"Not quite true, look at India and Pakistan, both have whom have recently detonated nuclear devices just to prove to the other that they could. It's also arguable that Israel's nukes have been a sufficient deterrent to numerically-superior and chemically-armed Arab states. "
None of this contradicts what I have said. Neither India nor Pakistan have ever used nukes nor have ever explicitly threatened to use nukes while the US has done both. We bombed Japan (twice) with nukes and have explicitly threatened Iraq.
As for Israel it's not nukes that are deterring it's the military might of the US. Attacking Israel means the US will bomb your ass. Although I for one don't see exactly what possible benefit we get from shielding israel from it's enemies the fact remains that israel is the tail that wags the american dog.
"I've mentioned India and Pakistan, but the danger we face is not from a nuclear-armed country but from a nuclear-armed non-country, like a terrorist network for example. After the breakup of the Soviet Empire, it's not even necessary to have the technological infrastructure to manufacture your own weapons these days."
There is no need for nuclear weapons when chemical and biological weapons are so much easier to use, make, carry, and deploy. I'll give you an example.
Two terrorists could drive from the canadian border to mexico via the west. Along the way they could inject several hundred cows with mad cow disease and or hoof and mouth disease. After getting to mexico (and flying off to whereever) they announce what they have done. VOILA!. The economy of the west collapses, thousands of ranchers are out of work and they are angry at the US govt, the liberals, the environmentalists, the UN and wht have you (they were angry at them anyway so it's not much of a leap). They join militias and the entire western US goes into a chaos.
A couple of bottles of a vaccine and they can deliver a devestating blow the US.
Also remember nukes work best when dropped from a plane. Ideally they should be exploded in the air.
Personally I think nuklear weapons are overrated. Make a list of all countries which have used nuclear weapons in war and it contains only one name "United States of America". Make a list of countries which have threatened nuclear war another country and it will only contain one name "United States of Amrica".
The only country which will ever use nuclear weapons is the US. All other countries are trying to get them to fend off an attack from us.
You are making a presumption that our enemy will be technologically sophisticated. If you look at the last few wars we fought we have fought against people with no technology whatsoever. Iraq (desert storm, the 10 years of continual bombing since then and the upcoming war again), afghanistan, serbia, haiti, panama, palestine (through our proxy in Israel) etc. As a general rule we don't "pick on somebody our own size" and instead go after people who can't put up much of a fight.
When we fight those people we tend to attack at night because they don't even have night vision glasses and we fight from 10,000 feet for the first few months because they don't have anti aircraft weapons to hit us with. We jam their radars and bomb their airports, we also bomb electricy and water supplies so that they are completely defenseless by the time we hit the ground with our people.
The idea that some poor shmuck in some far off desert is going to have sophisticated nanotech detecting device is a stretch don't you think.
" But Open Secrets also includes every $200 or more contribution by every cubicle dweller at Microsoft"
I imagine that MS the corporation "encouraged" every single one of it's employees to give. I also imagine that it's easy to give when your job is on the line.
"Experience has shown that at present, no society is pure enough to live according to the "everybody give and ask nothing in return" ideal."
Interesting perspective. So tell me something is there a middle ground between the idealized world of jesus ("everybody give and ask nothing in return") and the one we have today ("the stong kill and eat the weak")?
"Not nearly representative enough?" What does that mean, exactly? "
It means exactly what it says.
"Your suggestion that we "get rid of winner take all" is confusing to me, because it seems to contradict the idea that the government represents the majority."
No it does not. It's actually a very myopic way of trying to build a representitive govt especially when combines with the absurd electoral collage. In the past 200 years there have been so many mathematical advances in game theory that to rely on a simple majority winner take all system is just silly. Let me see if I can explain a bit.
In the last election there were four people running for the president. Al Gore, George Bush, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan. If instead of picking just one candidates the people were allowed to rank them in preference the outcome of the election would have been different. Not only that but people would not be discouraged from voting for third party candidates for fear of "throwing their vote away". For example If I really liked Pat Buchanan I would rank him the highest candidate and them bush would be my second choice and then I would choose gore and nader in that order. These votes would all be given numbers and in the end the highest rank candidate woudl win. This way I would not have to worry about Al Gore winning the election just because I voted for Pat.
I urge you to read this this book if you think that winner take all is some kind of an ideal form of representing the wishes of the majority. We can do much much better as a nation and we should.
"Is this the perfect system? I doubt it. But is it the best one we've-- as a species, I mean-- come up with so far? Yes, definitely."
