I'm not sure I trust Sprint with info like that
on
GPS Meets PCS
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· Score: 3, Informative
Looking over at Spamhaus, we find that Sprint is working hard to be in the top 3 spam-friendly ISPs, currently hosting 18 sites of known spammers and spam software and ignoring all complaints. If this is what their policy is on personal information, I don't think I want them to know where I am.
Re:Methinks they're munching on "special" brownies
on
Charting Virtual Worlds
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· Score: 4, Funny
"And, if it is, what would such a network be thinking about?"
Sex. Just like everybody else. Especially on the internet.
From over at the Cyberceography site they mention in the article, we're posed with the question:
"Have you ever wondered what a data packet might actually look like as it zips along the phone line? What physical form might it take?"
Now, maybe I paid too close attention to my physics and EE classes, but they might as well ask "What does an electron taste like?" (Yes, I know it's grape-aid)
A conceptual map of the internet would be useful for helping to grasp the concept of the amorphous monstrousity the 'net is, but I'm worried that these electronic cartographers are going in the wrong direction. It's nice that 16th century cartographers put in all those pretty sea serpents and mermaids, but that still doesn't change the facts that South America looks nothing like that, there's a whole other continent in the South Pacific, and there's no Northwest Passage.
Qwest and UUNet I can do without, but Sprint has some darned nifty services (Sprint ION, if it ever gets out the door). That, and us USAA members get all sorts of discounts from Sprint (EarthLink, long distance, PCS, etc.). So my current solution to that problem is to send a letter to USAA (who seem very privacy-oriented) and asking them if they really want to associate with a company that has such a reputation. I figure they can put more pressure on Sprint to change their ways than I can.
They never officially gave a cause (though they first blamed a NATO sub accidentally hitting it). There's been specualtion that there was an accident during what was supposed to be a test of a supercavitating (supersonic) torpedo, but it's generally accepted now by those who study such things that the problem was a plain old torpedo getting old without enough maintenance.
The sun never passes directly over the United States, unless you start taking into account our assorted territories, and even then it'd only be a twice-a-year thing.
"The ad should only show up once per day per user, unless you have turned "cookies" off in your browser."
Let us track your internet browsing through cookies and we won't pester you (quite as much).
"Like many other companies we've responded by trying to innovate for our advertisers"
Because why should we try innovating for our readers when advertising is where the money is?
"so we can remain financially healthy and continue to serve you"
You = advertisers.
"we ask you to consider that the content you come to Salon for -- independent-minded,"
Four legs good, two legs bad!
"thought-provoking,"
Did NASA fake the moon landings?
"unavailable elsewhere"
Just like the goatse.cx site!
"Today we have two ways to support our writers, editors and the rest of the staff"
Well, two ways that we'll admit to.
"If sitting through one five-second ad before you can read an article is simply too much of a delay for you, we offer a Salon Premium subscription as a different way to support Salon."
Ceasing to visit Salon is not an option.
"Our intention, as always, is to bring you the most intelligent,"
From the same people who thought up jump-through advertising!
"provocative,"
Gratuitous use of the word "sex."
"fearless"
Unless somebody threatens with a lawsuit.
"coverage of news"
The kind of news where Bill Clinton's name appears twice on their main page nine months after the end of his presidency.
"Well, stop filtering the ads. Read them and click the ones that you are interested in as compared to the other ads.
Even if you are not interested in any of them, click the least offensive."
Unacceptable. I will click on an ad that interests me (and there are very few I've seen on the internet that do that), but I will not click on an ad "so the ads don't get worse." That's like paying your local crime boss "protection" money ("Do business with me and nobody gets hurt.")
"Remember, advertising is a legitimate industry. Let's minimize the amount of social control it has over our lives by treating it as such." How can you claim that advertising is a "legitimate" industry and then mention trying to "minimize" the amount of control it has over our lives in the same breath?
At any rate, if ads are too annoying on a site, I simply stop visiting it. Ad-blocking software and mechanisms are only useful to me for visiting sites I wouldn't normally visit because of intrusive/annoying advertising. While the "arms race" you discuss may take place over, say, warez sites, it still won't affect the sites that have less intrusive advertising that I don't use blocking software on to begin with.
Besides, Salon is just a wee bit too rabidly leftist for my tastes. And this is from someone peruses the People's Daily website about once a week.
"He's a religous fundamentalist trying to wreck revenge on the United States and western civilisation."
Why? Just because? For the heck of it?
"Yes. He's just a nut."
You really think that somebody who can organize something like what we've seen is "just a nut?" You think that flying planes into buildings almost simultaneously is the "limit" of is stratiegic skills?
