The following sentence from the article troubles me greatly: "The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countries is also not an especially important reason for slow scientific development. "
It should be clear to any human being in this world that democracy (and the rule of secular law), though not perfect by any means, leads to a populace who have a moral investment in the country in which they live - and this leads them to think of greater things, such as science, and not the day-to-day issues like how to not be killed for wearing the wrong clothes.
Religion and science have nothing to do with each other and anyone who even suggests that is making a grave mistake and fool out him/herself and the science s/he studies.
It's because it's true. Nazi-Germany, Russia and China have done a lot of science without any real democracy. There doesn't seem to be a very strong link. Dictatorships/oligarchies do not have any intrinsic qualities that would preclude science. But it does depend on both implementation and leadership. The great leap forward in China was a immense leap backwards for industry and science but then again "No child left behind" and "intelligent Design" does the same damage within a democracy.
Total crap. The Arab world was at its scientific height under Muslim rule and is the only reason the west has the science it has.
The scientific establishment need to recognize that it did ot arise separate from the rest of the world, the Islaamicc world was centuries aahead of the west for quite a long time.
Us Chinese blame the Arabs for the rise of the west. They sacked our colony, took our printing technology and gave it to Europe. If not for printing Europe would still be a cultural and technological back water.
Que the Jihad. Poor scientist... Beheaded before his time.
Seriously: What is everything open to criticism except Islam. Islam has some major issues because the entire religion is controlled by very corrupt demagogues. Criticize it and some random clerics asks that you be killed and some person with mental problems does it. I really can't think of any rational non-oppressive solution except to have everyone openly criticize it. They can't kill all of us.
So if you thought laptop battery fires were dangerous before, these are a terrorist wet dream made to order...
I really wish I had mod points. There should be a '-1 ignorant'. There are a lot of materials that are extremely harmful if they get inside of you that exist cheaply and in large quantities. Arsenic, cyanide, acetone, etc... you hardly need something as exotic as this. Terrorists aren't like the ones that exist in 24 or sum of all fears. Their really not super geniuses out to get sharks with frickin laser beams. The ones that know what their doing will makes bombs (with CIA taught techniques). The ones that don't and watch too much TV will light a car filled with gas on fire thinking it will explode, doing more damage to themselves then to anyone else.
A stable dollar isn't necessarily a sigh of economic health. The current admin has made a whole slew of bad financial choices. It's going to take some time to turn that around. Hopefully the next be financially responsible. Demo or repub I think it's independent of party.
Who to Blame? Alan Greenspan. His policy of Fed Lending to get out of recessions has left the dollar hugely weaker than it was 15 years ago. He did at least as much damage as Richard Nixon's destruction of the gold standard.
There is a huge fallacy in that statement. The Gold standard had so many drawbacks that it's hardly "damaging" to move to another system. Tying your currency to a commodity is foolish. The price of gold is artificial as it isn't useful for much and is precious only because it's precious. Sort of like the Paris Hilton of commodities. If a nation decided to flood the market with their reserves it drastically suppresses the currency. All nations using the gold standard now have a lower valued currency without any good reason for it. Moving away from the gold standard give syou many more options in manipulating the economy as well.
The original NES was $200 or $250 (depending on the bundle) in 1985. If you add in inflation, that $200 becomes $375 in 2006 dollars, and the $250 is roughly $468. How many units of the NES did Nintendo sell at that price, anyway?
Your factoring the average value for inflation. Don't forget the huge dip the US dollar took recently and the fact inflation is often under estimated. that 250$ buys about 600$ buys now for many things. So it's even more of a bargain these days.
I'm with the parent poster. When I go out to eat at a service restaurant I should have a good experience (fast service, good food, clean dinnerware, etc.) A good tip is for when the service is above and beyond the basic level that everybody should get for the price of their meal.
I'm just making the observation as a former waiter and dating a waitress is that tip varies more with how flirty and good looking you are then how hard you work to please others. You may deny that it ought to be this way but I can attest that it is the way most people tip.