I don't think so. It is not nearly representitive enough. For most people in the US voting is a futile experience because of the winner take all system. If you live in Montana and want to vote democrat you might as well not even bother. Same if you are a republican in NY.
I know lots of people like you are perfectly content and are convinced that the US is the greatest country in the world and all but complacency is a bad thing. We can make our system lots better by utilizing all kinds of methods to achieve a more representitive govt. The first thing we have to do is to get rid of winner take all.
"Name one government that has worked as long or as well as the United States'."
America is only 200 years old ya moron. Most countries are older then the US.
"Acquaintances are not necessarily your friends. "
What makes you say that? DO you have any studies or something? I suspect they used the word "Acquaintances" to mean people you know who are not relatives such as neighbors and boyfriends and such. I suspect that if a drug dealer killed another one the FBI would not put that murder into the "killed by friends" pile.
"While we are on the subject, my other favorite pro-gun-control statistic is the one where they say "X kids are killed every day by guns." This one fails to mention that even 19-year olds are classified as kids."
Again some documentation as to what a Kid means would be appreciated. I highly doubt the FBI would put people above 18 as kids.
"And of course gang killings and suicides are rolled into this statistic as well."
Oh yes because people killed by gangs are not worth worrying about.
"No, a free press means that the press is free from governmental interference."
I guess we disagree on this point. I say a free press is free from all (most) undue interference. Whether that interference comes from a corporation or a govt is irrelevant. In fact it's worse if it comes from a corporation because I don't get a vote in how the corporation is run.
"what do you think editors do, anyway?"
They do whatever disney, microsoft, Dubya, ashcroft, and rupert murdoch tells them.
MS clearly sees us as the enemy. The question is what do we do when the biggest, baddest, richest corporation and people in the world has identified you as the enemy. Whatever the answer is I don't think it should be "let's just stand around and act like nothing is happening". When a powerful enemy points it's biggest guns at you better do something or you will be killed.
"Because the NRA fights for the rights granted in the Constitution does not mean you will be shot. In fact, most crimes are committed by firearms obtained illegally anyway, so the things the NRA stands for do not come into play. "
That's interesting. I was under the impression that most gun killings were commited by friends and relatives are you saying that those guns are obtained illegally?
In some (most) states the same thing happens with car dealers. They have asked the state to make it illegal to sell cars on sundays so that they could all be closed. This way they could take sunday off without worrying about their competition being open.
Are there any car dealers open on sundays in your state?
"You seem to be confusing Truth with the freedom to say any old thing you like without being arrested."
Ok let me try and rephrase this in case I wasn't being clear. A free press means the reporter can report the news as it happens in a truthful matter. If the said reporter is told by some mega corporation that they are not allowed to tell the truth but must instead push some idology or other then it's not free press. Likewise if the same mega corporation tells the reporter not to report bad news about the company then it's not free press.
You seem to feel that as long they reporter is not being arrested then the press is free. I say if a reporter fears for his/her job then it's very much like being arrested. The govt is not the only entity with the ability to punish the press for reporting news it does not like.
"What, now you're whining because you don't have a publishing empire to back you up? I don't see any laws guaranteeing yoyu an audience."
I am simply pointing out that me forming my own newspaper is akin to pissing in a hurricane. Was it you that suggested the idea?
"And how can you equate bias in mass media with a lack of free press?"
Because their bias prevents them from reporting the truth. For example FoxNews reporters are not allowed to refer to palestine or use the phrase "occupied terrotories". They also refer to jewish settlements as "jewish neighborhoods". Why? I don't know. What possible motive does a US news outlet to act as a PR firm for the nation of Israel?. Again I don't know the answer. All I know is that their bias prevents them reporting the news accurately. A news anchor or an outlet which is being dictated to report or not report the news because of external forces is not free.
"If you don't like it, print your own newsletter."
Yes that will show them!. Take that Disney! take that Rupert Murdoch!. Damn you billionaires I will bring you down with my e-zine!.
In a just world, a just country with a real justice system the answer is yes. In the USA where justice is for sale to the highest bidder then answer is no.
The problem is that the citizens of the US are less interested in freedom every day. Nowhere is this more obvious then the press. The press no longer even pretends to be unbiased or altruistic. It simply reports what the politicians, the police, PR dept of the parent company, or the idology of the owner says.
The press has gone from being watchdogs to being a megaphone for those with money and power.
"They purchased the rights to use the Mosaic code and then gave IE away for free."
I heard this was due to a clause in the contract saying MS had to pay a pecentage of the revenue from IE to Mosaic. I imagine they had dollar signs in their eyes when they wrote that contract and did not imagine the lengths MS would go to screw them.
