Funny... I thought that only a moron would buy Youtube because they can't possibly be making money by paying for gobs of bandwidth and hardware and taking in pennies at a time from Google ads. But hey...
1. Come up with an idea.
2. Find stupid VC's
3. ????
4. Profit!
I don't even think the ??? are nessacary. The Vc pays you, you scram to jamaica and yoru done. The VC scams some retirement funds and the only losers are the end investor.
,i>We just got medicare part D over 30 years after the pharma revolution made pills at least as important as surgery. For 30 years people were steered inappropriately towards surgery because the government couldn't politically align its funding to scientific progress. If you're comfortable with waiting for decades for proper medicine, go for it dude. I'll choose a different course.
What does that have to do with government funded health care? All those problems are issues with ineffective beauracracy and it's as bad in the states as it is in canada where I live.
No... Terrorism is a problem because we do not follow Sharia. It's not a matter of foreign policy (besides the fact we don't want all the Israelis driven into the sea). This is a war based on dogma.
If you read up on the histories of the area you will find that is not the cause. Thats a scarecrow arguement. There are certainly individuals who think that way but they are not the ones who crashed several planes into the twin towers. They are country hicks in the middle of nowhere. The ones who crashed th eplanes were due to the US support of isreal and the economic occpation of saudi arabia.
No matter what we do, we won't stop the propaganda against us from fanatics. We are the Great Satan to some of them, and nothing we do (outside submission) will change that. I do agree that we do need to secure our borders, and for that, both sides are sorely lacking. People need to realize that being against illegal immigration isn't the same thing as being against immigration.
Thats a fairly recent developement. PRevious the Russians were the great satan ect.. Immigration is great, illegals and refugees ned to be shot when found. I agree somewhat with you. I don't beleive we should accept refugees. Why provide a hoem simply because no one wants you.
Actually, Iraq is a meaningful theater of war. It has several goals: 1) Focus enemy fire on military personal/targets in the area 2) Remove a dictator who was ignoring UN sanctions 3) Help stop genocide 4) Attempt to install a democraticly elected government 5) Kill/capture/injure some high ranking members of Al'qaeda 6) Attempt to find known caches of biological and chemical weapons. Most of these objectives have been met... so I wouldn't say it's failed. It will fail if we simply pick up and leave. For those who think that changes of these magnitude are quick and simple, look at history, and check our troop levels in Japan and Germany.
You do realize that 1- is in progress but may never be achieved. 2- happened but didn't do anything positive for the country. 3- wasn't happeneing until 2 happened. 4 is not going so well simply because the country was such a ethnic mess. 5 is nonsense since the insurgency has nothing to do with al'qaeda but is instead shites, republican guards and bathists staging a prebellion to keep their minority ethnicity in power. 6 was a joke from the start and nothing has been recovered or detected.
Japan and Germany camparisons dont' apply because they had law and order and they weren't killing each other after the war. If we can restore law and order and install a democracy that would be a victory but I have a sneaking suspicion we'll cut and run eventually even if we get republicans for 2 more terms. It's a quagmire.
None of it has ocntirbuted to any form of terrorist threat reduction because they weren't a major financial sorce to begin with and they were despised by most of the real threats to national security. IT also made the US a laughing stock and hurt the image of invulnerability almost as much as Vietnam did.
Oh, did you miss the recent inquiry report where it was determined that the RCMP passed on erroneous or misleading information to the US, and where Ara was pretty well cleared of involvemnet with Al Qaeda? What exactly did he do to "deserve it"? An apparently innocent man was tortured for a year. Of course in the U.S. you might never have had an inquiry; the whole issue would have been swept under the carpet with Arar having no chance to examine the evidence against him, getting tried by a military tribunal, and the people who screwed up getting a promotion.
I did some more reading into it. I was only aware of older informatio; namely he was accused of being an associated of a Abdullah Almalki. It seems that link was extremely tenous. I take it back he didn't deserve it.
All I am saying is that you must treat them all equally because they have their flaws but they are all well supported theories. If you question one more so then another with no basis to do this then indeed you are lying to yourself. Science is about doubt, and if anyone present s a plasuible alternative I will consider both. If you question it's plausibility then question all other theories with similiar doubt. Most don't. PS. the scientific contreversy doesn't exsist. We have not found a alternative to evolution yet and it's previous peers were discreditted. Thus we have to consider it plausible and iwht evidence at hand also consider it likely. The political aspect is a certain group that will not do so and do nto give sufficient reason to hold that belief. Thus I say it's poltiical.
Your original post did not make that distintion and implied there was contreversy to Evolution and didn't mention any others. that's misleading. all theroeis are appriximations and patterns based on observations. Evolution is one of them, and it's as well supported as almost any other thoery. It's nto science to take it as being absolutely true, but it's also not science to selectively mis-represent theories.
PS. I am a christian, I think the ignorance in our communtieis is revolting. Christinity should value knowledge not sprun the possibility because it's inconvienant.
I am sayign exactly what I'm saying. Your view of science is false. Evolution is our current theory. Has as much support as almost any other and we have no alternatives at the moment. It's as "true" as any other theory in Science. Which is to say "Conditonal acceptance as likely to be true unless we find a better model or falsfify the whole idea". Your statements try to say there is some contriversy over the acceptance of evolution, there is not within science. We accept it as "Conditonal acceptance as likely to be true unless we find a better model or falsfify the whole idea" just like general relativity, special relativity ect...
As for faith. If you disprove evolution or propose a more valid theory then any university will give you a PHD and the nobel award comitee wants some of your time. Until then you have to accept evolution as being plausible and likely. To cast any mroe doubt then you normally would on any scientific theory would be political since evolution has jumped through all the nessasary hoops to be regaurded as a accepted scientific theory. Do you question the validity of General relativity in the same way? how about thermo dynamics? if not then your doign it for intellectual dishonest reasons.