If these people were all "just nuts," they'd be easier to spot and we wouldn't have had 9/11.
"You think they'd have messed with 767's if they had nukes?"
Hell yes! The goal of these extremists is to destabalize the US and give their own forces a chance to set up what is essentially a police state across the Muslim world. Think of the Iron Curtain back in the bad old days.
Stratfor.com suggests that bin Laden and his peers feel that they can get the US out of the picture by dragging the US into another Vietnam-esque war, destabalizing the US government as Americans get pissed off once again at the meat grinder war a conventional invasion of Afghanistan would turn out to be.
The reason such an invasion of Afghanistan would be such a pain is because we need to borrow other countries' airspace (if not ground bases). A nuclear attack by these terrorists, on the other hand, would justify a nuclear response by the US on the terrorsits and their sponsor countries (legally if not morally). ICBMs don't need to travel through anybody's airspace but ours and the target's. We might be nice and borrow Pakistan's airspace just long enough to send over B-52s to drop leaflets warning civilians near targets to get out of the way, but that's it.
When it's all over, instead of taking over the Islamic world, there may not be an Islamic world for these people to take over.
These people may be cruel, but they're not stupid. They know they need a US hampered by it's own morality/decadence/sloth (depends on your point of view) than MIRVs raining down on their heads.
... they just got around to calling unsolicited e-mail an electronic attack (which I feel it is). I wouldn't mind having the Feds kick down doors and drag off the people that keep flooding my mailbox with e-mails they pretend I asked for.
Re:there's an argument to be made....
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"the number one export for the United States is weapons."
Oh? And where do you get your numbers? Either way, I find it hard to believe in light of how the number one exporter of weapons globally is France.
"The middle eastern countries are mostly split into 2 factions."
Oh, I wish.
Israel is one by itself.
Predominantly Muslim countries that are genuinely friendly towards the US (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan) make a second.
Predominantly Muslim countries whose governments are on friendly terms with the United States, but whose populace isn't all that keen on that idea (Yemen comes to mind). That's three.
Predominantly Muslim countries who don't really give a damn one way or another (Afghanistan, Pakistan). Four.
Predominantly Muslim countries that were outright hostile to the US, but now want friendlier relations (Iran, Lybia). Five.
Predominantly Muslim countries that continue to be outright hostile to the US (Iraq).
That's at least six I can divide the Muslim world into. Of course, for a real analysis, you'll need to look at that part of the world on a country-by-country basis, because each one has different relations with the US (we set up diplomatic relations with nation-states, not religions). This is just as generalized as I feel comfortable with.
"The only thing that is going to save us a sane, rational foreign policy that doesn't incense our enemies in the middle east."
It would appear that our enemies in the Middle East are neither all that sane (suicidal) or rational (the only big winner here is Israel). So how will being "sane" and "rational" be all that better?
And besides, it's real easy to be an armchair diplomat than to actually try to deal with internatonal relations. I note that you only call for vague improvements with no specific ideas on how to make those improvements.
Your ally is using military force against terrorist cells targeting civilians. How do you respond? Do you tell them that they shouldn't defend themselves as scores of their civilians are brutally murdered, or do aid them with materiel that may itself be used against civilian targets?
Your main enemy (militarily, economically, philosophically) is backing one side in a war against another side that has a habit of using weapons of mass destruction. Do you let your arch-rival take control of oil fields vital to the survival of the Western world while continuing to spread a philosophy that is hostile to you, or do you turn a blind eye to chemical weapon attacks by their enemies?
During hostilities involving one of your allies, you have an intelligence-gathering ship off-shore, feeding information to another one of your allies. That second ally, in turn, feeds that information to the enemy of your first ally. The first ally then proceeds to attack and disable your ship, killing scores of her crew. Do you cry out for retribution while it is shown how you're not as good an ally as you should have been (helping their enemies shoot their planes from the sky), or do you sweep it under the rug as a misunderstanding, outraging survivors of the attack?
These aren't so cut-and-dry that a lack of US arms would have solved the problem, and these are all situations that US foreign policy makers needed to deal with in the Middle East (along with scores of other extremely ugly, no-win situations).
While it's real easy for people like you to sit in your comfortable desk chairs and pound away at a keyboard, there are life-and-death decisions that need to be made, ones where people will die no matter what you do, people will be hostile towards you no matter what you do, and no two people agree on who the good guys and the bad guys are.
If we get involved, people are slaughtered. If we don't get involved, people are slaughtered. The only difference is that in the second one we actually fucking TRIED to do something, instead of just abandoning those people to their hapless fate.
