It's not a secret that lots of slashdotters are against the war. What I want to know is, what would they have done about Saddam? And I want honest answers. This is a guy that has used chemical weapons to kill thousands of his own people, and has repeatedly threatened his neighbors. Yes, oil matters. The world runs on it. Thus, the world should give a shit if one guy with a big army threatens that resource. ( I still say the notion that we went to war this time for oil is bullshit, but that's another argument).
So slashdotters, fess up. What should've been done to Saddam? Should we have just stepped back and let the UN handle it? Should we tried to have used diplomacy to get him to change his ways? Should we have tried to remove him at all? What about the sanctions? Yes, people were starving. What would your solution be, slashdotters? Come on, be honest.
While I've seen plenty of angry rhetoric here, I've yet to see anyone say "We should have done "insert solution here" instead". So what about it? And when I mean honest, I mean it. If you just don't give a fuck about the Iraqis, or democracy in Iraq, and think it's none of our business, piss on 'em, they're on their own, say it. If you think the UN could've REALLY handled the problem, say it. If you think all Saddam needed was a little TLC, then say it. If you had another idea other than sanctions or war to contain or eliminate Baathism, then lets hear it.
What I don't want to hear is mealy-mouthed sidestepping of the issues. I figure opposition to Iraq comes in two varieties: the "fuck those people, it's none of our business variety", and the "the cause was right, but we went about it all wrong variety". If you have another view, then by all means, share it.
I'm just tired of all of the criticism of the war without alternative solutions from you guys. What should (or should've) been done?
As noted, only the American version is being called Zilla....because the Japanese regard him as being a weak-dick knockoff of the real thing. What they don't realize is that we pretty much think the same thing. Japanese fans call the American version GINO, an acronym for Godzilla In Name Only.
Anyway, they put this fight in here to stick it to the American filmakers that created the overgrown iguana; I'd personally like to see Godzilla tear him to pieces, then turn around and take a big nuclear shit on his carcass, while the other monsters stand around and laugh at him.
What if someone like, say, U2 went exclusively to downloads for an album. You'd get the music, and maybe a jpeg to print a cd cover, plus other downloadable goodies (maybe exclusive videos or something). The following costs could be changed:
$0.00 Packaging/manufacturing; what packaging and manufacturing is involved in the download process? Nothing. All these costs will go into production overhead.
$0.45 Distribution; I'm just taking a shot in the dark at this one, but distribution of electronic music basically means managed hosting of servers, so you could cut costs a lot here.
$1.75 Marketing/promotion; I think you could cut this even more, but I'm thinking of things like posters, carboard advertisements, etc, at record stores. They wouldn't be a factor anymore. Basically just advertising would be costs...magazine ads and commercials.
$0.00 Retail overhead; this goes away completely. Distribution costs cover this. No displays, no shipping, no stocking, no storage, none of those costs. You enter your credit card number, click an icon, and bang, music is on its way from the server.
That brings the price down to $10.20; and let me say, I'm EXTREMELY suspicious of that $2.91 figure for label overhead. I think that's mostly bullshit, and I wouldn't be surprised if the real number were half of that.
...to the left. Voter fraud goes on in every election, by lots of people in both parties. And it's not like there's been a lack of stories about Democratic voter fraud. And pointing this out DOES NOT ENDORSE IT. All voter fraud should be punished. But it's a damn disgrace (and a big help to the Democratic party) to only point it out when it helps Republicans. Since Slashdot won't report it when Dem s do it, here's a recent sampler:
And lets not forget the revelation that the Democratic Party plans a pre-emptive strike by alleging voter fraud in close races, even if there's absolutely no proof of it.
...is that the regime waited this long to crack down on the bloggers. Expect much, much worse to come. Hey, after all, this is the regime that executed a teenage girl for the crime of making smartassed comments to religous authorities.
In an era when any pissed off group cries "Hate Speech!" when someone says something they don't like, Canada is creating a serious freedom of speech situation.
He's not in a popularity contest. Sysadmins aren't there to be your pal. They're employed to make sure the system is running per spec, and that includes enforcing IT department policy. And companies have those policies for a reason. You don't want employees putting ANY unauthorized software on the system. One day it's SETI@home, but the next its a trojan because some clueless moron wanted to waste company time playing Mahjong.