Biologists define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. One example is insects developing a resistance to pesticides over the period of a few years. Even most Creationists recognize that evolution at this level is a fact. What they don't appreciate is that this rate of evolution is all that is required to produce the diversity of all living things from a common ancestor.
The origin of new species by evolution has also been observed, both in the laboratory and in the wild. See, for example, (Weinberg, J.R., V.R. Starczak, and D. Jorg, 1992, "Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory." Evolution 46: 1214-1220). The "Observed Instances of Speciation" FAQ in the talk.origins archives gives several additional examples.
Even without these direct observations, it would be wrong to say that evolution hasn't been observed. Evidence isn't limited to seeing something happen before your eyes. Evolution makes predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetic sequences, geographical distribution of species, etc., and these predictions have been verified many times over. The number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming.
What hasn't been observed is one animal abruptly changing into a radically different one, such as a frog changing into a cow. This is not a problem for evolution because evolution doesn't propose occurrences even remotely like that. In fact, if we ever observed a frog turn into a cow, it would be very strong evidence against evolution.
"Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."
First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact. Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too. However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.
Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. (Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)
Lack of proof isn't a weakness, either. On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one's conclusions is a sign of hubris. Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be. Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you're operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn't 100% certain.
To win the GWOT we must drain the fever swamps in the Middle East that UBL feeds on for new idiots to strap a bomb onto. That means we need to transform the dysfunctional countries in the region into modern Republican forms of government with modern instituitions and economies. They won't be little clones of the US, Canada or Europe because they are Islamic peoples who will need to discover their own balance in much the same way our fledgling nations balanced their religious, philisophical and political beliefs.
Lets start with this: Terrorism is a problem because a group of individuals have a problem with some of the US foreign policies and will fund or commit acts of violence as venegence or policy inflencing. They have a problem with the US's support of isreal and the US perceived occupation of saudi arabia.. How exactly does an invasion help this problem? In fact isn't a war just adding mroe fuel to the fire? Didn't we just convert 28 million people to the terrorist cause by invading, disrupting any semblance of law and order and then doing nothing to restore order? How did that help? drain the fevered swap? that a really bad anology and a idiotic simplification of the politics of the region.
Now once one accepts that this is the only longterm solution the obvious question is HOW? Well one way would be to invade and smash Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc. and rebuild them all as was done at the end of WWII. Downside is that after Clinton 'spent the peace dividend' we lacked the militaty force to even consider something so grand. A less expensive and probably better way would be to build a model and allow the people in the others to emulate a successful example of their own free will.
We can start by beefing up national security (which happened), sanctioning the individuals who funded this(has not happened). Possibly convince the countries that have populatiosn that hate us to stop the propaganda that blames the US and Isreal for all the problems in the world. I doubt invading one of their neighbors is a good way to do this.
Another alternative is secure the borders, and just wait them out. since all of this takes money and the oil in the region is expected to dry up in ~40 years, we'll be laughing at them liek we do to theAfricans who have similiar grudges but no money to finance any retaliation.
Ok, we only invade one country... Next question is obviously WHICH one? As fate would have it there was one country centrally situated that we happened to still be in a formal state of War with, was generally a nightmare waiting to happen again and was about to slip out of the UN sanctions that were part of the Cease Fire agreement that stopped Gulf War I. Basically Saddam needed killin in a bad way regardless. I think the choice was pretty easy. What part of that line of reasoning do you have a problem with?
The problem is invading a country doesn't solve the problem. even glassing a country wouldn't solve it. Iraq is a meaningless aside in the "war on terror" and the "war on terror" is a cause celebre with very little real signifigance. It's being used to justify the desprate last gamble of a crumblign empire to retain it's #1 spot int he coming century. It's mostly failed. So why continue the meanigless chirade.
Evolution/Creationism: I haven't heard of a valid "experiment" to test this either way.
this one is like staying there is a valid alternative to thermo dynamics and all the laws are wrong. It doesn't stand up. This is a purely political debate amoung one ideology and the very validity of science. There have been thousands of experiements verying and reforming aspects of evolution, all implications have been supported, the falsifying . Creationism is not science but theology. There is no contriversy about this within science only within a certain religious group.
Finally you can get healthcare without relying on a big paperwork socialized system. In fact, the paperwork is massively enlarged by medicare/medicaid, the number of useless and expensive tests is massively enlarged by the pro-Dem trial lawyers, and doctor supply is artificially limited via government action in order to raise prices. Healthcare needs vastly less government and the Reps seem to be the only party even halfway moving in that direction.
You do however save the 66+% profit margine all businesses have. In the end reducing the cost of medicare. In most sutdies the US medicare isnt' soem bastion of efficientcy. It's both inefficent, expensive, and has poor coverage on ti's people. A accountant friend of mine advised me the #1 reason for bankrupcy filings int he US is medicare related. This might be wrong but if it's true then why should it be this way?
Yes, an excellent example of how laws are moral matters somewhere along the line. The DMCA is the government saying it is immoral to copy stuff that many consider to be fair use. Legislation is nothing more than government "letting us know" what it thinks is moral or not.
The gov just says it's bad to break the protection of stuff that someone has put in place to make copying stuff difficult. they've taken a positive stance on copying stuff for yourself. so it's a self-contridictory position given their past rulings.
I,>Right on! The Republicans tend to be comprised by people who view themselves as the moral elite. They want to control how we think. On the other hand, the Democrats tend to be comprised of people who view themselves as the intellectual elite. They want to control how we think.