So if I go out for a $50 meal, and spend 1 hour in the restaurant, then the waiter gets $10 from me. But they probably were serving at least 2 other tables, meaning they make $30 an hour. That's way too much for somebody with no specialized skills.
Being pretty, flirty, and having a nice body are somewhat specialized skills.
Indeed; to actually render at 1080p, one needs a more powerful console - like a PS3, for example.
Let me preface this comment: I own and enjoy my Ps3. I do not own a 360. I am not a game programmer.
Both the 360 and the ps3 have around the same graphics muscle. the 360 has a better architecture which is easier to keep "busy" then the Ps3. The Ps3 should probably top out higher under optimal conditions but it's easier to achieve optimal conditions on the 360. With intelligent programming both could do 1080p at reasonable frame rates. But unfortunately many studios are lazy so we get the shaft on the PS3 versions of certain games until someone can knock out a really good tool kit for the ps3. The reason they might be skimping on resolution for Halo 3 is because it allows 4 player split screen. When rendering that many objects is it's easy to clog thing sup and get slow down. So they cut a few corners here and there to prioritize FPS over resolution.
I also have to add that Halo 3 is amongst the most beautiful games I've ever played.
I was a great big meh on my 42" Sharp aquas at 1080p. It was like an improved Halo 1. Nothing caught my eye in any particular way. It was good but "ordinary" for the genre. I am spoiled form PC gaming so the bar is higher. I borrowed it and a 360 for the weekend and did think it had anything more then utilitarian graphics. A good extension to Halo 2.
Just out of curiosity,... What religion was China with 129,000,000 dead in the 20th century? What religion was the USSR with 72,000,000 dead in the 20th century? What religion where the Nazi's with 21,000,000 dead? What religion was Cambodia with 2,035,000 dead?
That brings us to ~200,000,000 for Communism, and atheist creed, and 21,000,000 for Nazism a pseudo-religious creed (IIRC, its official religious view was a state concocted Lutheranism with Paganism and a heavy dose of militarism, obviously designed to ween the population off Christianity and onto state controlled propoganda)
China was superstitious taoist/buddhist even now during communism, The USSR was still sort of Christian, The Nazi's were certainly Christian, Cambodians are and were mostly Buddhist.
Got anymore red herrings? Those nations weren't non religious. But a political fervor over took it. There was only an explicit anti-religious bent. The argument that religion causes war is similarly a red herring. Religion presents a easy control device for those who want control. Just as political ideology is. Be it taoism, Christianity, Islam or Republican/Democrat. All of them have built in controls, authority, irrationality, and are meant to make it easier to control people.
Knowing Sony, it's possible the connector has 9 contacts and the lug is offset to the left by 2mm so a standard lead won't fit and you have to buy an RJ45s(TM) (For Sony(R) multimedia devices) cable, and you can only interface to kit using the TCP/IPs (For Sony(R) multimedia devices) protocol.
Sony is gettign better on that. Well maybe just on the Ps3. The Ps3 has a plethora of standard plugs (normal rj45, 4 usb, HDMI, flash card readers for all major brands, Optical audio out etc..). The Sony 50" HDTV My parents got also has all standard plugs with a little slot for a Memstick being the only proprietary thing on it. I wonder if they've learned their lesson?
Try chatting with a Native North American one day, and ask how they feel about the extinction of indigenous languages. Here in the United States, indigenous people suffered deliberate attempts at extermination, marginalization, and assimilation. At various times, it was illegal to speak Native languages, practice Native religions, or hold traditional dances or ceremonies, such as weddings. A lot of Native tradition have disappeared, and those that still exist are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Not many Native Americans I've spoke to are happy about the state of affairs.
