he really only got started donating to significant non-M$ benefiting causes when he met Melinda. She appears to have been a positive influence.
i find it interesting that gates only really started donating after having been hauled in for a rather public anti-trust trial, having learned the importance of keeping up appearances to The Mob when you're the world's richest man.
But he doesn't and that's the whole point. He doesn't care if other people die. He is a sociopath and like all sociopaths he has no ability to empethize with other people. To him dead koreans (north or south) don't matter. The only thing that matters is the supremecy of US military power and unquestioning obediance to his will.
incredible, what you can read into something, when you have a fixed preoccupation in your head about something.
the op's primary point seemed to be that NK would be a larger threat later than it is now. so, if you accept his premises, it would save more lives to deal with NK now than later.
you can argue over the validity of his premises, but you expose your ulterior preoccupations with this "supremacy" and "obedience" and "will" drivel.
an annonymous US official says its not: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/09/12/nkorea.blast/
which says this:
Yonhap reported the explosion happened in Yanggang province along the Chinese border, the site of Yongjori Missile Base -- a large facility with an underground missile firing range.
According to data gathered by Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Yongjori is a suspected site for North Korea's uranium enrichment program.
this could be a missile test gone hugely awry, or - holy shit - could this be a US strike against NK uranium enrichment program??
It was an accident such as the one a few months ago, when a train laden with chemicals went up into the air.
interesting side-note - i seem to recall an article from that incident that stated there were syrian nationals involved with missile technology accompanying whatever was on that train.
makes one wonder if that explosion was a "don't fuck around" message from the US.
As for you seoul scenario. Annihilation amounts to the death of nearly every soul in Seoul. Its hard to imagine that a couple of hours or even a couple of days of artillary fire could acheive such an outcome.
i think another message cited an article that estimated 500,000 artillery rounds *per hour* for several hours. sure, a bunch of people would get out of seoul, but do you have any idea how devastating that would be?
The lesson therefore for evil dictators is NOT to disarm - in fact get those nukes as quickly as possible! Then no-one will dare invade you.
of course, the logical conclusion to this line of thought is: we must nuke such an evil dictator to disabuse other evil dictators-in-the-wings from pursuing that line of logic.
Do I think he's bright enough to pour piss out of a boot?
when you think of all the neural activity and cognitive skills required to identify piss in a boot, and then the motor control and coordination required to actually empty it, it really is a miracle of sorts, isn't it?
And while we could possibly have gone in and done something about it, we'd likely have had to deal with China if we had. And that's not a good idea, their army is both massive and well armed with their own nukes, as well as other things.
yeah, but this festering sore left over from the cold war (ie NK) has, is, and will be a problem until we do something decisive about it.
if that means wiping out pyong yang and saying "your move, china", maybe that's the best of a couple really shitty options.
But if you even START to THINK about invading North Korea, Seoul gets hit by 50,000 missiles before our troops can even step across the border. Sure, North Korea would fall in a matter of days, but not until after they'd done tons of damage.
and i'm sure he'll become more sane, have less weapons, and become less desperate as time goes on.
You didn't get it. My point was that "This is what the liberals have done for us, can't you see this?" theme of the "Joe" post was overdone.
of course it was, for effect. that doesn't invalidate the main point of the post: that many of those who trash "liberals" benefit directly from "liberal" policies, along with everyone else.
Liberals didn't make my water clean
actually, they did. the environmental situation now is far better than it was in, say, the 1970's. that's a direct result of "liberal" environmental legislation.
and, belive it or not, the suggestion that they've done anything to protect me from taking a chance on a bad doctor... nothing could be further from the truth.
i can think of a lot of things that would be farther from the truth, but the original point was drug safety, not bad doctors. you can't convince me that Walter Broadwinkle, MD, is more effective at drug quality control than the institutions we currently have in place for that purpose. sane doctors *rely* on drug safety controls. if you don't want those benefits, the philipines are just a plane-ride away.
Liberal policy in health care will bring us closer and closer to Canada's situation, where a mass exodous of doctors is crippling their government's ability to provide health care soon after it started.
meanwhile, here in the US, the number of people without health insurance practically equals the population of canada. and, details aside, all the other industrialized countries have somehow managed to cover their citizens. all of them. except the US.
i don't advocate one particular health care proposal over another, but i'm pretty sure we can do better than we're doing now.
You are pretty condescending for someone who can't be bothered with details like starting a sentence with a capital letter...
if i were to start my sentences with capital letters, would i have the credentials to be condescending? consider this: capital letters are often unnecessary, add keystrokes, and can cause you to contort your hand position in some cases - and that's bad for you.
In any situation, you have two options. 1) complain about being victimized or 2) do something about it.
excellent idea. if management unjustly "victimizes" me, i fully intend to bring it up with the union.