If the two operating systems are unable to authenticate with each other then they don't interoperate period. I am simply pointing out that a blatant lie like "but generally the two (inter)operate separately and nicely." got modded up so high. The fact is MS does not interoperate with anything but itself and even then only the latest versions of it's software.
"You propose clearing up the bugs rapidly by ignoring 90% of them? Are you sure you don't work for MicroSoft?"
Yes to the first part and no to the second. Otherwise you are left with the current situation where a bug in some obscure package will hold up the entire distribution. It's especially onerous if the hold up is due to a bug in an architecture that is not widely used. Not to pick on them but do you really want the next version of debian held up until some bug in mod_midgard gets cleared up?
I say trim the core down to the packages that most people use and leave the rest as "contrib". If you stick with the approved list you are set if you use contrib you take your chances.
"It would be impossible to trim it down, because as soon as you put something in an "add-on" third party source instead of the core distribution, it loses its credibility."
The hard fact is that there are only so many volunteers and the list of packages keeps growing. Something has to give sometime.
Actually apt-cache search is very powerful. If you type in whatever you are looking for chances are you will get lots of hits.
If you have even a faintest idea of what you are looking for you can find it. If you want just to play with something I think the debian web interface to packages is much cooler and easier to use. To each his own I guess.
The problems of debian are obvious and easy to fix. The reason debian packages are old is because there are too many of them. There are thousands of packages in the debian system and there are very strict rules as to when they are declared to be stable. This means that no matter what package you install into a debian stable system you are guranteed all dependent packages are available and more importantly that package will never ever brak your system. This applies no matter what your CPU or architecture is.
The problem is that this is a herculean task and although debian does a decent job it's a futile task.
IMHO debian should do the following.
Trim down the list of "official" packages drastically. Take only the best 100 or so packages and concentrate on them exclusively. The rest of the packaged can be treated as "add on" and should be put on separate servers. The users can choose to add them to their apt.sources or not and if they do there are no guarantees.
This will allow the debian package mainters to concentrate on a drastically smaller list and make sure the bugs are cleared up rapidly.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not quite true, look at India and Pakistan, both have whom have recently detonated nuclear devices just to prove to the other that they could. It's also arguable that Israel's nukes have been a sufficient deterrent to numerically-superior and chemically-armed Arab states. "
None of this contradicts what I have said. Neither India nor Pakistan have ever used nukes nor have ever explicitly threatened to use nukes while the US has done both. We bombed Japan (twice) with nukes and have explicitly threatened Iraq.
As for Israel it's not nukes that are deterring it's the military might of the US. Attacking Israel means the US will bomb your ass. Although I for one don't see exactly what possible benefit we get from shielding israel from it's enemies the fact remains that israel is the tail that wags the american dog.
"I've mentioned India and Pakistan, but the danger we face is not from a nuclear-armed country but from a nuclear-armed non-country, like a terrorist network for example. After the breakup of the Soviet Empire, it's not even necessary to have the technological infrastructure to manufacture your own weapons these days."
There is no need for nuclear weapons when chemical and biological weapons are so much easier to use, make, carry, and deploy. I'll give you an example.
Two terrorists could drive from the canadian border to mexico via the west. Along the way they could inject several hundred cows with mad cow disease and or hoof and mouth disease. After getting to mexico (and flying off to whereever) they announce what they have done. VOILA!. The economy of the west collapses, thousands of ranchers are out of work and they are angry at the US govt, the liberals, the environmentalists, the UN and wht have you (they were angry at them anyway so it's not much of a leap). They join militias and the entire western US goes into a chaos.
A couple of bottles of a vaccine and they can deliver a devestating blow the US.
Also remember nukes work best when dropped from a plane. Ideally they should be exploded in the air.
Personally I think nuklear weapons are overrated. Make a list of all countries which have used nuclear weapons in war and it contains only one name "United States of America". Make a list of countries which have threatened nuclear war another country and it will only contain one name "United States of Amrica".
The only country which will ever use nuclear weapons is the US. All other countries are trying to get them to fend off an attack from us.
You are making a presumption that our enemy will be technologically sophisticated. If you look at the last few wars we fought we have fought against people with no technology whatsoever. Iraq (desert storm, the 10 years of continual bombing since then and the upcoming war again), afghanistan, serbia, haiti, panama, palestine (through our proxy in Israel) etc. As a general rule we don't "pick on somebody our own size" and instead go after people who can't put up much of a fight.