Nice anology. Indeed it seem mostly true. However the first party wouldn't mind if they cause you to cease to exsist if you contradict their position while the second just wish you'd shut up and let people who obviously know better to decide things. Theres a fairly hefty difference.
"Just admit it, Democrats are less founded in conservative Christian belief and therefore are more prone to rely on science for decisions/explanations" I'm no republican, but I can't accept this. It's probably true that Christianity is not going to be the non-scientific thing that Democrats base their decisions on, but that doesn't mean they're any more scientific than the pubs. Consider -I see dems using class & race resentment to rile people up as often as the pubs use 'faith & morals' -Conservative fiscal policy -- generally speaking -- has some economic basis, while social-program expansion is generally based on sob stories. I don't think the idea that one party is more scientific in their approach is *at *all tenable.
Depends, there is a fair bit of empirical data showing social programs reduce crime. There is definite data stating harsh penalties do not. Just consider the Dems pushing crime reduction through more proven methods.
Tha majority of his repsonses are disputes about his points. I haven't seen anythign simply callign him names. Although I do not view below 1 so I may not see those.
you dont' read much history do you. Lets see, you were attacked by Osama bin laden an ex CIA-associated Saudi by a group of mostly saudis with a paper trail of money linking more saudis who had a deep ideological hate for saddam hussan and who actively tried to kill each other... Logically it must then be Iraq that is reposnible? seem logical to me....
All too true. But they are fighting. During the opening acts of WWII and the Cold War (WWIII) we didn't exactly cover ourselves in glory either. But we knew that defeat wasn't an option and kept going and eventually won. I'm still holding out hope the Republicans will keep swinging long enough to learn how to fight this new sort of war.
You had clear objectives in WWII and the cold war was a ideological contest which didn't really matter either way to most americans but was important for purely ideological reasons. Camobodia/vietnam beign communist or not would nto have affected the US much. But to allow the USSR too many "political" victories hurt the prestige and influence of the US.
Winning requires internalizing the fundamental truth of modern warfare. Battles are won and lost on the battlefield, but the war is won on the floor of the Congress and on TV. Defeat Democrats and UBL will give up since his only hope for victory lies in destroying our will to fight. Democrats lend him moral support when they lead him to believe that one election tipping their way will give him victory in Iraq. I'm NOT saying all Democrats are knowingly in league with UBL. What I am saying is that UBL doesn't care because the result, for him, is the same regardless. And I'm sad to say no small portion of Democrats don't care if they give UBL a victory, their blind hatred of Bush and their insatable lust to regain lost political power is overwhelming all other considerations.
The fundemental truths of modern warfare are exactly the same as the fundemental truths of ancient warfare. Assymetric warfare does depend on causing yoru massively powerful opponent to stop. But it also require your massively powerful opponent to occupy your terrortory and to make stupid tactical and strategic blunders allowing you to snipe at them. The most obvious bluder is you have politicians directing your military. Thats a huge idotic mistake that a general 1800 years ago warned against. The politicos needs to point and say "I want them" and the generals should rule the soliders from there. Your soldiers have been given vague and unachievable objectives and the only winning condition your gov set for yourselves is virtually impossible (bring democracy to a ethnically divided, violence soaked collection of peoples who hate you). And then you under fund and understaff them as well. This little foray has cost the US both prestige, moral high ground, money, lives, and influence. No matter what the outcome now it will be a failure. Cut and running just minimizes your cost in lives and cash. There is little else to be gained fromt his fiasco at this point.
Don't have to check, I was watching. Yes most Democrats voted to destroy the Taliban. As most of them voted to invade Iraq, and for the same reason. Voting otherwise would have been suicide for most of them. But from their public statements then and now it was clear that had they believed they could have been survived they would have voted against both.
Afganistan was a "if you touch us we'll destory you" message. Iraq was a "while we're here we minus as well finish this too." message. dont' equate the two. they have very little in common.
Afganistan would be a quagmire. Afganistan had resisted conquest by every major power since history began, we would suffer the fate of the British and the Russians. Afganistan was just a little pissant country Bushitler wanted to beat up to prove his manhood. You name it and some Democrat was saying it.... then.
Afganistan had other backers against the brits and russians. We stormed in, killed a few peopel and then handed power over to nearly the same people you came to kill.. It was a PR victory but you did very little. you won quickly because the afgani's didn't have a major power backign them this time (unliek the russians vs afganistan or US vs vietnam). And their other backers (iran) didn't want to touch it.
Where were you? War in Iraq was justified on any one of several equally valid ca
Most Republicans are living in the real world, where there is a shooting war on. Most Democrats are living in a fantasy world where they are more likely to believe Bushitler blew up the WTC than to believe UBL not only did it, but that it wasn't his first successful attack. The only Democrats on the national stage who show they at least understand are Lieberman (forced from his party for his belief) and perhaps HRC, who probably understands we have a war on but is politically savvy enough to fuzz her position enough to remain viable in her insane party. Making her morally bankrupt and unfit for office regardless of which side you look at the issue from.
I'd revise that and say most americans are living ina fantasy world. There are sane Democrates and Republicans but the ones who choose the winner are stupid lower middle class slobs who routinely vote against their own interest because they arent' smart enough to realize what their interests are. Intelligent Democrates and Republicans are aware their side has problems but to the rest of the world, the republicans in power now seem insane warmongers. The democrate government were seemingly reasonable.