You are responsible for your success.
why would someone expect their union to be "responsible" for their success? a union has a fairly well-defined role in the worker-employer relationship, and being responsible for one's success isn't part of it.
Your company is not looking you for you, neither is your boss, and certainly not the union.
actually, the union is looking out for me. it leverages my value - ie, what i get paid - by unifying it with that of my co-workers. it makes sure i have some recourse if someone in management has a bad day and arbitrarily decides to fire me. it collectively negotiates retirement benefits, health benefits, and other benefits on my behalf.
it provides fairness and added security to my life. for this, i pay them a small amount of cash out of each check to cover expenses. sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
The earlier you come to grips with this, the better you are off.
i'm pretty open-minded, you just haven't made a very persuasive argument.
If you want to slack, then just get familiar with being a victim.
what makes you think that i want to "slack"? i work pretty hard, both at my day job and at my moonlighting pursuits. meanwhile, my workday is less fearful and frustrating, since i know that the ego/whims/napoleon complex of my direct supervisor are at least somewhat tempered by the knowledge that he or she will have to justify such actions to a review board.
No one promised you something for nothing.
and i haven't asked for it.
i have to say, your post doesn't make much sense to me, but it does indicate that you carry a lot of psychological / philosophical baggage with regard to unions.
What I can say is, freedom is like drawing a circle on the ground for somebody to stand in, I personally admit that, in some developed countries like America, in some certain cases, they DO have a larger circle (Could you understand what I mean?
i would say that you are not even in the circle if you cannot vote for the people who will represent you in government. it is the center of the circle, and if it's not there, there can be no circle.
the chinese people are not even nearly in charge of their own destiny if they can't vote for their political leaders.
the people in the US can be lazy, can make questionable choices when voting, sometimes they can be deceived by politicians. however, at the end of the day, they *can* get together and - non-violently - remove the ruling party from office if they really want to. the ruling party must always be aware of this when they make decisions, and this is so very important to having a government that is responsive to the needs of the people.
what would really be so bad about permitting free, fair elections in china right now?
btw, i too appreciate the dialogue we have on this subject.
There are many more such examples. Let's face it, unions are bad, bad, bad for the US, it employees, and its economy. Unions were a solution for the 30's, 40's and 50's. But they are not the solution for the 21st century.
this has virtually NOTHING to do with unions, and everything to do with the cost of (barely) living in the third world compared to modern, industrialized societies.
Moral to the story: if you are good at what you do, you don't need a union.
the moral of the story: i'm really excellent, and the top, say, 5% of excellent people should band together with me and be real excellent and fuck the non-excellent people.
see, the problem with your system is that it's only good for the top 5% of excellent people. and if the other 95% - you know, the sub-human slackers who aren't as excellent as you - aren't looked out for in the system, all kinds of bad things happen.
so get over yourself. these kinds of threads always fill up with "i'm so incredibly marvelous, and it's *so* hard to soar with the eagles when i'm surrounded by all these turkeys!" messages.
I'm sure that the vast majority of the $40 per month I pay on my water bill goes to quality control.
part of it, i suspect. i would imagine that the rest of it is used to deliver water to your house. wtf is your point?
Goodness knows that libreals know more about prescribing safe medicine than my doctor does.
no, but i bet libreals know how to pass legislation that helps ensure that you're not playing russian roulette when you select a doctor.
Yeah, because if that wasn't the case, my employer would have to divert money from my paycheck into a health insurance plan.
insurance is all about distributing risk. you pay a little bit into a pool so that you, along with everyone else, is protected from death and/or catastrophic financial impoverishment in the event that you should draw the short straw.
now grow up, use your mind a little bit, and look at both sides calmly and with some humility, instead of indulging yourself with all the imaginary slights and burdens that society has foisted upon you.
if unionization were universal, then a union in one organization would not be a competitive disadvantage against one without a union. union leadership would be invited into corporate planning sessions and become partners in the business, instead of workers being treated like disposable objects. union leadership could then go back to their membership and say "no, seriously, people - we *do* need to accept a pay cut / layoffs / whatever this time - we've seen the numbers." true, management would have to spread their wealth around to the rank and file a bit, but that's bad *how*, exactly?
Promoting mediocrity.
if you mean that the daily workplace experience would be a less suffocating, fear-filled exercise in ass-sucking - yeah, that's probably true. and if you mean that management would be less able to indulge itself in little power trips and temper-tantrums, that's true too. it's not all about productivity - self-respect and quality of life are important too.
Antagonising non-union workers / coercing people into joing.
i think i'm ok with non-union workers in a unionized workplace; but there can't be preference given before-hand to workers who would agree to remain non-union. they should be able to choose after being hired whether or not the union offers them benefits for their dues.