When we fight those people we tend to attack at night because they don't even have night vision glasses and we fight from 10,000 feet for the first few months because they don't have anti aircraft weapons to hit us with. We jam their radars and bomb their airports, we also bomb electricy and water supplies so that they are completely defenseless by the time we hit the ground with our people.
The idea that some poor shmuck in some far off desert is going to have sophisticated nanotech detecting device is a stretch don't you think.
If it mentioned oil I could have sworn dubya himself wrote that email. Grammer mistakes and all.
Uh Mr Coward I would like to point out that MS gives much more money to republicans then democrats. Did you see tha graphs?
" But Open Secrets also includes every $200 or more contribution by every cubicle dweller at Microsoft"
I imagine that MS the corporation "encouraged" every single one of it's employees to give. I also imagine that it's easy to give when your job is on the line.
"Experience has shown that at present, no society is pure enough to live according to the "everybody give and ask nothing in return" ideal."
Interesting perspective. So tell me something is there a middle ground between the idealized world of jesus ("everybody give and ask nothing in return") and the one we have today ("the stong kill and eat the weak")?
"Not nearly representative enough?" What does that mean, exactly? "
It means exactly what it says.
"Your suggestion that we "get rid of winner take all" is confusing to me, because it seems to contradict the idea that the government represents the majority."
No it does not. It's actually a very myopic way of trying to build a representitive govt especially when combines with the absurd electoral collage. In the past 200 years there have been so many mathematical advances in game theory that to rely on a simple majority winner take all system is just silly. Let me see if I can explain a bit.
In the last election there were four people running for the president. Al Gore, George Bush, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan. If instead of picking just one candidates the people were allowed to rank them in preference the outcome of the election would have been different. Not only that but people would not be discouraged from voting for third party candidates for fear of "throwing their vote away". For example If I really liked Pat Buchanan I would rank him the highest candidate and them bush would be my second choice and then I would choose gore and nader in that order. These votes would all be given numbers and in the end the highest rank candidate woudl win. This way I would not have to worry about Al Gore winning the election just because I voted for Pat.
I urge you to read this this book if you think that winner take all is some kind of an ideal form of representing the wishes of the majority. We can do much much better as a nation and we should.
"arguing that only pure Communism is good."
If jesus was alive today he would be called communist too.
"Is this the perfect system? I doubt it. But is it the best one we've-- as a species, I mean-- come up with so far? Yes, definitely."
I don't think so. It is not nearly representitive enough. For most people in the US voting is a futile experience because of the winner take all system. If you live in Montana and want to vote democrat you might as well not even bother. Same if you are a republican in NY.
I know lots of people like you are perfectly content and are convinced that the US is the greatest country in the world and all but complacency is a bad thing. We can make our system lots better by utilizing all kinds of methods to achieve a more representitive govt. The first thing we have to do is to get rid of winner take all.
"Name one government that has worked as long or as well as the United States'."
America is only 200 years old ya moron. Most countries are older then the US.
"Acquaintances are not necessarily your friends. "
What makes you say that? DO you have any studies or something? I suspect they used the word "Acquaintances" to mean people you know who are not relatives such as neighbors and boyfriends and such. I suspect that if a drug dealer killed another one the FBI would not put that murder into the "killed by friends" pile.
"While we are on the subject, my other favorite pro-gun-control statistic is the one where they say "X kids are killed every day by guns." This one fails to mention that even 19-year olds are classified as kids."
Again some documentation as to what a Kid means would be appreciated. I highly doubt the FBI would put people above 18 as kids.
"And of course gang killings and suicides are rolled into this statistic as well."
Oh yes because people killed by gangs are not worth worrying about.
"No, a free press means that the press is free from governmental interference."
I guess we disagree on this point. I say a free press is free from all (most) undue interference. Whether that interference comes from a corporation or a govt is irrelevant. In fact it's worse if it comes from a corporation because I don't get a vote in how the corporation is run.
"what do you think editors do, anyway?"
They do whatever disney, microsoft, Dubya, ashcroft, and rupert murdoch tells them.
" Is Microsoft really the "enemy"?"
MS clearly sees us as the enemy. The question is what do we do when the biggest, baddest, richest corporation and people in the world has identified you as the enemy. Whatever the answer is I don't think it should be "let's just stand around and act like nothing is happening". When a powerful enemy points it's biggest guns at you better do something or you will be killed.
"Because the NRA fights for the rights granted in the Constitution does not mean you will be shot. In fact, most crimes are committed by firearms obtained illegally anyway, so the things the NRA stands for do not come into play. "
That's interesting. I was under the impression that most gun killings were commited by friends and relatives are you saying that those guns are obtained illegally?