"I would hope that each of you would send this to as many people as you can and emphasize that they should send it to as many of their friends until this letter is sent to every person on the web."
And then we have:
"webmaster@NOSPAM!str8dog.com"
So we should spam everybody but you?
Personally, I'm getting worried that we're getting just a little too nationalistic for our own good.
Re:Airport security
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 1, Redundant
" I've been hearing about the proposal to beef up security for domestic flights in the USA: bravo!"
You may be cheering, but I'm not a big fan of cops with automatic weapons, and that's what I've been seeing from footage of the local airports.
"why did we have to invade Japan? Why did it need to surrender? It was blockaded, it couldn't mount any significant attack that wouldn't have met russian and american forces, so why were the only choices invasion or nuclear attack?"
Well, besides the fact that the Allies decided they needed unconditional surrenders at Yalta, while the Japanese islands were isolated, their troops were still free to rape/pilage/burn/use biological weapons (!) on mainland Asia. Also, there was no telling what they might be able to do with the resources they had (scrape together enough to build those submersible carriers they were talking about, starting putting anthrax on those balloons they were sending over the NW USA...).
"Why not nuke a naval base?"
You mean like Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
"Why not shell targets from the shore"
1.) If you can hit them, they can hit you.
2.) Ground targets can be buried, reinfoced with feet of concrete, dispersed along the countryside, etc. Dreadnaughts tend to stand out like sore thumbs, and must obey the laws of hydrodynamics.
3.) 16" guns only reach so far in-land.
"focus on anti-aircraft capabilities,"
1.) If you can hit them, they can hit you.
2.) Air power isn't the end-all be-all of military campaigns. Never has been, never will be. Consider the examples of the Battle of Britain, Vietnam and Yugoslavia.
"non-stop carpet bombings of military targets?"
Who said we weren't?
"Why not send every american soldier home, away from the obviously defeated Japan, and let the threat of taking on the world alone have it's effect?"
If they were willing to stare down the idea of nuclear annihilation (even welcome it), why would they be worried about that? Going down in a fight against the world would bring great honor and glory. Just the way a samurai hopes to die.
"Why no 'warning shot' over the water to see if letting Japan see the effects of a weapon that was, at that time, mistakenly thought to be the end of the world, would inspire and end to aggression, and possibly a surrender?"
What if it didn't work? Better yet, if a "warning shot" would have been effective, wouldn't Hiroshima have been that much more effective?
"Surely it's not possible that our immediate reaction was mass murder, because the people and the government wanted revenge, or because the government wanted to flex it's muscles for the world..."
Yeah, nothing to do with the fact that this was after almost four years of involvement in the greatest conflagration the world has ever known, or that we had these bombs already after a heated arms race with the Germans, or...
"I know of no precision nuke that wouldn't kill or irradiate nearby civilians."
You should talk to the Indians (and possibly Pakistanis), then. They seem to have mastered the art of making extremely clean, sub-kiloton tactical nukes. Fall-out is a sign of inefficiency, and we've had over 50 years to work on it.
"There was no justification for it in Nagasaki or Hiroshima"
Oh?
The US submarine force does to Japan what Germany has only dreamed of doing to the UK for decades: A total blokade. Japan slowly starts to starve. They don't surrender. Heck, they're busy training children in school how to use a bamboo spear to help fend off an American invasion.
The US bombs Hiroshima. They don't surrender.
The US bombs Nagasaki. They don't surrender.
The USSR (after having won their Great Patriotic War) declares war on Japan.
A few days later, Emperor Hirohito records a surrender message to be broadcast the next day. That night the Japanese Army tries to stage a coup to keep the emperor from surrendering. They wanted to die a glorious death rather than surrender.
And even after all that, starved, bombed, and a few million angry Soviets on their back, it takes OVER A MONTH for them to finally sign the official surrender.
Anybody who thinks that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't justified either doesn't know the facts or is underestimating the willingness of the Japanese to die for their emperor. Consider the fact that it took two bombs.
"If you can tell me that killing hundreds of thousands of civilians to save the American lives that would be lost in an assault (as was the excuse given after WW2), then you're telling me that America stands for nothing that it was meant to stand for."
America doesn't stand for throwing perfectly good young boys into a meat grinder for no damned good reason, just to satisfy some bushido sensibilities. We don't use human wave tactics for a reason, and its not for want of troops.
Besides, US troops aren't the only ones that were saved. If the Japanese had their way, their country would have ceased to be in the process of conquering it.
