"When nuclear weapons were being developed, it was to create something that would make future warfare impossible (same with the machine gun)"
Wrong on both counts. The goal of both weapons was to make warfare easier, quicker, and less bloody. Dr. Gatling's concern was the number of men needed in formation to achieve X rate of fire, and his reasoning was that reducing that number of men while achieving the same rate of fire would reduce the need for men to even be there to begin with. As for nuclear weapons, peruse the internet a little and take a look at what Eisenhower's philosophy was on them (nutshell: use them early and often to reduce the need to send in actual soldiers).
"but we know how that turned out."
It's a little to soon to say how nukes have turned out, but in many ways Dr. Gatling was successful. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons have lowered the number of men needed to take and hold an objective, which works to lessen collateral damage. For all the carnage that happened in places like Stalingrad and Berlin during the Second World War, think about how much worse it would have been if all the troops had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in formation.
"Meanwhile, this thing seems to be purely for killing:"
However, nuclear weapons (and this new concept) are different from the other two classifications of WMD in that they actually have valid military uses. Chemical and biological weapons are all but useless against a moderately prepared force, and their only real use is against civillian populations. However, there are times when you really need a powerful explosive to take out a military target (such as underground bunkers). Yes, it's meant to kill people, but it's only intended to kill certain people in certain places, not "everybody in the downtown area." The fallout is a side-effect that even the DOD wants to eliminate because it hampers the weapon's usefullness in a tactical situation (it's better to take and hold an objective than to deny its use to everybody).
"Why am I paying for the development of a whole new type of weapon when I can't afford school because of the resession?"
DOD = federal education = state
"and massive defense spending is what caused this deficit mess we're in now..."
FY 2001
Medicaid: 7% Medicare: 12% Defense: 16% Social Security: 23%
"It seems that it will be the case that the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese etc. left beautiful ruins and philosophy,"
You mean like the beautiful ruins the Romans left us in Carthage? Oh, wait...
The ability for an army to raze a city is not something unique to the past century. Or the past millenium, for that matter. The "beautiful ruins and philosophy" you speak of are only there because they were built by the winning side. Note that you said:
"Greeks" instead of "Iranians"
"Romans" instead of "Lybians"
"Egyptians" instead of "Sudanese"
And the only reason I can't think of somebody the Middle Kingdom raped/pillaged/slaughtered off of the top of my head is that the schools I attended had a "Western" bias.
"Microsoft Code at Fault for Half of all Windows Crashes"
I look at the paragraph under it:
"Microsoft is claiming that half of all MS Windows crashes are the fault of third party code, not their own."
Anybody older than the age of, say, 10 should see that these are two very different statements. To assume that Microsoft is automatically to blame for the other half of OS problems completely ignores what everybody here should know is the #1 source of computer problems: User error.
If you want to lament the lack of quality conrols involved in Microsoft's "Made for Windows" branding, fine. If you want to conjecture just what that other half really is, also fine. But you can't print painfully obvious logical fallacies like this and hope to be taken seriously as a source of news.
I also believe that great scientific progress can be made through aggressive federal funding of research on umbilical cord, placenta, adult and animal stem cells, which do not involve the same moral dilemma. This year (2001) the government will spend $250 million on this important research.
Except that stealing DirecTV doesn't involve just hacking your box. It involves rigging your box to pass false information onto their servers in order to gain unauthorized access, essentially hacking/cracking hardware on the other end of the phone line. If it were easy/possible to decrypt the DirecTV signal without using the phone jack on the box, this would be a non-issue.
Or are you arguing that, becuase I own my computer, I have the right to use it to break into yours over the internet?
"Right, after World War II, the US government, and the rich running it,"
Except that's the last thing "the rich" would have wanted. The Soviet Union, like China today, was a police state, and "police state" always means "cheap/free labor." Why worry about the "labor movements" you mention in your post when you can go to a country where the labor movement is lined up against the wall and shot? Remember what communist Warsaw's response to Solidarity was?
Little known fact: Until some people caught on, in the 20's and 30's the US was the Soviet Union's biggest trade partner. By far.
Because we all know theoretical physicists also just happen to know everything about anthropology, history and foreign relations. Photons, people, it's all the same, right?
"So is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of the whole Sega kaboozle - Genesis went down, Sega released the radical Dreamcast,"
Apples and Oranges. The SNES had the Genesis down but not out. It was the way Sega just totally dropped the system when they started pushing the Saturn that genuinely killed it (leaving all those people who bought a 32-X going "huh?"). The Saturn was a victim of Sega's own marketing department ("Let's release it months before any games are available!"). Dreamcast was more or less a victim of Sega's history of abandoning their consoles, no matter how popular they were at the time. At that point, Sega had a nasty history of abandoning their consoles at the first sign of trouble (ie. strong competition), and consumers figured the same would happen to the Dreamcast when the PS2 came out. Sure, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but still...