"It's scary admitting that you support Kerry here."
Here?? At Slashdot???
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
This is one of the most Bush-hating sites on the Internet. Please. The only reason you have to fear voicing support for Kerry here is criminally insane Nader supporters. If it wasn't for Pudge, the Politics section icon would be circle-slash over the letter W.
Krugman is a democrat first, and economist second. He's abandoned any pretense of fairness or objectivity in his columns. You might as well go to James Carville for economic advice.
Oh, and thanks for at least being honest about the pettiness of the Bush-hating (" It's often satisfying in its own childish way to trash on Bush for all the personal reasons").
"The educated and knowledgeable tend toward the left?"
The parent post said ACADEMIA, but while academics are certainly intellegent and knowledgeable, where is it written that they can't be biased? During the cold war, some of our brightest minds failed us miserably by either willfully overlooking the horrors of communism, or even outright embracing it.
An advanced degree doesn't neccessarily equal wisdom. In fact, it seldom does.
" Hmmm...I wonder how he would do in poll of business owners and managers? That is, people who actually DO things, as opposed to those who merely talk about them?"
The parent post has a point, and the guy that modded it troll did so only for partisan politcal reasons. Whoever you are, you're a coward, and you suck, big time.
Harvard and the Ivy League are bastions of the Democratic Party. If you had asked business professors from a conservative college (like, perhaps Hillsdale College in Michigan), I'm pretty sure they'd say Bush's policies are just fine, thanks.
Like it or not, we're in a partisan age, and everything is looked at through a political prism now.
" It's pretty sad to see what the great Internet and blogs have done to actual discussion and debate about the issues."
I fall on my knees and thank God for the Internet and the bloggers. For the first time, people have alternatives to the established media. CBS wouldn't have been caught so quickly on the fake guard memos if it wasn't for bloggers. And contrary to what you're saying, there's real honest discussion going on the web. There's a lot of one-sided mudslinging, but that inevitable. But we're so much better off now. We have real choices where to get our information now.
"Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical."
You just summed up, in one paragraph, what's so utterly wrong with the left. Evil, sir, is not subjective. Oppressing and starving your people is not just "doing your own thing within an ideological context". By this reasoning, no system can ever be wrong. Nazism can be excused because invading your neighbors and shipping Jews off to ovens just becomes "just doing your thing". Communism becomes just fine because creating gulags becomes "just doing your thing".
When those airliners smashed into the Twin Towers, were the hijackers just "doing their own thing"?
Ideas have consequences, especially when put into practice. And evil exists, and must be oppossed. We can debate how best to do it, but to suggest that it doesn't exist at all, that we shouldn't judge on conduct or ideals, is to become complicit in the act of monsters, to become part of their crimes ourselves.
...about the need to use encryption for sensitive stuff, but that still doesn't justify the theft, especially if it was done for political purposes.
Perhaps I ought to pass along the suggestion to my local party offices. Not much of a leftist-hacker crowd down here, though. Seattle, now, that's a different story.
I'll probably send that suggestion into the national GOP offices. "Hey, this maybe-liberal guy on slashdot has a really good idea...". Maybe even get you credit for it:P
Get a bunch of plantiff's attorneys involved, and a chase for money will ensue. Though SCO may have opened the doors here, IT really isn't very special when it comes to this sort of thing. Business has been dealing with this for years. There's a scam right now concerning ADA lawsuits, where law firms literally go out and hunt small and medium business that may have ADA infractions, even if they're relativly small and the owners tackle the problem right away. Settle up, or we sue.
If lawyers think they've got a loophole to pull cash out of you, they'll attack it. Hope your firm's attorneys are good.
I'm sick of hearing this. What's your basis for saying this? Any US trucks loading up on Iraqi crude, taking it back to the states like booty from a raid? If we were just interested in the oil, there were easier ways to get it than to go to war. Hell, Kuwait has as much oil, and they'd be easier to conquer. The Saudi's too.