Apparently, those that care are too few in numbers to matter. Languages come and go. They mutate and get absorbed, obliterated, and new ones form. The concept of culture being innately valuable is pretty wrong. Tradition is simply ideas and habits parents pass to their children. Some may benefit a group of people, others not. For instance the "tradition" of eating part of a loved one that exists in portion of Africa encourages the spread of disease. It's a tradition, it's detrimental. Most are more neutral. The medicine bags of various north American tribes are a benign "habit". There really isn't that much list if no one wears one anymore. Putting such huge value into "habits" is silly. If it persists great. If not.. well apparently it didn't have too much fo a upside.
Apple is pursuing a less-is-more strategy here imho... Geeks online have flame wars about weather of not the iPhone is a "real smartphone", with the implied presumption that smartphone status is, or ought to be, a goal Apple is trying to achieve. On the contrary, I suspect that Apple is actively trying to avoid having people perceive the iPhone as a smartphone. Smartphones are either toys for geeks or corporate tethers keeping us chained to work; the iPhone is targeted at the mainstream consumer, not a corporate IT department or the individual geeks working in it.
It's aimed squarely at people who have a penile length deficiency. This serious and debilitating disease plagues many upper middle class shmucks. Filling in the gap for those not cool enough to pull off a side kick and not rich enough to get a Porsche. We applaud the work of apple in making natures unfortunate under endowment a slightly lighter burden.
Now, let's see it at other levels of communication.
I, as a student of a public high school in America, take in more force-fed facts that are expected to be regurgitated, and get fewer and fewer chances to let my creative juices flow. Rather than writing that a person thinks something happened, I think someone could get more of a benefit out of writing about why it happened.
Perhaps that's why all forms of math are just so hard for me to wrap my head around; I know that things work, but I don't see why it's useful.
That aside, in a post-No-Child-Left-Educated world, would there be any creativity left to teach anything like this?
I'm not a teacher, nor am I always a realist, so I might just be thinking too optimistically about this. I guess it'd be best to just wait and see.
Well I don't think the problem is that school isn't "creative enough". It's that school is far too behind and dumbed down. If you think your getting forced fed facts now wait till university. They will give you the equivalent of an entire High school semester worth of material in any given week. They go over it in general and you fill in the rest through reading and study.
What I think the problem is, is that they gave you some notion that there is some mystical teaching method that will fill your heads with these facts instantly. That some "Dead poets society" type teaching methods exists to instantly make you a scholar. It doesn't. Any given child in most semi developed Asian country will be 2 grades ahead of you in math and he was just "force fed" that stuff. Actually almost any given kid in the west as well will be about 2 grades ahead of you in almost any subject except maybe English and (if your state has it) "civics". America set the bar really low when it come to education, even before dubya.
One of the key differences as well is culture. The Us has a very anti-intellectual culture. In every teen or kids show They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool. It's a rare breed that is smart and not a social misfit in American culture. While in Asian cultures doing well contributes to yoru social standing.
It's hard to really teach in such a culture. You need to really want to devour knowledge. No teacher, no matter how good, can be a substitute for a passion to learn and thats something that isn't imparted much these days. It's really up to your family to do that. So if you think force feeding knowledge is bad, well guy it never changes. You either take it upon yourself to learn why or you'll be left behind by the rest of the world.
So are you saying we should lock up Scientologists?
Just because a cult gives you the creeps doesn't mean they should be oppressed.
- RG>
For Falun Gong no. Their just empty headed new age creeps. Their not dangerous yet.
For the heavily aggressive, often criminal Scientologists it might be a good idea. The scam is already illegal in many countries and it's openly a scam and incident of abuse of the legal system are common.
Does it ever bother anyone that in Canada and the US Presidents and PM's tend to be lawyers? Have you noticed a lot of the house, senate, etc.. are also lawyers? Notice as well that so many laws come out that benefit no one except lawyers? Maybe we should try biasing society away from electing people who a vested interest in making things complicated. Maybe we should try voting in ore Science related professionals and engineers. Look at other major nations, China's run by a PHD engineer, Russia is run by a former Spy/Assassin and India's run by a PHD economist. I guess technically Putin is a law scholar but he's a law school grad who could kill you with his bare hands, dispose of the body, and then have lunch.