On the other hand, "Nintendo abandonware" is almost an oxymoron. Nintendo has never abandoned a console, at least not to the same degree that Sega has. Hell, you can still get spare parts and such for your Virtual Boy from Nintendo's website.
This is simply a measure by Nintendo to cut back on the price of storing unsold units in warehouses.
"I will begin by trying to define 'terrorist'. Anyone who terrorizes anyone else is a terrorist. That means the US ventures in Vietnam and Iraq where they tried to intimidate the civilians to drop support to their governments is just as terrorist as say the USSR trying to invade Afghanistan."
Why is it I'm the only one here that seems to see things fairly cut-and-dry when it comes to defining a "terrorist?" I mean, I've seen the above idea proposed over and over and over again around here I'm beginning to think there's a scratch on the CD.
A terrorist is someone who deliberately targets civillians (ie. non-combattants), violating the Geneva Conventions in the process. Period.
You mention examples of intimidation, some real, some imagined. Intimidation is not in and of itself terrorism. If you're shooting at enemy combattants (ie. non-civillians), it's called "warfare." If nobody is shooting, it's called "diplomacy." It only becomes "terrorism" when somebody is deliberately shooting at non-coms. So long as those getting shot at are wearing uniforms and/or brandishing weapons, it is not terrorism. About the only gray area here is shooting at civillian leaders that are in the military chain of command (US president, certain members of the cabinet, etc.), but even that is far and away from targeting random civillians for no other reason than because they are civillians.
"That means the US ventures in Vietnam and Iraq where they tried to intimidate the civilians to drop support to their governments is just as terrorist as say the USSR trying to invade Afghanistan."
Actually, neither were terrorism. Ignoring your ignorance about Vietnam for the moment, The US campaigns you mentioned were overwhelmingly aimed at enemy combattants, with little used deliberately against civillians (none of which were actually sanctioned).
And on the example of the Soviet occupation of Afganistan, invading Afghanistan is not in and of itself "terrorism." Whether or not it was terrorism depends solely on whether or not the Soviets were aiming for unarmed Afghani civillians. And on the flip side, Mujaheddin tactics against the Red Army, so long as they targeted uniformed Soviet soldiers, were also not terrorism.
"They supported the Al Qaeda because of what they believed, not because they wanted to terrorize US citizens."
You're drawing lines where there are none. Al Qaeda's express aim is to deliberately target American civillians (with the hopes of affecting political change). Al Qaeda propaganda specifically tells its followers to make no distinction between US combattants and non-combattants, going so far as to give preferential bias towards targeting non-combattants. About the only attack Al Qaeda was involved in that didn't involve terrorism was the attack on the USS Cole (an American-flagged vessel of war).
Not everybody dreaming of a single unified "Nation of Islam" is interested in killing civillians. However, everybody who bears alliegence to Al Qaeda is.
"They were terrorists because they terrorized Afghans."
No, they were terrorists because they systematicly slaughtered Afghan civillians. Anything short of that, while it may have violated other parts of the Geneva Conventions and Hague Accords, is not terrorism.
"By the way Al Qaeda and the Taliban both killed more civilians in Afghanistan each, than Al Qaeda did on 9/11."
The UN's double-standard of only frowning upon organizations killing the civillians in other countries is a completely different matter, separate from the "is/is not terrorism" bit.
"A terrorist to some is a freedom fighter to others."
Personal opinion does not enter into the decision process when defining an act as terrorism or not. As I mentioned before, Mujaheddin tactics against the Red Army were not terrorism not because they were "on our side," but because they targeted uniformed Soviet soldiers.
"As an Irish citizen living in the US - I have decided that it is time to leave this country - it is starting to look, smell, and act as Germany did during the 1930s."
Interesting. Were you actually in Germany in the 1930's, or are you basing your opinion solely on the History Channel?
"'d bet pretty close to 100% of all Windows consumer installations arrive pre-installed on their Dell or Gateway computers. (...) These people will get back 10 to 20 percent of that. "
Actually, I'm in that minority whose existence you doubt. I specifically bought a retail copy of XP Pro so that I wouldn't have an OS married to hardware.
" I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I have to call "bullshit" when I see people expecting the settlement to result in free or nearly-free Microsoft products for everyone who wants one. Why?"