In some (most) states the same thing happens with car dealers. They have asked the state to make it illegal to sell cars on sundays so that they could all be closed. This way they could take sunday off without worrying about their competition being open.
Are there any car dealers open on sundays in your state?
"You seem to be confusing Truth with the freedom to say any old thing you like without being arrested."
Ok let me try and rephrase this in case I wasn't being clear. A free press means the reporter can report the news as it happens in a truthful matter. If the said reporter is told by some mega corporation that they are not allowed to tell the truth but must instead push some idology or other then it's not free press. Likewise if the same mega corporation tells the reporter not to report bad news about the company then it's not free press.
You seem to feel that as long they reporter is not being arrested then the press is free. I say if a reporter fears for his/her job then it's very much like being arrested. The govt is not the only entity with the ability to punish the press for reporting news it does not like.
"What, now you're whining because you don't have a publishing empire to back you up? I don't see any laws guaranteeing yoyu an audience."
I am simply pointing out that me forming my own newspaper is akin to pissing in a hurricane. Was it you that suggested the idea?
"When did it ever? "
At one time it at least pretended to be unbiased.
"And how can you equate bias in mass media with a lack of free press?"
Because their bias prevents them from reporting the truth. For example FoxNews reporters are not allowed to refer to palestine or use the phrase "occupied terrotories". They also refer to jewish settlements as "jewish neighborhoods". Why? I don't know. What possible motive does a US news outlet to act as a PR firm for the nation of Israel?. Again I don't know the answer. All I know is that their bias prevents them reporting the news accurately. A news anchor or an outlet which is being dictated to report or not report the news because of external forces is not free.
"If you don't like it, print your own newsletter."
Yes that will show them!. Take that Disney! take that Rupert Murdoch!. Damn you billionaires I will bring you down with my e-zine!.
In a just world, a just country with a real justice system the answer is yes. In the USA where justice is for sale to the highest bidder then answer is no.
The problem is that the citizens of the US are less interested in freedom every day. Nowhere is this more obvious then the press. The press no longer even pretends to be unbiased or altruistic. It simply reports what the politicians, the police, PR dept of the parent company, or the idology of the owner says.
The press has gone from being watchdogs to being a megaphone for those with money and power.
"They purchased the rights to use the Mosaic code and then gave IE away for free."
I heard this was due to a clause in the contract saying MS had to pay a pecentage of the revenue from IE to Mosaic. I imagine they had dollar signs in their eyes when they wrote that contract and did not imagine the lengths MS would go to screw them.
They found out the hard way.
"When did I ever mention AD?"
If the two operating systems are unable to authenticate with each other then they don't interoperate period. I am simply pointing out that a blatant lie like "but generally the two (inter)operate separately and nicely." got modded up so high. The fact is MS does not interoperate with anything but itself and even then only the latest versions of it's software.
"You propose clearing up the bugs rapidly by ignoring 90% of them? Are you sure you don't work for MicroSoft?"
Yes to the first part and no to the second. Otherwise you are left with the current situation where a bug in some obscure package will hold up the entire distribution. It's especially onerous if the hold up is due to a bug in an architecture that is not widely used. Not to pick on them but do you really want the next version of debian held up until some bug in mod_midgard gets cleared up?
I say trim the core down to the packages that most people use and leave the rest as "contrib". If you stick with the approved list you are set if you use contrib you take your chances.
"It would be impossible to trim it down, because as soon as you put something in an "add-on" third party source instead of the core distribution, it loses its credibility."
The hard fact is that there are only so many volunteers and the list of packages keeps growing. Something has to give sometime.
Actually apt-cache search is very powerful. If you type in whatever you are looking for chances are you will get lots of hits.
If you have even a faintest idea of what you are looking for you can find it. If you want just to play with something I think the debian web interface to packages is much cooler and easier to use. To each his own I guess.
The problems of debian are obvious and easy to fix. The reason debian packages are old is because there are too many of them. There are thousands of packages in the debian system and there are very strict rules as to when they are declared to be stable. This means that no matter what package you install into a debian stable system you are guranteed all dependent packages are available and more importantly that package will never ever brak your system. This applies no matter what your CPU or architecture is.
The problem is that this is a herculean task and although debian does a decent job it's a futile task.
IMHO debian should do the following.
Trim down the list of "official" packages drastically. Take only the best 100 or so packages and concentrate on them exclusively. The rest of the packaged can be treated as "add on" and should be put on separate servers. The users can choose to add them to their apt.sources or not and if they do there are no guarantees.
This will allow the debian package mainters to concentrate on a drastically smaller list and make sure the bugs are cleared up rapidly.