As for the bases, we're going by the post world war II playbook. After the war, set up a long term military presence to provide protection and stability to a fledgling democracy. It took a hell of a long time in Germany and Japan, and it'll take a long time now. No one has ever denied that. But did we cart natural resources wholesale out of Germany and Japan after the war? No, we helped build two of the mostle stable and strong democracies in the world, despite their being NO tradition of freedom in either country previously. That's a pretty damn good accomplishment, and it's what we're trying to do now; plant a seed in the totalitarian middle-east that will sprout into a strong tree, and begin to influence it's neighbors. You think Syria wants a democratic Iraq? How about Iran? Hell, some of our so called allies in the middle east are afraid of a free, strong, stable Iraq. The Islamists are terrified of the prospect.
But, I suppose its just easier to scream "No blood for oil!" than for you to actually see what we're trying to do.
"Bush kept attacking Kerry on the basis that Kerry is critical of Bush's own war policy and is therefore unfit to be president."
Bullshit. Bush attacked Kerry on his multilateralism, not because of his criticism of Bush's policies. Bush made it clear that he didn't need international authority to defend US interests. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two. Like that approach or not, if you have a shred of honesty, you have to admit that Bush was upfront about his policy ideals, and that he'll tell you, upfront, that those ideas are very different from Kerrys. You make it sound like Bush went "How dare you criticize me?". That's utter crap. There are very big differences between the ideas of these two men, and that's what they debated last night.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a secret that lots of slashdotters are against the war. What I want to know is, what would they have done about Saddam? And I want honest answers. This is a guy that has used chemical weapons to kill thousands of his own people, and has repeatedly threatened his neighbors. Yes, oil matters. The world runs on it. Thus, the world should give a shit if one guy with a big army threatens that resource. ( I still say the notion that we went to war this time for oil is bullshit, but that's another argument).
So slashdotters, fess up. What should've been done to Saddam? Should we have just stepped back and let the UN handle it? Should we tried to have used diplomacy to get him to change his ways? Should we have tried to remove him at all? What about the sanctions? Yes, people were starving. What would your solution be, slashdotters? Come on, be honest.
While I've seen plenty of angry rhetoric here, I've yet to see anyone say "We should have done "insert solution here" instead". So what about it? And when I mean honest, I mean it. If you just don't give a fuck about the Iraqis, or democracy in Iraq, and think it's none of our business, piss on 'em, they're on their own, say it. If you think the UN could've REALLY handled the problem, say it. If you think all Saddam needed was a little TLC, then say it. If you had another idea other than sanctions or war to contain or eliminate Baathism, then lets hear it.
What I don't want to hear is mealy-mouthed sidestepping of the issues. I figure opposition to Iraq comes in two varieties: the "fuck those people, it's none of our business variety", and the "the cause was right, but we went about it all wrong variety". If you have another view, then by all means, share it.
I'm just tired of all of the criticism of the war without alternative solutions from you guys. What should (or should've) been done?
As noted, only the American version is being called Zilla....because the Japanese regard him as being a weak-dick knockoff of the real thing. What they don't realize is that we pretty much think the same thing. Japanese fans call the American version GINO, an acronym for Godzilla In Name Only.
Anyway, they put this fight in here to stick it to the American filmakers that created the overgrown iguana; I'd personally like to see Godzilla tear him to pieces, then turn around and take a big nuclear shit on his carcass, while the other monsters stand around and laugh at him.
...from the Rolling Stone article:
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
What if someone like, say, U2 went exclusively to downloads for an album. You'd get the music, and maybe a jpeg to print a cd cover, plus other downloadable goodies (maybe exclusive videos or something). The following costs could be changed:
$0.00 Packaging/manufacturing; what packaging and manufacturing is involved in the download process? Nothing. All these costs will go into production overhead.
$0.45 Distribution; I'm just taking a shot in the dark at this one, but distribution of electronic music basically means managed hosting of servers, so you could cut costs a lot here.
$1.75 Marketing/promotion; I think you could cut this even more, but I'm thinking of things like posters, carboard advertisements, etc, at record stores. They wouldn't be a factor anymore. Basically just advertising would be costs...magazine ads and commercials.