Always amuses me to see how many people correlate education with superiority. I'll side with Heinlein on that one...Better to have military service as a prerequisite for citizenship, because then, at least, the citizens would have to have shown themselves willing put themselves at the service of the country, even to the point of losing their lives, before they could exercise their franchise. Education says nothing about the person so educated.
I'm all for the slashdot moderator political system. The only one who can vote are the politically inactive and in good standing with the community (ie never rand for council, no arrests for any felonies). They're picked at random given 5 votes and the freedom to exercise such a vote as they please. Stating a public opinion that can be linked back to you about a particular vote disqualifies you. You can state such a opinion anonymously.
As I said. They over step the limits of what is right or just. I do not condone the actions. I may think certain ideologies are vacuous but I would not support the forcefully abolishment of that ideology.
And there is a 4th choice you left out: they could have gone in and done the job themselves, but we all know what unilateral action nets anyone in the court of world opinion.
Apathy? Everyone gave some lip service to "US is bad" and did nothing about it.
I don't think anything short of a WWII style mobilization would have done much. The American people aren't into a war like that so it'd be Vietnam but worse because the opposition in better armed. As well do what yourselves? install a puppet regime? Saddam was a pseudo puppet regime. Iran was run by one until it was over thrown. Install a democracy? the US doesn't tend to favor democracies in it's puppets. Democracies are hard and expensive to control while a pupper dictatorship requires the bribing and kissing of only a few asses.
I can't find any mention in the article of whether you'll be able to boot from them with current BIOSs. Surely any system they'll be in will have a decent amount of RAM for the OS, but it would be pretty cool solely for the fast boot times.
Hey, We all use Linux right.. we never have to reboot/sarcasm.
Slashdot Mirror
The following sentence from the article troubles me greatly: "The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countries is also not an especially important reason for slow scientific development. "
It should be clear to any human being in this world that democracy (and the rule of secular law), though not perfect by any means, leads to a populace who have a moral investment in the country in which they live - and this leads them to think of greater things, such as science, and not the day-to-day issues like how to not be killed for wearing the wrong clothes.
Religion and science have nothing to do with each other and anyone who even suggests that is making a grave mistake and fool out him/herself and the science s/he studies.
It's because it's true. Nazi-Germany, Russia and China have done a lot of science without any real democracy. There doesn't seem to be a very strong link. Dictatorships/oligarchies do not have any intrinsic qualities that would preclude science. But it does depend on both implementation and leadership. The great leap forward in China was a immense leap backwards for industry and science but then again "No child left behind" and "intelligent Design" does the same damage within a democracy.
Total crap. The Arab world was at its scientific height under Muslim rule and is the only reason the west has the science it has.
The scientific establishment need to recognize that it did ot arise separate from the rest of the world, the Islaamicc world was centuries aahead of the west for quite a long time.
Us Chinese blame the Arabs for the rise of the west. They sacked our colony, took our printing technology and gave it to Europe. If not for printing Europe would still be a cultural and technological back water.
Que the Jihad. Poor scientist... Beheaded before his time.
Seriously: What is everything open to criticism except Islam. Islam has some major issues because the entire religion is controlled by very corrupt demagogues. Criticize it and some random clerics asks that you be killed and some person with mental problems does it. I really can't think of any rational non-oppressive solution except to have everyone openly criticize it. They can't kill all of us.
So if you thought laptop battery fires were dangerous before, these are a terrorist wet dream made to order ...
I really wish I had mod points. There should be a '-1 ignorant'. There are a lot of materials that are extremely harmful if they get inside of you that exist cheaply and in large quantities. Arsenic, cyanide, acetone, etc... you hardly need something as exotic as this. Terrorists aren't like the ones that exist in 24 or sum of all fears. Their really not super geniuses out to get sharks with frickin laser beams. The ones that know what their doing will makes bombs (with CIA taught techniques). The ones that don't and watch too much TV will light a car filled with gas on fire thinking it will explode, doing more damage to themselves then to anyone else.