Because part of their anti-trust practices are forcing users to pay for unnecessary upgrades. What other reason is there to buy the latest version of Office than because it's what everybody else is forced to use? When it comes to Windows and Office you can't just buy one, not if you want to be able to use the same software and files the rest of the world is strong-armed into using.
Remember when NT 4.0's end-of-life got moved up "just because?" Do you think that would happen if Microsoft allowed a little bit of competition every once in a while? In a competitive market, that move would blow up in their face, showing how little they intend to support their newer products. In the current OS market, though, most customers literally have no choice but to swallow the price of an upgrade to XP. So not only are you losing a few hundred on the 4.0 to XP upgrade, you also didn't get your full money's worth on your original 4.0 purchase.
"As for the lawyer fees, how much of the Big Tobacco settlement was swallowed by law firms?"
Apples and oranges. I have yet to see a want-ad that says "Non-smokers need not apply."
"And finally, I bet anyone who got a voucher good for $10 or $20 off the software of their choice - complements of Microsoft - would run off to their local software shop to cash it in, no questions asked. Don't claim you wouldn't."
I just got the letter in the mail a few days ago. And no, I won't be asking for the voucher. Of course, I'm also in that imaginary group of people who refuses to watch movies produced by MPAA members and I cross-refernece every CD I'm thinking about buying with the list of RIAA members, so I must not count.
"It's a measly computer program, when all is said and done."
No, it's a $300.00+ program, and that's not counting (the price of) the time and effort wasted using Microsoft products instead of better products that were forced out of the market by Microsoft's illegal business practices.
I'll stop complaining when the payout per-plaintiff is an appreciable fraction of the retail price of the software.
It's not that the Baby Bells don't want to give away their user information, it's that they don't want to give away their user information for free. If the RIAA approached them with some cash instead of a subpoena, there wouldn't be anything worth talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
And Japan was the first and only country to use biological weapons in a war. What's your point?
"When nuclear weapons were being developed, it was to create something that would make future warfare impossible (same with the machine gun)"
Wrong on both counts. The goal of both weapons was to make warfare easier, quicker, and less bloody. Dr. Gatling's concern was the number of men needed in formation to achieve X rate of fire, and his reasoning was that reducing that number of men while achieving the same rate of fire would reduce the need for men to even be there to begin with. As for nuclear weapons, peruse the internet a little and take a look at what Eisenhower's philosophy was on them (nutshell: use them early and often to reduce the need to send in actual soldiers).
"but we know how that turned out."
It's a little to soon to say how nukes have turned out, but in many ways Dr. Gatling was successful. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons have lowered the number of men needed to take and hold an objective, which works to lessen collateral damage. For all the carnage that happened in places like Stalingrad and Berlin during the Second World War, think about how much worse it would have been if all the troops had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in formation.
"Meanwhile, this thing seems to be purely for killing:"
However, nuclear weapons (and this new concept) are different from the other two classifications of WMD in that they actually have valid military uses. Chemical and biological weapons are all but useless against a moderately prepared force, and their only real use is against civillian populations. However, there are times when you really need a powerful explosive to take out a military target (such as underground bunkers). Yes, it's meant to kill people, but it's only intended to kill certain people in certain places, not "everybody in the downtown area." The fallout is a side-effect that even the DOD wants to eliminate because it hampers the weapon's usefullness in a tactical situation (it's better to take and hold an objective than to deny its use to everybody).
"Why am I paying for the development of a whole new type of weapon when I can't afford school because of the resession?"
DOD = federal
education = state
"and massive defense spending is what caused this deficit mess we're in now..."
FY 2001
Medicaid: 7%
Medicare: 12%
Defense: 16%
Social Security: 23%
Source
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
You mean like the beautiful ruins the Romans left us in Carthage? Oh, wait...
The ability for an army to raze a city is not something unique to the past century. Or the past millenium, for that matter. The "beautiful ruins and philosophy" you speak of are only there because they were built by the winning side. Note that you said:
- "Greeks" instead of "Iranians"
- "Romans" instead of "Lybians"
- "Egyptians" instead of "Sudanese"
And the only reason I can't think of somebody the Middle Kingdom raped/pillaged/slaughtered off of the top of my head is that the schools I attended had a "Western" bias."If you melt the North Pole, you'll surely melt these glaciers too, and then we'll all be fucked."
That's more of a concern on the South Pole than the North. They don't call it the Arctic Ocean for nothing.
I look at the story title:
"Microsoft Code at Fault for Half of all Windows Crashes"
I look at the paragraph under it:
"Microsoft is claiming that half of all MS Windows crashes are the fault of third party code, not their own."
Anybody older than the age of, say, 10 should see that these are two very different statements. To assume that Microsoft is automatically to blame for the other half of OS problems completely ignores what everybody here should know is the #1 source of computer problems: User error.