Also, your ideas about what is important to the united states seem unifnormed. The US could have stayed out of Iraq and still be just as secure as they are now (some argue even more secure). They are making a play to control the oil to hedge the growth of the chinese/european/russian economies. It happens that their play for it didn't go so well. It has nothing to do with security since most of the terrorism is inspired more from their pseudo occupation of saudi arabia. Most republicans live in fantasy world as well where they truly beleive that terrorism is a legitimate threat and not a fringe phenomenon that has not killed that many people (5,000 americans isn't a lot). Terrorism will not destroy the united states. Terrorism is about as threatening as lime disease and deserves no more press but gets more because it's the cause celebre of the modern age.
Expectations. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that men (and women!) online are looking for the "perfect partner". Newsflash, people: there's no such thing. Everybody has their flaws. Doesn't matter who they are.
I has a facetious reply to this earlier but I wanted to put a more serious one. Physical attraction is a huge part of a realationship and without it you have very good friends but not a romantic relationship. It's fine looking underneath appearances but attraction is part mental part physical. I know what doesn't attract me and only date those that do and try to find a good person who can live with my own quirks. It's inevitably what the whole game is about. If we happen to miss some great people who don't fit into our idea of attractive, unfortunately I am sure it wouldn't have worked out anyways. I have dated girls I thought were not attractive but were so sweet and nice I couldn't say no. Eventually I just didn't have any interest in them in a sexual way and we parted ways.
That's a bad analogy. Coca-cola without carmelized sugar wouldn't be anything like the current product. The OP's argument is that a PS3 would be just as useful without an overpriced, pie-in-the-sky optical drive, and I'm inclined to agree with him
Coca-cola without carmalized sugar is simply not brown. Otherwise it's the same. Ps3 without the blu-ray just as different. It's a feature of the product. There are subsitutes for crmalized sugar, like corn syrup and brown food coloring but it would taste subtley different just as a PS3 with a DVD or HD-DVD would be different.
If you want a more accurate analogy, imagine that there's a far less expensive (but comparable in taste and nutritional value) alternative to sugar out there, but that Coke owns the rights to sugar, and that they intend to make a fortune selling sugary products at a very high premium.
It happened sort of, coke uses high fructose corn syrup not sugar because it's cheaper.
The real reason that Blu-ray is being pushed on consumers is that Sony is attempting, yet again, to get their proprietary storage format a foothold in the market. Consumers don't want Blu-ray (it's expensive as all hell), manufacturers don't want Blu-ray (production yields are very low), and content producers don't seem to want it, either. HD-DVD is far more widely supported, nearly as good, and doesn't use expensive, untested technology. Plus, it's already available. But Sony doesn't see royalties every time an HD-DVD disc is sold.
I think you've reversed the reality of support, HD-DVd has Universal and a subsidary owned by the weinstiens supporting them. Blu-ray has the rest of the industry. Most of the industry is non-exclusive to either and Blu-ray has exclusive support by Sony. also, on the board of directors of the blu-ray standard are Apple Computer Corp.; Dell, Inc.; Hewlett Packard Company; Hitachi, Ltd.; LG Electronics Inc.; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Panasonic (Matsushita Electric); Pioneer Corporation; Royal Philips Electronics; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sharp Corporation; Sony Corporation; Sun Microsystems; TDK Corporation; Thomson; Twentieth Century Fox; Walt Disney Pictures and Television; Warner Bros.
So yeah, you're basically being forced to pay a few hundred bucks extra for a component that doesn't really have any immediate benefit for you. You're paying Sony to saturate the market with a product no one really needs.
again thats the product, there is no force there. If you think it's a bad decision; don't buy one. Otherwise you don't have a point. Blu-ray has some benifits and while it does tac on cost it does offer some value in return.
Appearances (which comes in with expectations, I suppose.) If you're not 'beautiful', you're evidently not worth knowing. Dig a little deeper, people. There's more to beauty than stick figures like you see in those fashion magazines...
I though that once upon a time. Then I realized I wasn't ugly and have been shallow and self gratifying ever since. It works for me.
This console's already facing a hard enough time as it is with its own price tag. Considering the PS3 is likely being sold at a loss like most previous consoles, Sony can't afford not to sell games at a competing price point to the Xbox 360. Anything higher would doom the PS3 right from the start.
which previous consoles were sold at a loss? Xbox for sure, 360 for a while what else? all others were never confirmed to be at a loss.
First of all, if this micropayment system is allowed to take off, gamers will pay far more than the price of their console in micropayments as all game studios will harness this. You'll pay $60 for Final Fantasy XV, and then $1 for every level. It'll be a micropayment bloodbath. So no, this strategy is not affordable.
Then on top of this, when you re-sell the game, everyone has to buy the levels all over again since it is tied to your console. This is Sony with a sniper rifle zeroing in on the reseller market.
Moreover, why do I need to hand over my credit card and personal info and register my single player game to Sony, or anyone else? Sony wants everyone who buys a game to have to register with Sony and that's b.s.
This is one hard core PS3 fan boy who just suddenly decided not to buy a PS3. And I love the Playstation series.
Aren't we goign overboard with the whole mirco payments exageration. All we know is GT HD has a micro payments systems for cars and tracks. We don't know if it's cheap but comes with no tracks and cars or if it's a complete game and the extras are just model revisions and add ons.
They should have just called it Blue-Ray ("Blue Ray") instead of Blu-Ray ("Blew Ray") because it seems to be messing some people up. I saw a comment yesterday where someone was talking about Blu laser diodes....
You can't trade mark somethign liek Red Fridge/Blue ray/Yellow banana. So they went with Blu-ray to avoid havign to deal with a trademark that is too general.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny... I thought that only a moron would buy Youtube because they can't possibly be making money by paying for gobs of bandwidth and hardware and taking in pennies at a time from Google ads. But hey...
1. Come up with an idea.
2. Find stupid VC's
3. ????