A stable dollar isn't necessarily a sigh of economic health. The current admin has made a whole slew of bad financial choices. It's going to take some time to turn that around. Hopefully the next be financially responsible. Demo or repub I think it's independent of party.
What time span are you referring to? Since the abolishment of the gold standard or the last 8 years? the last 8 years I agree.
The gold standard is dead And there isn't a compelling reason to revive it.
Who to Blame? Alan Greenspan. His policy of Fed Lending to get out of recessions has left the dollar hugely weaker than it was 15 years ago. He did at least as much damage as Richard Nixon's destruction of the gold standard.
There is a huge fallacy in that statement. The Gold standard had so many drawbacks that it's hardly "damaging" to move to another system. Tying your currency to a commodity is foolish. The price of gold is artificial as it isn't useful for much and is precious only because it's precious. Sort of like the Paris Hilton of commodities. If a nation decided to flood the market with their reserves it drastically suppresses the currency. All nations using the gold standard now have a lower valued currency without any good reason for it. Moving away from the gold standard give syou many more options in manipulating the economy as well.
The original NES was $200 or $250 (depending on the bundle) in 1985. If you add in inflation, that $200 becomes $375 in 2006 dollars, and the $250 is roughly $468. How many units of the NES did Nintendo sell at that price, anyway?
Your factoring the average value for inflation. Don't forget the huge dip the US dollar took recently and the fact inflation is often under estimated. that 250$ buys about 600$ buys now for many things. So it's even more of a bargain these days.
We're not talking about strippers here.
I'm with the parent poster. When I go out to eat at a service restaurant I should have a good experience (fast service, good food, clean dinnerware, etc.) A good tip is for when the service is above and beyond the basic level that everybody should get for the price of their meal.
I'm just making the observation as a former waiter and dating a waitress is that tip varies more with how flirty and good looking you are then how hard you work to please others. You may deny that it ought to be this way but I can attest that it is the way most people tip.
How I miss the old 28.8 and the origins of online CTF based gaming.
28.8.. such luxury. While in my day we made due with 9600. No fancy smancy k at the end.
I dunno. I mean, I already HAVE a PS3, and I don't see why I'd want this.
Ahh just wait until the hype machine convinces you it's greatest thing since the pill.
So if I go out for a $50 meal, and spend 1 hour in the restaurant, then the waiter gets $10 from me. But they probably were serving at least 2 other tables, meaning they make $30 an hour. That's way too much for somebody with no specialized skills.
Being pretty, flirty, and having a nice body are somewhat specialized skills.
Indeed; to actually render at 1080p, one needs a more powerful console - like a PS3, for example.
Let me preface this comment: I own and enjoy my Ps3. I do not own a 360. I am not a game programmer.
Both the 360 and the ps3 have around the same graphics muscle. the 360 has a better architecture which is easier to keep "busy" then the Ps3. The Ps3 should probably top out higher under optimal conditions but it's easier to achieve optimal conditions on the 360. With intelligent programming both could do 1080p at reasonable frame rates. But unfortunately many studios are lazy so we get the shaft on the PS3 versions of certain games until someone can knock out a really good tool kit for the ps3. The reason they might be skimping on resolution for Halo 3 is because it allows 4 player split screen. When rendering that many objects is it's easy to clog thing sup and get slow down. So they cut a few corners here and there to prioritize FPS over resolution.
I also have to add that Halo 3 is amongst the most beautiful games I've ever played.
I was a great big meh on my 42" Sharp aquas at 1080p. It was like an improved Halo 1. Nothing caught my eye in any particular way. It was good but "ordinary" for the genre. I am spoiled form PC gaming so the bar is higher. I borrowed it and a 360 for the weekend and did think it had anything more then utilitarian graphics. A good extension to Halo 2.
Just out of curiosity, ...
What religion was China with 129,000,000 dead in the 20th century?
What religion was the USSR with 72,000,000 dead in the 20th century?
What religion where the Nazi's with 21,000,000 dead?