If you want to lament the lack of quality conrols involved in Microsoft's "Made for Windows" branding, fine. If you want to conjecture just what that other half really is, also fine. But you can't print painfully obvious logical fallacies like this and hope to be taken seriously as a source of news.
Interesting interpretation there.
Except that stealing DirecTV doesn't involve just hacking your box. It involves rigging your box to pass false information onto their servers in order to gain unauthorized access, essentially hacking/cracking hardware on the other end of the phone line. If it were easy/possible to decrypt the DirecTV signal without using the phone jack on the box, this would be a non-issue.
Or are you arguing that, becuase I own my computer, I have the right to use it to break into yours over the internet?
A GBA playing MP3s would work about as well as a PS2 playing DVDs. If you want an iPod, get an iPod. Leave my game console alone.
No no, this isn't about Linus, it's about flame wars. Next, there'll be coverage of the ages-old Purple vs.
Green debate.
(And whoever doesn't get that reference doesn't have enough B5 in their diet.)
"Right, after World War II, the US government, and the rich running it,"
Except that's the last thing "the rich" would have wanted. The Soviet Union, like China today, was a police state, and "police state" always means "cheap/free labor." Why worry about the "labor movements" you mention in your post when you can go to a country where the labor movement is lined up against the wall and shot? Remember what communist Warsaw's response to Solidarity was?
Little known fact: Until some people caught on, in the 20's and 30's the US was the Soviet Union's biggest trade partner. By far.
"One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic."
-Stalin
Because we all know theoretical physicists also just happen to know everything about anthropology, history and foreign relations. Photons, people, it's all the same, right?
"In theory you take a rod that goes from one galaxy to a distant galaxy many many lighyt years away."
You mean that stuff they sell in e-mails really works?
".this doesn't play as well in the west because there is significantly more cultural definition between what is childish and what is more "adult"."
Only in high school. That comes to a halt when wanna-be adults grow up and actually enter the real world.
"So is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of the whole Sega kaboozle - Genesis went down, Sega released the radical Dreamcast,"
Apples and Oranges. The SNES had the Genesis down but not out. It was the way Sega just totally dropped the system when they started pushing the Saturn that genuinely killed it (leaving all those people who bought a 32-X going "huh?"). The Saturn was a victim of Sega's own marketing department ("Let's release it months before any games are available!"). Dreamcast was more or less a victim of Sega's history of abandoning their consoles, no matter how popular they were at the time. At that point, Sega had a nasty history of abandoning their consoles at the first sign of trouble (ie. strong competition), and consumers figured the same would happen to the Dreamcast when the PS2 came out. Sure, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but still...
On the other hand, "Nintendo abandonware" is almost an oxymoron. Nintendo has never abandoned a console, at least not to the same degree that Sega has. Hell, you can still get spare parts and such for your Virtual Boy from Nintendo's website.
This is simply a measure by Nintendo to cut back on the price of storing unsold units in warehouses.
No, but I'm not the one claiming the ability to properly compare and contrast the two.
"I will begin by trying to define 'terrorist'. Anyone who terrorizes anyone else is a terrorist. That means the US ventures in Vietnam and Iraq where they tried to intimidate the civilians to drop support to their governments is just as terrorist as say the USSR trying to invade Afghanistan."
Why is it I'm the only one here that seems to see things fairly cut-and-dry when it comes to defining a "terrorist?" I mean, I've seen the above idea proposed over and over and over again around here I'm beginning to think there's a scratch on the CD.
A terrorist is someone who deliberately targets civillians (ie. non-combattants), violating the Geneva Conventions in the process. Period.
You mention examples of intimidation, some real, some imagined. Intimidation is not in and of itself terrorism. If you're shooting at enemy combattants (ie. non-civillians), it's called "warfare." If nobody is shooting, it's called "diplomacy." It only becomes "terrorism" when somebody is deliberately shooting at non-coms. So long as those getting shot at are wearing uniforms and/or brandishing weapons, it is not terrorism. About the only gray area here is shooting at civillian leaders that are in the military chain of command (US president, certain members of the cabinet, etc.), but even that is far and away from targeting random civillians for no other reason than because they are civillians.
"That means the US ventures in Vietnam and Iraq where they tried to intimidate the civilians to drop support to their governments is just as terrorist as say the USSR trying to invade Afghanistan."
Actually, neither were terrorism. Ignoring your ignorance about Vietnam for the moment, The US campaigns you mentioned were overwhelmingly aimed at enemy combattants, with little used deliberately against civillians (none of which were actually sanctioned).