4. Profit!
I don't even think the ??? are nessacary. The Vc pays you, you scram to jamaica and yoru done. The VC scams some retirement funds and the only losers are the end investor.
,i>We just got medicare part D over 30 years after the pharma revolution made pills at least as important as surgery. For 30 years people were steered inappropriately towards surgery because the government couldn't politically align its funding to scientific progress. If you're comfortable with waiting for decades for proper medicine, go for it dude. I'll choose a different course.
What does that have to do with government funded health care? All those problems are issues with ineffective beauracracy and it's as bad in the states as it is in canada where I live.
This is from Japan. Their militaristic ambitions are still low (though perhaps on the rebound), while they have an aging popultion.
Japanese nationalizm is surging at the moment. Just in case China has all their nukes aimed at them.
No... Terrorism is a problem because we do not follow Sharia. It's not a matter of foreign policy (besides the fact we don't want all the Israelis driven into the sea). This is a war based on dogma.
If you read up on the histories of the area you will find that is not the cause. Thats a scarecrow arguement. There are certainly individuals who think that way but they are not the ones who crashed several planes into the twin towers. They are country hicks in the middle of nowhere. The ones who crashed th eplanes were due to the US support of isreal and the economic occpation of saudi arabia.
No matter what we do, we won't stop the propaganda against us from fanatics. We are the Great Satan to some of them, and nothing we do (outside submission) will change that. I do agree that we do need to secure our borders, and for that, both sides are sorely lacking. People need to realize that being against illegal immigration isn't the same thing as being against immigration.
Thats a fairly recent developement. PRevious the Russians were the great satan ect.. Immigration is great, illegals and refugees ned to be shot when found. I agree somewhat with you. I don't beleive we should accept refugees. Why provide a hoem simply because no one wants you.
Actually, Iraq is a meaningful theater of war. It has several goals: 1) Focus enemy fire on military personal/targets in the area 2) Remove a dictator who was ignoring UN sanctions 3) Help stop genocide 4) Attempt to install a democraticly elected government 5) Kill/capture/injure some high ranking members of Al'qaeda 6) Attempt to find known caches of biological and chemical weapons. Most of these objectives have been met... so I wouldn't say it's failed. It will fail if we simply pick up and leave. For those who think that changes of these magnitude are quick and simple, look at history, and check our troop levels in Japan and Germany.
You do realize that 1- is in progress but may never be achieved. 2- happened but didn't do anything positive for the country. 3- wasn't happeneing until 2 happened. 4 is not going so well simply because the country was such a ethnic mess. 5 is nonsense since the insurgency has nothing to do with al'qaeda but is instead shites, republican guards and bathists staging a prebellion to keep their minority ethnicity in power. 6 was a joke from the start and nothing has been recovered or detected.
Japan and Germany camparisons dont' apply because they had law and order and they weren't killing each other after the war. If we can restore law and order and install a democracy that would be a victory but I have a sneaking suspicion we'll cut and run eventually even if we get republicans for 2 more terms. It's a quagmire.
None of it has ocntirbuted to any form of terrorist threat reduction because they weren't a major financial sorce to begin with and they were despised by most of the real threats to national security. IT also made the US a laughing stock and hurt the image of invulnerability almost as much as Vietnam did.
Oh, did you miss the recent inquiry report where it was determined that the RCMP passed on erroneous or misleading information to the US, and where Ara was pretty well cleared of involvemnet with Al Qaeda? What exactly did he do to "deserve it"? An apparently innocent man was tortured for a year. Of course in the U.S. you might never have had an inquiry; the whole issue would have been swept under the carpet with Arar having no chance to examine the evidence against him, getting tried by a military tribunal, and the people who screwed up getting a promotion.
I did some more reading into it. I was only aware of older informatio; namely he was accused of being an associated of a Abdullah Almalki. It seems that link was extremely tenous. I take it back he didn't deserve it.
All I am saying is that you must treat them all equally because they have their flaws but they are all well supported theories. If you question one more so then another with no basis to do this then indeed you are lying to yourself. Science is about doubt, and if anyone present s a plasuible alternative I will consider both. If you question it's plausibility then question all other theories with similiar doubt. Most don't. PS. the scientific contreversy doesn't exsist. We have not found a alternative to evolution yet and it's previous peers were discreditted. Thus we have to consider it plausible and iwht evidence at hand also consider it likely. The political aspect is a certain group that will not do so and do nto give sufficient reason to hold that belief. Thus I say it's poltiical.
Your original post did not make that distintion and implied there was contreversy to Evolution and didn't mention any others. that's misleading. all theroeis are appriximations and patterns based on observations. Evolution is one of them, and it's as well supported as almost any other thoery. It's nto science to take it as being absolutely true, but it's also not science to selectively mis-represent theories.
PS. I am a christian, I think the ignorance in our communtieis is revolting. Christinity should value knowledge not sprun the possibility because it's inconvienant.
I am sayign exactly what I'm saying. Your view of science is false. Evolution is our current theory. Has as much support as almost any other and we have no alternatives at the moment. It's as "true" as any other theory in Science. Which is to say "Conditonal acceptance as likely to be true unless we find a better model or falsfify the whole idea". Your statements try to say there is some contriversy over the acceptance of evolution, there is not within science. We accept it as "Conditonal acceptance as likely to be true unless we find a better model or falsfify the whole idea" just like general relativity, special relativity ect...
As for faith. If you disprove evolution or propose a more valid theory then any university will give you a PHD and the nobel award comitee wants some of your time. Until then you have to accept evolution as being plausible and likely. To cast any mroe doubt then you normally would on any scientific theory would be political since evolution has jumped through all the nessasary hoops to be regaurded as a accepted scientific theory. Do you question the validity of General relativity in the same way? how about thermo dynamics? if not then your doign it for intellectual dishonest reasons.