What religion was Cambodia with 2,035,000 dead?
That brings us to ~200,000,000 for Communism, and atheist creed, and 21,000,000 for Nazism a pseudo-religious creed (IIRC, its official religious view was a state concocted Lutheranism with Paganism and a heavy dose of militarism, obviously designed to ween the population off Christianity and onto state controlled propoganda)
China was superstitious taoist/buddhist even now during communism,
The USSR was still sort of Christian,
The Nazi's were certainly Christian,
Cambodians are and were mostly Buddhist.
Got anymore red herrings? Those nations weren't non religious. But a political fervor over took it. There was only an explicit anti-religious bent. The argument that religion causes war is similarly a red herring. Religion presents a easy control device for those who want control. Just as political ideology is. Be it taoism, Christianity, Islam or Republican/Democrat. All of them have built in controls, authority, irrationality, and are meant to make it easier to control people.
Knowing Sony, it's possible the connector has 9 contacts and the lug is offset to the left by 2mm so a standard lead won't fit and you have to buy an RJ45s(TM) (For Sony(R) multimedia devices) cable, and you can only interface to kit using the TCP/IPs (For Sony(R) multimedia devices) protocol.
Sony is gettign better on that. Well maybe just on the Ps3. The Ps3 has a plethora of standard plugs (normal rj45, 4 usb, HDMI, flash card readers for all major brands, Optical audio out etc..). The Sony 50" HDTV My parents got also has all standard plugs with a little slot for a Memstick being the only proprietary thing on it. I wonder if they've learned their lesson?
Try chatting with a Native North American one day, and ask how they feel about the extinction of indigenous languages. Here in the United States, indigenous people suffered deliberate attempts at extermination, marginalization, and assimilation. At various times, it was illegal to speak Native languages, practice Native religions, or hold traditional dances or ceremonies, such as weddings. A lot of Native tradition have disappeared, and those that still exist are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Not many Native Americans I've spoke to are happy about the state of affairs.
Apparently, those that care are too few in numbers to matter. Languages come and go. They mutate and get absorbed, obliterated, and new ones form. The concept of culture being innately valuable is pretty wrong. Tradition is simply ideas and habits parents pass to their children. Some may benefit a group of people, others not. For instance the "tradition" of eating part of a loved one that exists in portion of Africa encourages the spread of disease. It's a tradition, it's detrimental. Most are more neutral. The medicine bags of various north American tribes are a benign "habit". There really isn't that much list if no one wears one anymore. Putting such huge value into "habits" is silly. If it persists great. If not.. well apparently it didn't have too much fo a upside.
Apple is pursuing a less-is-more strategy here imho...
Geeks online have flame wars about weather of not the iPhone is a "real smartphone", with the implied presumption that smartphone status is, or ought to be, a goal Apple is trying to achieve. On the contrary, I suspect that Apple is actively trying to avoid having people perceive the iPhone as a smartphone. Smartphones are either toys for geeks or corporate tethers keeping us chained to work; the iPhone is targeted at the mainstream consumer, not a corporate IT department or the individual geeks working in it.
It's aimed squarely at people who have a penile length deficiency. This serious and debilitating disease plagues many upper middle class shmucks. Filling in the gap for those not cool enough to pull off a side kick and not rich enough to get a Porsche. We applaud the work of apple in making natures unfortunate under endowment a slightly lighter burden.
Now, let's see it at other levels of communication.
I, as a student of a public high school in America, take in more force-fed facts that are expected to be regurgitated, and get fewer and fewer chances to let my creative juices flow. Rather than writing that a person thinks something happened, I think someone could get more of a benefit out of writing about why it happened.
Perhaps that's why all forms of math are just so hard for me to wrap my head around; I know that things work, but I don't see why it's useful.
That aside, in a post-No-Child-Left-Educated world, would there be any creativity left to teach anything like this?
I'm not a teacher, nor am I always a realist, so I might just be thinking too optimistically about this. I guess it'd be best to just wait and see.