$0.00 Retail overhead; this goes away completely. Distribution costs cover this. No displays, no shipping, no stocking, no storage, none of those costs. You enter your credit card number, click an icon, and bang, music is on its way from the server.
That brings the price down to $10.20; and let me say, I'm EXTREMELY suspicious of that $2.91 figure for label overhead. I think that's mostly bullshit, and I wouldn't be surprised if the real number were half of that.
So what's your idea of good journalism? CBS?
So, do two wrongs make a right then?
What it IS is fraud; the whole notion of the "pre-emptive strike" is to allege voter intimidation even when there is none.
...to the left. Voter fraud goes on in every election, by lots of people in both parties. And it's not like there's been a lack of stories about Democratic voter fraud. And pointing this out DOES NOT ENDORSE IT. All voter fraud should be punished. But it's a damn disgrace (and a big help to the Democratic party) to only point it out when it helps Republicans. Since Slashdot won't report it when Dem s do it, here's a recent sampler:
- Attempted Democratic Voter Fraud In Nashville
- Voter Fraud In South Dakota
- Colorado To Tackle Voter Fraud Fears
- Rendell will send monitors to elections offices
- ACORN Voter Registration Fraud Allegations Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg, Says Employment Policies Institute
And lets not forget the revelation that the Democratic Party plans a pre-emptive strike by alleging voter fraud in close races, even if there's absolutely no proof of it.
Slashdot; not fair, and damn sure not balanced.
...is that the regime waited this long to crack down on the bloggers. Expect much, much worse to come. Hey, after all, this is the regime that executed a teenage girl for the crime of making smartassed comments to religous authorities.
In an era when any pissed off group cries "Hate Speech!" when someone says something they don't like, Canada is creating a serious freedom of speech situation.
"Bet you're a popular guy around the office"
He's not in a popularity contest. Sysadmins aren't there to be your pal. They're employed to make sure the system is running per spec, and that includes enforcing IT department policy. And companies have those policies for a reason. You don't want employees putting ANY unauthorized software on the system. One day it's SETI@home, but the next its a trojan because some clueless moron wanted to waste company time playing Mahjong.
"It's scary admitting that you support Kerry here."
Here?? At Slashdot???
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
This is one of the most Bush-hating sites on the Internet. Please. The only reason you have to fear voicing support for Kerry here is criminally insane Nader supporters. If it wasn't for Pudge, the Politics section icon would be circle-slash over the letter W.
Krugman is a democrat first, and economist second. He's abandoned any pretense of fairness or objectivity in his columns. You might as well go to James Carville for economic advice.
Oh, and thanks for at least being honest about the pettiness of the Bush-hating (" It's often satisfying in its own childish way to trash on Bush for all the personal reasons").
"The educated and knowledgeable tend toward the left?"
The parent post said ACADEMIA, but while academics are certainly intellegent and knowledgeable, where is it written that they can't be biased? During the cold war, some of our brightest minds failed us miserably by either willfully overlooking the horrors of communism, or even outright embracing it.
An advanced degree doesn't neccessarily equal wisdom. In fact, it seldom does.
" Hmmm...I wonder how he would do in poll of business owners and managers? That is, people who actually DO things, as opposed to those who merely talk about them?"
The parent post has a point, and the guy that modded it troll did so only for partisan politcal reasons. Whoever you are, you're a coward, and you suck, big time.
I hate to ape O'Reilly, but sorry, no spin here. Look up any survey of academics in this country. See where they overwhelmingly vote.
As for Bush going down, care to make a friendly wager on that? I say he wins the popular vote 51-47 percent, more for the electoral college vote.
Harvard and the Ivy League are bastions of the Democratic Party. If you had asked business professors from a conservative college (like, perhaps Hillsdale College in Michigan), I'm pretty sure they'd say Bush's policies are just fine, thanks.
Like it or not, we're in a partisan age, and everything is looked at through a political prism now.
" It's pretty sad to see what the great Internet and blogs have done to actual discussion and debate about the issues."