""Evolution has never been observed."
Biologists define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. One example is insects developing a resistance to pesticides over the period of a few years. Even most Creationists recognize that evolution at this level is a fact. What they don't appreciate is that this rate of evolution is all that is required to produce the diversity of all living things from a common ancestor.
The origin of new species by evolution has also been observed, both in the laboratory and in the wild. See, for example, (Weinberg, J.R., V.R. Starczak, and D. Jorg, 1992, "Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory." Evolution 46: 1214-1220). The "Observed Instances of Speciation" FAQ in the talk.origins archives gives several additional examples.
Even without these direct observations, it would be wrong to say that evolution hasn't been observed. Evidence isn't limited to seeing something happen before your eyes. Evolution makes predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetic sequences, geographical distribution of species, etc., and these predictions have been verified many times over. The number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming.
What hasn't been observed is one animal abruptly changing into a radically different one, such as a frog changing into a cow. This is not a problem for evolution because evolution doesn't propose occurrences even remotely like that. In fact, if we ever observed a frog turn into a cow, it would be very strong evidence against evolution.
"Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."
First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact. Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too. However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.
Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. (Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)
Lack of proof isn't a weakness, either. On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one's conclusions is a sign of hubris. Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be. Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you're operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn't 100% certain.
What evolution has is what any good scient
To win the GWOT we must drain the fever swamps in the Middle East that UBL feeds on for new idiots to strap a bomb onto. That means we need to transform the dysfunctional countries in the region into modern Republican forms of government with modern instituitions and economies. They won't be little clones of the US, Canada or Europe because they are Islamic peoples who will need to discover their own balance in much the same way our fledgling nations balanced their religious, philisophical and political beliefs.
Lets start with this: Terrorism is a problem because a group of individuals have a problem with some of the US foreign policies and will fund or commit acts of violence as venegence or policy inflencing. They have a problem with the US's support of isreal and the US perceived occupation of saudi arabia.. How exactly does an invasion help this problem? In fact isn't a war just adding mroe fuel to the fire? Didn't we just convert 28 million people to the terrorist cause by invading, disrupting any semblance of law and order and then doing nothing to restore order? How did that help? drain the fevered swap? that a really bad anology and a idiotic simplification of the politics of the region.
Now once one accepts that this is the only longterm solution the obvious question is HOW? Well one way would be to invade and smash Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc. and rebuild them all as was done at the end of WWII. Downside is that after Clinton 'spent the peace dividend' we lacked the militaty force to even consider something so grand. A less expensive and probably better way would be to build a model and allow the people in the others to emulate a successful example of their own free will.
We can start by beefing up national security (which happened), sanctioning the individuals who funded this(has not happened). Possibly convince the countries that have populatiosn that hate us to stop the propaganda that blames the US and Isreal for all the problems in the world. I doubt invading one of their neighbors is a good way to do this.
Another alternative is secure the borders, and just wait them out. since all of this takes money and the oil in the region is expected to dry up in ~40 years, we'll be laughing at them liek we do to theAfricans who have similiar grudges but no money to finance any retaliation.
Ok, we only invade one country... Next question is obviously WHICH one? As fate would have it there was one country centrally situated that we happened to still be in a formal state of War with, was generally a nightmare waiting to happen again and was about to slip out of the UN sanctions that were part of the Cease Fire agreement that stopped Gulf War I. Basically Saddam needed killin in a bad way regardless. I think the choice was pretty easy. What part of that line of reasoning do you have a problem with?
The problem is invading a country doesn't solve the problem. even glassing a country wouldn't solve it. Iraq is a meaningless aside in the "war on terror" and the "war on terror" is a cause celebre with very little real signifigance. It's being used to justify the desprate last gamble of a crumblign empire to retain it's #1 spot int he coming century. It's mostly failed. So why continue the meanigless chirade.
Evolution/Creationism: I haven't heard of a valid "experiment" to test this either way.
this one is like staying there is a valid alternative to thermo dynamics and all the laws are wrong. It doesn't stand up. This is a purely political debate amoung one ideology and the very validity of science. There have been thousands of experiements verying and reforming aspects of evolution, all implications have been supported, the falsifying . Creationism is not science but theology. There is no contriversy about this within science only within a certain religious group.
Finally you can get healthcare without relying on a big paperwork socialized system. In fact, the paperwork is massively enlarged by medicare/medicaid, the number of useless and expensive tests is massively enlarged by the pro-Dem trial lawyers, and doctor supply is artificially limited via government action in order to raise prices. Healthcare needs vastly less government and the Reps seem to be the only party even halfway moving in that direction.
You do however save the 66+% profit margine all businesses have. In the end reducing the cost of medicare. In most sutdies the US medicare isnt' soem bastion of efficientcy. It's both inefficent, expensive, and has poor coverage on ti's people. A accountant friend of mine advised me the #1 reason for bankrupcy filings int he US is medicare related. This might be wrong but if it's true then why should it be this way?
Yes, an excellent example of how laws are moral matters somewhere along the line. The DMCA is the government saying it is immoral to copy stuff that many consider to be fair use. Legislation is nothing more than government "letting us know" what it thinks is moral or not.
The gov just says it's bad to break the protection of stuff that someone has put in place to make copying stuff difficult. they've taken a positive stance on copying stuff for yourself. so it's a self-contridictory position given their past rulings.
I,>Right on! The Republicans tend to be comprised by people who view themselves as the moral elite. They want to control how we think. On the other hand, the Democrats tend to be comprised of people who view themselves as the intellectual elite. They want to control how we think.