Well I don't think the problem is that school isn't "creative enough". It's that school is far too behind and dumbed down. If you think your getting forced fed facts now wait till university. They will give you the equivalent of an entire High school semester worth of material in any given week. They go over it in general and you fill in the rest through reading and study.
What I think the problem is, is that they gave you some notion that there is some mystical teaching method that will fill your heads with these facts instantly. That some "Dead poets society" type teaching methods exists to instantly make you a scholar. It doesn't. Any given child in most semi developed Asian country will be 2 grades ahead of you in math and he was just "force fed" that stuff. Actually almost any given kid in the west as well will be about 2 grades ahead of you in almost any subject except maybe English and (if your state has it) "civics". America set the bar really low when it come to education, even before dubya.
One of the key differences as well is culture. The Us has a very anti-intellectual culture. In every teen or kids show They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool. It's a rare breed that is smart and not a social misfit in American culture. While in Asian cultures doing well contributes to yoru social standing.
It's hard to really teach in such a culture. You need to really want to devour knowledge. No teacher, no matter how good, can be a substitute for a passion to learn and thats something that isn't imparted much these days. It's really up to your family to do that. So if you think force feeding knowledge is bad, well guy it never changes. You either take it upon yourself to learn why or you'll be left behind by the rest of the world.
So are you saying we should lock up Scientologists?
Just because a cult gives you the creeps doesn't mean they should be oppressed.
- RG>
For Falun Gong no. Their just empty headed new age creeps. Their not dangerous yet.
For the heavily aggressive, often criminal Scientologists it might be a good idea. The scam is already illegal in many countries and it's openly a scam and incident of abuse of the legal system are common.
Does it ever bother anyone that in Canada and the US Presidents and PM's tend to be lawyers? Have you noticed a lot of the house, senate, etc.. are also lawyers? Notice as well that so many laws come out that benefit no one except lawyers? Maybe we should try biasing society away from electing people who a vested interest in making things complicated. Maybe we should try voting in ore Science related professionals and engineers. Look at other major nations, China's run by a PHD engineer, Russia is run by a former Spy/Assassin and India's run by a PHD economist. I guess technically Putin is a law scholar but he's a law school grad who could kill you with his bare hands, dispose of the body, and then have lunch.
And the US has? Dubya...
Always amuses me to see how many people correlate education with superiority. I'll side with Heinlein on that one...Better to have military service as a prerequisite for citizenship, because then, at least, the citizens would have to have shown themselves willing put themselves at the service of the country, even to the point of losing their lives, before they could exercise their franchise. Education says nothing about the person so educated.
I'm all for the slashdot moderator political system. The only one who can vote are the politically inactive and in good standing with the community (ie never rand for council, no arrests for any felonies). They're picked at random given 5 votes and the freedom to exercise such a vote as they please. Stating a public opinion that can be linked back to you about a particular vote disqualifies you. You can state such a opinion anonymously.
It can't be any worse then the current system.
As I said. They over step the limits of what is right or just. I do not condone the actions. I may think certain ideologies are vacuous but I would not support the forcefully abolishment of that ideology.
And there is a 4th choice you left out: they could have gone in and done the job themselves, but we all know what unilateral action nets anyone in the court of world opinion.
Apathy? Everyone gave some lip service to "US is bad" and did nothing about it.
I don't think anything short of a WWII style mobilization would have done much. The American people aren't into a war like that so it'd be Vietnam but worse because the opposition in better armed. As well do what yourselves? install a puppet regime? Saddam was a pseudo puppet regime. Iran was run by one until it was over thrown. Install a democracy? the US doesn't tend to favor democracies in it's puppets. Democracies are hard and expensive to control while a pupper dictatorship requires the bribing and kissing of only a few asses.
I can't find any mention in the article of whether you'll be able to boot from them with current BIOSs. Surely any system they'll be in will have a decent amount of RAM for the OS, but it would be pretty cool solely for the fast boot times.
/sarcasm.
Hey,
We all use Linux right.. we never have to reboot