Attracting organised crime.
my instinct is that organized crime in unions is actually *advantageous* to management, since crooks cut deals without really caring about those whom they represent. as an added bonus, it tarnishes the image of unions in general.
Who is assuming that an IT union would be permitted to strike?
"Dat's a nice little CRM server you got dere, boss. It would be, like, a real shame if somethin' happened to it and you couldn't deliver to your customers no more. I'm just sayin'... things happen, ya know? Like, let's say I'm all weak an' worn out from too few vacation days, an' i type in a wrong command... No, I'm just sayin', dat's all..."
Slashdot Mirror
simpleton.
i find it interesting that gates only really started donating after having been hauled in for a rather public anti-trust trial, having learned the importance of keeping up appearances to The Mob when you're the world's richest man.
incredible, what you can read into something, when you have a fixed preoccupation in your head about something.
the op's primary point seemed to be that NK would be a larger threat later than it is now. so, if you accept his premises, it would save more lives to deal with NK now than later.
you can argue over the validity of his premises, but you expose your ulterior preoccupations with this "supremacy" and "obedience" and "will" drivel.
jeez, does this guy seem just a little to cheerful, or what?
which says this:
Yonhap reported the explosion happened in Yanggang province along the Chinese border, the site of Yongjori Missile Base -- a large facility with an underground missile firing range. According to data gathered by Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Yongjori is a suspected site for North Korea's uranium enrichment program.
this could be a missile test gone hugely awry, or - holy shit - could this be a US strike against NK uranium enrichment program??
interesting side-note - i seem to recall an article from that incident that stated there were syrian nationals involved with missile technology accompanying whatever was on that train.
makes one wonder if that explosion was a "don't fuck around" message from the US.
i think another message cited an article that estimated 500,000 artillery rounds *per hour* for several hours. sure, a bunch of people would get out of seoul, but do you have any idea how devastating that would be?
of course, the logical conclusion to this line of thought is: we must nuke such an evil dictator to disabuse other evil dictators-in-the-wings from pursuing that line of logic.
when you think of all the neural activity and cognitive skills required to identify piss in a boot, and then the motor control and coordination required to actually empty it, it really is a miracle of sorts, isn't it?
actually i think i already saw the prequel to this movie: "Kim Il Sung: Bad Haircut I"
you haven't taken into account the possibility of a series.
dude, apparently you didn't get the memo. it isn't mass murder, it's a "pre-emptive strike on an emerging threat."
yeah, but this festering sore left over from the cold war (ie NK) has, is, and will be a problem until we do something decisive about it.
if that means wiping out pyong yang and saying "your move, china", maybe that's the best of a couple really shitty options.
and i'm sure he'll become more sane, have less weapons, and become less desperate as time goes on.
tastes like... Victory...
of course it was, for effect. that doesn't invalidate the main point of the post: that many of those who trash "liberals" benefit directly from "liberal" policies, along with everyone else.
Liberals didn't make my water clean
actually, they did. the environmental situation now is far better than it was in, say, the 1970's. that's a direct result of "liberal" environmental legislation.
and, belive it or not, the suggestion that they've done anything to protect me from taking a chance on a bad doctor... nothing could be further from the truth.
i can think of a lot of things that would be farther from the truth, but the original point was drug safety, not bad doctors. you can't convince me that Walter Broadwinkle, MD, is more effective at drug quality control than the institutions we currently have in place for that purpose. sane doctors *rely* on drug safety controls. if you don't want those benefits, the philipines are just a plane-ride away.
Liberal policy in health care will bring us closer and closer to Canada's situation, where a mass exodous of doctors is crippling their government's ability to provide health care soon after it started.
meanwhile, here in the US, the number of people without health insurance practically equals the population of canada. and, details aside, all the other industrialized countries have somehow managed to cover their citizens. all of them. except the US.
i don't advocate one particular health care proposal over another, but i'm pretty sure we can do better than we're doing now.
You are pretty condescending for someone who can't be bothered with details like starting a sentence with a capital letter...
if i were to start my sentences with capital letters, would i have the credentials to be condescending? consider this: capital letters are often unnecessary, add keystrokes, and can cause you to contort your hand position in some cases - and that's bad for you.
"grow up"? "some humility"? Check yourself.
i will try harder in the future.
excellent idea. if management unjustly "victimizes" me, i fully intend to bring it up with the union.
You are responsible for your success.
why would someone expect their union to be "responsible" for their success? a union has a fairly well-defined role in the worker-employer relationship, and being responsible for one's success isn't part of it.