Nice anology. Indeed it seem mostly true. However the first party wouldn't mind if they cause you to cease to exsist if you contradict their position while the second just wish you'd shut up and let people who obviously know better to decide things. Theres a fairly hefty difference.
But, who are YOU or the govt. to tell me what I can and cannot do to or ingest into my body???
Smarter then you. I guess that sums it up. The reason they control prescription drugs, inspect food ect.. is the same.
"Just admit it, Democrats are less founded in conservative Christian belief and therefore are more prone to rely on science for decisions/explanations" I'm no republican, but I can't accept this. It's probably true that Christianity is not going to be the non-scientific thing that Democrats base their decisions on, but that doesn't mean they're any more scientific than the pubs. Consider -I see dems using class & race resentment to rile people up as often as the pubs use 'faith & morals' -Conservative fiscal policy -- generally speaking -- has some economic basis, while social-program expansion is generally based on sob stories. I don't think the idea that one party is more scientific in their approach is *at *all tenable.
Depends, there is a fair bit of empirical data showing social programs reduce crime. There is definite data stating harsh penalties do not. Just consider the Dems pushing crime reduction through more proven methods.
Tha majority of his repsonses are disputes about his points. I haven't seen anythign simply callign him names. Although I do not view below 1 so I may not see those.
> There are two primary shooting wars going on.
Nope, only one.
you dont' read much history do you. Lets see, you were attacked by Osama bin laden an ex CIA-associated Saudi by a group of mostly saudis with a paper trail of money linking more saudis who had a deep ideological hate for saddam hussan and who actively tried to kill each other... Logically it must then be Iraq that is reposnible? seem logical to me....
All too true. But they are fighting. During the opening acts of WWII and the Cold War (WWIII) we didn't exactly cover ourselves in glory either. But we knew that defeat wasn't an option and kept going and eventually won. I'm still holding out hope the Republicans will keep swinging long enough to learn how to fight this new sort of war.
You had clear objectives in WWII and the cold war was a ideological contest which didn't really matter either way to most americans but was important for purely ideological reasons. Camobodia/vietnam beign communist or not would nto have affected the US much. But to allow the USSR too many "political" victories hurt the prestige and influence of the US.
Winning requires internalizing the fundamental truth of modern warfare. Battles are won and lost on the battlefield, but the war is won on the floor of the Congress and on TV. Defeat Democrats and UBL will give up since his only hope for victory lies in destroying our will to fight. Democrats lend him moral support when they lead him to believe that one election tipping their way will give him victory in Iraq. I'm NOT saying all Democrats are knowingly in league with UBL. What I am saying is that UBL doesn't care because the result, for him, is the same regardless. And I'm sad to say no small portion of Democrats don't care if they give UBL a victory, their blind hatred of Bush and their insatable lust to regain lost political power is overwhelming all other considerations.
The fundemental truths of modern warfare are exactly the same as the fundemental truths of ancient warfare. Assymetric warfare does depend on causing yoru massively powerful opponent to stop. But it also require your massively powerful opponent to occupy your terrortory and to make stupid tactical and strategic blunders allowing you to snipe at them. The most obvious bluder is you have politicians directing your military. Thats a huge idotic mistake that a general 1800 years ago warned against. The politicos needs to point and say "I want them" and the generals should rule the soliders from there. Your soldiers have been given vague and unachievable objectives and the only winning condition your gov set for yourselves is virtually impossible (bring democracy to a ethnically divided, violence soaked collection of peoples who hate you). And then you under fund and understaff them as well. This little foray has cost the US both prestige, moral high ground, money, lives, and influence. No matter what the outcome now it will be a failure. Cut and running just minimizes your cost in lives and cash. There is little else to be gained fromt his fiasco at this point.
Don't have to check, I was watching. Yes most Democrats voted to destroy the Taliban. As most of them voted to invade Iraq, and for the same reason. Voting otherwise would have been suicide for most of them. But from their public statements then and now it was clear that had they believed they could have been survived they would have voted against both.
Afganistan was a "if you touch us we'll destory you" message. Iraq was a "while we're here we minus as well finish this too." message. dont' equate the two. they have very little in common.
Afganistan would be a quagmire. Afganistan had resisted conquest by every major power since history began, we would suffer the fate of the British and the Russians. Afganistan was just a little pissant country Bushitler wanted to beat up to prove his manhood. You name it and some Democrat was saying it.... then.
Afganistan had other backers against the brits and russians. We stormed in, killed a few peopel and then handed power over to nearly the same people you came to kill.. It was a PR victory but you did very little. you won quickly because the afgani's didn't have a major power backign them this time (unliek the russians vs afganistan or US vs vietnam). And their other backers (iran) didn't want to touch it.
Where were you? War in Iraq was justified on any one of several equally valid ca
Most Republicans are living in the real world, where there is a shooting war on. Most Democrats are living in a fantasy world where they are more likely to believe Bushitler blew up the WTC than to believe UBL not only did it, but that it wasn't his first successful attack. The only Democrats on the national stage who show they at least understand are Lieberman (forced from his party for his belief) and perhaps HRC, who probably understands we have a war on but is politically savvy enough to fuzz her position enough to remain viable in her insane party. Making her morally bankrupt and unfit for office regardless of which side you look at the issue from.
I'd revise that and say most americans are living ina fantasy world. There are sane Democrates and Republicans but the ones who choose the winner are stupid lower middle class slobs who routinely vote against their own interest because they arent' smart enough to realize what their interests are. Intelligent Democrates and Republicans are aware their side has problems but to the rest of the world, the republicans in power now seem insane warmongers. The democrate government were seemingly reasonable.