And on the example of the Soviet occupation of Afganistan, invading Afghanistan is not in and of itself "terrorism." Whether or not it was terrorism depends solely on whether or not the Soviets were aiming for unarmed Afghani civillians. And on the flip side, Mujaheddin tactics against the Red Army, so long as they targeted uniformed Soviet soldiers, were also not terrorism.
"They supported the Al Qaeda because of what they believed, not because they wanted to terrorize US citizens."
You're drawing lines where there are none. Al Qaeda's express aim is to deliberately target American civillians (with the hopes of affecting political change). Al Qaeda propaganda specifically tells its followers to make no distinction between US combattants and non-combattants, going so far as to give preferential bias towards targeting non-combattants. About the only attack Al Qaeda was involved in that didn't involve terrorism was the attack on the USS Cole (an American-flagged vessel of war).
Not everybody dreaming of a single unified "Nation of Islam" is interested in killing civillians. However, everybody who bears alliegence to Al Qaeda is.
"They were terrorists because they terrorized Afghans."
No, they were terrorists because they systematicly slaughtered Afghan civillians. Anything short of that, while it may have violated other parts of the Geneva Conventions and Hague Accords, is not terrorism.
"By the way Al Qaeda and the Taliban both killed more civilians in Afghanistan each, than Al Qaeda did on 9/11."
The UN's double-standard of only frowning upon organizations killing the civillians in other countries is a completely different matter, separate from the "is/is not terrorism" bit.
"A terrorist to some is a freedom fighter to others."
Personal opinion does not enter into the decision process when defining an act as terrorism or not. As I mentioned before, Mujaheddin tactics against the Red Army were not terrorism not because they were "on our side," but because they targeted uniformed Soviet soldiers.
"As an Irish citizen living in the US - I have decided that it is time to leave this country - it is starting to look, smell, and act as Germany did during the 1930s."
Interesting. Were you actually in Germany in the 1930's, or are you basing your opinion solely on the History Channel?
"'d bet pretty close to 100% of all Windows consumer installations arrive pre-installed on their Dell or Gateway computers. (...) These people will get back 10 to 20 percent of that. "
Actually, I'm in that minority whose existence you doubt. I specifically bought a retail copy of XP Pro so that I wouldn't have an OS married to hardware.
" I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I have to call "bullshit" when I see people expecting the settlement to result in free or nearly-free Microsoft products for everyone who wants one. Why?"
Because part of their anti-trust practices are forcing users to pay for unnecessary upgrades. What other reason is there to buy the latest version of Office than because it's what everybody else is forced to use? When it comes to Windows and Office you can't just buy one, not if you want to be able to use the same software and files the rest of the world is strong-armed into using.
Remember when NT 4.0's end-of-life got moved up "just because?" Do you think that would happen if Microsoft allowed a little bit of competition every once in a while? In a competitive market, that move would blow up in their face, showing how little they intend to support their newer products. In the current OS market, though, most customers literally have no choice but to swallow the price of an upgrade to XP. So not only are you losing a few hundred on the 4.0 to XP upgrade, you also didn't get your full money's worth on your original 4.0 purchase.
"As for the lawyer fees, how much of the Big Tobacco settlement was swallowed by law firms?"
Apples and oranges. I have yet to see a want-ad that says "Non-smokers need not apply."
"And finally, I bet anyone who got a voucher good for $10 or $20 off the software of their choice - complements of Microsoft - would run off to their local software shop to cash it in, no questions asked. Don't claim you wouldn't."
I just got the letter in the mail a few days ago. And no, I won't be asking for the voucher. Of course, I'm also in that imaginary group of people who refuses to watch movies produced by MPAA members and I cross-refernece every CD I'm thinking about buying with the list of RIAA members, so I must not count.
"It's a measly computer program, when all is said and done."
No, it's a $300.00+ program, and that's not counting (the price of) the time and effort wasted using Microsoft products instead of better products that were forced out of the market by Microsoft's illegal business practices.
I'll stop complaining when the payout per-plaintiff is an appreciable fraction of the retail price of the software.
"There Is No Single Instant In Time"
No, really? And I suppose next you'll tell me that the speed of light in a vacuum for all observers is the same number.
This hasn't been news for a century or so now. Move along.
I never thought of Mickey Mouse as my plastic pal who's fun to be with, and I still don't.
It's not that the Baby Bells don't want to give away their user information, it's that they don't want to give away their user information for free. If the RIAA approached them with some cash instead of a subpoena, there wouldn't be anything worth talking about.
Where's the "+1 On The Pipe" mod option when you need it?
"Will the next must-have computer input device be a slab of wet mud?"
No, that's for cooling the cabinet.