I fall on my knees and thank God for the Internet and the bloggers. For the first time, people have alternatives to the established media. CBS wouldn't have been caught so quickly on the fake guard memos if it wasn't for bloggers. And contrary to what you're saying, there's real honest discussion going on the web. There's a lot of one-sided mudslinging, but that inevitable. But we're so much better off now. We have real choices where to get our information now.
"Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical."
You just summed up, in one paragraph, what's so utterly wrong with the left. Evil, sir, is not subjective. Oppressing and starving your people is not just "doing your own thing within an ideological context". By this reasoning, no system can ever be wrong. Nazism can be excused because invading your neighbors and shipping Jews off to ovens just becomes "just doing your thing". Communism becomes just fine because creating gulags becomes "just doing your thing".
When those airliners smashed into the Twin Towers, were the hijackers just "doing their own thing"?
Ideas have consequences, especially when put into practice. And evil exists, and must be oppossed. We can debate how best to do it, but to suggest that it doesn't exist at all, that we shouldn't judge on conduct or ideals, is to become complicit in the act of monsters, to become part of their crimes ourselves.
...about the need to use encryption for sensitive stuff, but that still doesn't justify the theft, especially if it was done for political purposes.
:P
Perhaps I ought to pass along the suggestion to my local party offices. Not much of a leftist-hacker crowd down here, though. Seattle, now, that's a different story.
I'll probably send that suggestion into the national GOP offices. "Hey, this maybe-liberal guy on slashdot has a really good idea...". Maybe even get you credit for it
" But in the event of a recount, where does the vote go? "
It doesn't matter. The misprinted ballots have been recalled.
Get a bunch of plantiff's attorneys involved, and a chase for money will ensue. Though SCO may have opened the doors here, IT really isn't very special when it comes to this sort of thing. Business has been dealing with this for years. There's a scam right now concerning ADA lawsuits, where law firms literally go out and hunt small and medium business that may have ADA infractions, even if they're relativly small and the owners tackle the problem right away. Settle up, or we sue.
If lawyers think they've got a loophole to pull cash out of you, they'll attack it. Hope your firm's attorneys are good.
...please, no consipracy theories. It was a misprint, and it's been fixed. Plus, Bush is the one that didn't have a mark next to his name.
"You right-wing assholes should be in prison for your vile distortions."
This is +4, Informative?
Yeah, and the left never distorts anything? The right should be imprisoned for what their saying?
You're actually talking about IMPRISONING your opponents for their speech and ideals, do you realize that?
"They apparently want control over the oil."
I'm sick of hearing this. What's your basis for saying this? Any US trucks loading up on Iraqi crude, taking it back to the states like booty from a raid? If we were just interested in the oil, there were easier ways to get it than to go to war. Hell, Kuwait has as much oil, and they'd be easier to conquer. The Saudi's too.
As for the bases, we're going by the post world war II playbook. After the war, set up a long term military presence to provide protection and stability to a fledgling democracy. It took a hell of a long time in Germany and Japan, and it'll take a long time now. No one has ever denied that. But did we cart natural resources wholesale out of Germany and Japan after the war? No, we helped build two of the mostle stable and strong democracies in the world, despite their being NO tradition of freedom in either country previously. That's a pretty damn good accomplishment, and it's what we're trying to do now; plant a seed in the totalitarian middle-east that will sprout into a strong tree, and begin to influence it's neighbors. You think Syria wants a democratic Iraq? How about Iran? Hell, some of our so called allies in the middle east are afraid of a free, strong, stable Iraq. The Islamists are terrified of the prospect.
But, I suppose its just easier to scream "No blood for oil!" than for you to actually see what we're trying to do.
"Bush kept attacking Kerry on the basis that Kerry is critical of Bush's own war policy and is therefore unfit to be president."
Bullshit. Bush attacked Kerry on his multilateralism, not because of his criticism of Bush's policies. Bush made it clear that he didn't need international authority to defend US interests. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two. Like that approach or not, if you have a shred of honesty, you have to admit that Bush was upfront about his policy ideals, and that he'll tell you, upfront, that those ideas are very different from Kerrys. You make it sound like Bush went "How dare you criticize me?". That's utter crap. There are very big differences between the ideas of these two men, and that's what they debated last night.