Also, your ideas about what is important to the united states seem unifnormed. The US could have stayed out of Iraq and still be just as secure as they are now (some argue even more secure). They are making a play to control the oil to hedge the growth of the chinese/european/russian economies. It happens that their play for it didn't go so well. It has nothing to do with security since most of the terrorism is inspired more from their pseudo occupation of saudi arabia. Most republicans live in fantasy world as well where they truly beleive that terrorism is a legitimate threat and not a fringe phenomenon that has not killed that many people (5,000 americans isn't a lot). Terrorism will not destroy the united states. Terrorism is about as threatening as lime disease and deserves no more press but gets more because it's the cause celebre of the modern age.
Expectations. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that men (and women!) online are looking for the "perfect partner". Newsflash, people: there's no such thing. Everybody has their flaws. Doesn't matter who they are.
I has a facetious reply to this earlier but I wanted to put a more serious one. Physical attraction is a huge part of a realationship and without it you have very good friends but not a romantic relationship. It's fine looking underneath appearances but attraction is part mental part physical. I know what doesn't attract me and only date those that do and try to find a good person who can live with my own quirks. It's inevitably what the whole game is about. If we happen to miss some great people who don't fit into our idea of attractive, unfortunately I am sure it wouldn't have worked out anyways. I have dated girls I thought were not attractive but were so sweet and nice I couldn't say no. Eventually I just didn't have any interest in them in a sexual way and we parted ways.
That's a bad analogy. Coca-cola without carmelized sugar wouldn't be anything like the current product. The OP's argument is that a PS3 would be just as useful without an overpriced, pie-in-the-sky optical drive, and I'm inclined to agree with him
Coca-cola without carmalized sugar is simply not brown. Otherwise it's the same. Ps3 without the blu-ray just as different. It's a feature of the product. There are subsitutes for crmalized sugar, like corn syrup and brown food coloring but it would taste subtley different just as a PS3 with a DVD or HD-DVD would be different.
If you want a more accurate analogy, imagine that there's a far less expensive (but comparable in taste and nutritional value) alternative to sugar out there, but that Coke owns the rights to sugar, and that they intend to make a fortune selling sugary products at a very high premium.
It happened sort of, coke uses high fructose corn syrup not sugar because it's cheaper.
The real reason that Blu-ray is being pushed on consumers is that Sony is attempting, yet again, to get their proprietary storage format a foothold in the market. Consumers don't want Blu-ray (it's expensive as all hell), manufacturers don't want Blu-ray (production yields are very low), and content producers don't seem to want it, either. HD-DVD is far more widely supported, nearly as good, and doesn't use expensive, untested technology. Plus, it's already available. But Sony doesn't see royalties every time an HD-DVD disc is sold.
I think you've reversed the reality of support, HD-DVd has Universal and a subsidary owned by the weinstiens supporting them. Blu-ray has the rest of the industry. Most of the industry is non-exclusive to either and Blu-ray has exclusive support by Sony. also, on the board of directors of the blu-ray standard are Apple Computer Corp.; Dell, Inc.; Hewlett Packard Company; Hitachi, Ltd.; LG Electronics Inc.; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Panasonic (Matsushita Electric); Pioneer Corporation; Royal Philips Electronics; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sharp Corporation; Sony Corporation; Sun Microsystems; TDK Corporation; Thomson; Twentieth Century Fox; Walt Disney Pictures and Television; Warner Bros.
So yeah, you're basically being forced to pay a few hundred bucks extra for a component that doesn't really have any immediate benefit for you. You're paying Sony to saturate the market with a product no one really needs.
again thats the product, there is no force there. If you think it's a bad decision; don't buy one. Otherwise you don't have a point. Blu-ray has some benifits and while it does tac on cost it does offer some value in return.
Appearances (which comes in with expectations, I suppose.) If you're not 'beautiful', you're evidently not worth knowing. Dig a little deeper, people. There's more to beauty than stick figures like you see in those fashion magazines ...
I though that once upon a time. Then I realized I wasn't ugly and have been shallow and self gratifying ever since. It works for me.
This console's already facing a hard enough time as it is with its own price tag. Considering the PS3 is likely being sold at a loss like most previous consoles, Sony can't afford not to sell games at a competing price point to the Xbox 360. Anything higher would doom the PS3 right from the start.
which previous consoles were sold at a loss? Xbox for sure, 360 for a while what else? all others were never confirmed to be at a loss.
First of all, if this micropayment system is allowed to take off, gamers will pay far more than the price of their console in micropayments as all game studios will harness this. You'll pay $60 for Final Fantasy XV, and then $1 for every level. It'll be a micropayment bloodbath. So no, this strategy is not affordable.
Then on top of this, when you re-sell the game, everyone has to buy the levels all over again since it is tied to your console. This is Sony with a sniper rifle zeroing in on the reseller market.
Moreover, why do I need to hand over my credit card and personal info and register my single player game to Sony, or anyone else? Sony wants everyone who buys a game to have to register with Sony and that's b.s.
This is one hard core PS3 fan boy who just suddenly decided not to buy a PS3. And I love the Playstation series.
Aren't we goign overboard with the whole mirco payments exageration. All we know is GT HD has a micro payments systems for cars and tracks. We don't know if it's cheap but comes with no tracks and cars or if it's a complete game and the extras are just model revisions and add ons.
They should have just called it Blue-Ray ("Blue Ray") instead of Blu-Ray ("Blew Ray") because it seems to be messing some people up. I saw a comment yesterday where someone was talking about Blu laser diodes....
You can't trade mark somethign liek Red Fridge/Blue ray/Yellow banana. So they went with Blu-ray to avoid havign to deal with a trademark that is too general.