Your company is not looking you for you, neither is your boss, and certainly not the union.
actually, the union is looking out for me. it leverages my value - ie, what i get paid - by unifying it with that of my co-workers. it makes sure i have some recourse if someone in management has a bad day and arbitrarily decides to fire me. it collectively negotiates retirement benefits, health benefits, and other benefits on my behalf.
it provides fairness and added security to my life. for this, i pay them a small amount of cash out of each check to cover expenses. sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
The earlier you come to grips with this, the better you are off.
i'm pretty open-minded, you just haven't made a very persuasive argument.
If you want to slack, then just get familiar with being a victim.
what makes you think that i want to "slack"? i work pretty hard, both at my day job and at my moonlighting pursuits. meanwhile, my workday is less fearful and frustrating, since i know that the ego/whims/napoleon complex of my direct supervisor are at least somewhat tempered by the knowledge that he or she will have to justify such actions to a review board.
No one promised you something for nothing.
and i haven't asked for it.
i have to say, your post doesn't make much sense to me, but it does indicate that you carry a lot of psychological / philosophical baggage with regard to unions.
i would say that you are not even in the circle if you cannot vote for the people who will represent you in government. it is the center of the circle, and if it's not there, there can be no circle.
the chinese people are not even nearly in charge of their own destiny if they can't vote for their political leaders.
the people in the US can be lazy, can make questionable choices when voting, sometimes they can be deceived by politicians. however, at the end of the day, they *can* get together and - non-violently - remove the ruling party from office if they really want to. the ruling party must always be aware of this when they make decisions, and this is so very important to having a government that is responsive to the needs of the people.
what would really be so bad about permitting free, fair elections in china right now?
btw, i too appreciate the dialogue we have on this subject.
this has virtually NOTHING to do with unions, and everything to do with the cost of (barely) living in the third world compared to modern, industrialized societies.
the moral of the story: i'm really excellent, and the top, say, 5% of excellent people should band together with me and be real excellent and fuck the non-excellent people.
see, the problem with your system is that it's only good for the top 5% of excellent people. and if the other 95% - you know, the sub-human slackers who aren't as excellent as you - aren't looked out for in the system, all kinds of bad things happen.
so get over yourself. these kinds of threads always fill up with "i'm so incredibly marvelous, and it's *so* hard to soar with the eagles when i'm surrounded by all these turkeys!" messages.
part of it, i suspect. i would imagine that the rest of it is used to deliver water to your house. wtf is your point?
Goodness knows that libreals know more about prescribing safe medicine than my doctor does.
no, but i bet libreals know how to pass legislation that helps ensure that you're not playing russian roulette when you select a doctor.
Yeah, because if that wasn't the case, my employer would have to divert money from my paycheck into a health insurance plan.
insurance is all about distributing risk. you pay a little bit into a pool so that you, along with everyone else, is protected from death and/or catastrophic financial impoverishment in the event that you should draw the short straw.
now grow up, use your mind a little bit, and look at both sides calmly and with some humility, instead of indulging yourself with all the imaginary slights and burdens that society has foisted upon you.
if unionization were universal, then a union in one organization would not be a competitive disadvantage against one without a union. union leadership would be invited into corporate planning sessions and become partners in the business, instead of workers being treated like disposable objects. union leadership could then go back to their membership and say "no, seriously, people - we *do* need to accept a pay cut / layoffs / whatever this time - we've seen the numbers." true, management would have to spread their wealth around to the rank and file a bit, but that's bad *how*, exactly?
Promoting mediocrity.
if you mean that the daily workplace experience would be a less suffocating, fear-filled exercise in ass-sucking - yeah, that's probably true. and if you mean that management would be less able to indulge itself in little power trips and temper-tantrums, that's true too. it's not all about productivity - self-respect and quality of life are important too.
Antagonising non-union workers / coercing people into joing.
i think i'm ok with non-union workers in a unionized workplace; but there can't be preference given before-hand to workers who would agree to remain non-union. they should be able to choose after being hired whether or not the union offers them benefits for their dues.
Attracting organised crime.
my instinct is that organized crime in unions is actually *advantageous* to management, since crooks cut deals without really caring about those whom they represent. as an added bonus, it tarnishes the image of unions in general.
"Dat's a nice little CRM server you got dere, boss. It would be, like, a real shame if somethin' happened to it and you couldn't deliver to your customers no more. I'm just sayin'... things happen, ya know? Like, let's say I'm all weak an' worn out from too few vacation days, an' i type in a wrong command... No, I'm just sayin', dat's all..."
i see the "divide-and-conquer" implants are working well.
seriously, please... this is practically grade-school level analysis. that's not what unions are about.
what sweatshop hell-hole do you work in then?
another technological innovation brought to you by pr0n.