"We can't claim that our armed forces exist to fight and die in the name of freedom and basic human rights, when we're willing to forcefully trade civilian lives for those of our armed forces."
We don't. We don't want our soldiers to die for the state. We expect our citizen-soldiers to protect us from aggressors and to visit harm upon those aggressors. They're there to kill people and break things, not to die.
When push comes to shove, foreign nationals don't vote, so one American life will always be worth more than one foreign life.
" I find it highly ironic that, yet again, everyone instantly jumps to the conclusion that it was Arabs who are behind these tragedies. Does anyone else remember Oklahoma City, and the rush to judgement there, when in the end it was a white hick with a gap tooth."
You failed to mention that since that time, two US embassies and a US destroyer were bombed, and Islamic extremists were responsible. Heck, the last time the World Trade Center was attacked, it was Islamic militants. It would seem safe to say that OK City was the exception rather than the rule.
"Let's face it, there's a whole lot of people out there that hate the US, and for good reason (I was going to put a list here, but it's really just about everyone except Israel, Japan, Western Europe, and Canada)."
Iran is democratizing little by little and is interested in normalizing relations with us. Lybia is desparately trying to find a way to get back on our good side without taking credit for Pan Am 103 (and may end up doing it anyway). More and more Eastern European countries want to join NATO. Several countries in South America want to join NAFTA (and is more or less the impetus behind the FTAA).
In general, its quite safe to say that the US-haters out there are a very vocal minority. In fact, Americans abroad get a bad rap because we tend to assume that everybody hates us.
"it's about time they stood up for themselves."
You describe what they did as "standing up for themselves?" I'm not sure whether to be angry at you or pity you.
"And, before you say "economic domination does not merit this kind of response" - let me pose this question - what other way is there to respond when you are facing an opponent who has the money, owns the world legal system (has the money), and owns large numbers of world politicians (has the money)?"
"The money" you describe tend not to ride on commercial jets. "The money" tends not to work in the World Trade Center (they just do business through them). "The money" tends not to work above-ground in the Pentagon. And yet these people saw fit to kill all these incidentals.
"Furthermore let's hope American citizens wake up to what their government and corporations are doing around the world in time to prevent more of these attacks, before they happen, because that is the only way to eliminate the problem."
OK, let me get this straight: You imply that what was done today was because of the way we treat the rest of the world, especially civillians. You imply that civillians are killed or exploited or whatever by the US. THAT justified killing a whole mess of our civilians.
HOWEVER, having OUR civilians slaughtered by the thouands means we have to tip-toe where everybody else can violate Geneva conventions as they please?
While I agree we need to be tempered while deciding on a response, your "logic" is extremely two-faced.
"This hipothesis of a giant blach hole at the center of the galaxy is really interesting... too bad we won't have the galactic center exploding, as in Larry Niven's "Known Universe" books."
You mean the center of the universe. And we can't look at the "center" of the universe all that easily because that would require pointing our telescpes in a direction that is perpendicular to everything.
Get a retail copy of XP, so they can't complain about EULA violations.
Install it on one of your machines. Register and validate it. Then wipe the partition.
Install it on your second machine. When prompted, call Microsoft and have them re-validate your install on this machine now. Then wipe that partition and re-install back on the first machine.
Repeat hourly until you start getting busy signals when you call their number.
Why do I have visions of new computers plugging into a 230V AC socket, like dryers and ovens? 130 watts an awful lot of juice when you consider most power supplies only put out around 5 volts DC or so.
For those that don't remember their EE or physics courses: watts = volts * amps. And one amp through your torso is enough to kill just about anybody.
Interfacing your brain directly to a piece of electronics is all well and good until you start thinking about all the problems computers have nowadays with electronic attacks. Maybe I've seen Ghost in the Shell one too many times, but I want to be DAMNED sure about the computer I'm plugging directly into my brain.
"They balance it against gravity to measure it? Wouldn't that be really, really inaccurate, since gravity varies by altitude, local density variations, etc? Did I misunderstand what I just read?"
We're not talking about spring scales and such, it's a beam balance. It compares the weight of whatever you're trying to find the weight of on one side to the weight of the official kilogram on the other. The idea is that, if the beam is level, the weight of the kilogram mass on one side is the same as the stuff you're measuring on the other, so the masses must be the same.
Sure, the gravitic attraction on the two samples will be slightly different over the length of the beam (say 8"), but the difference is disgustingly negligible.
One is noting but a bunch of corporate whores, selling themselves out for just a little bit more power over its consumers, trying to claim status as a cultural icon and a driving force in Western societies and economies, while the other is operated by Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking over at Spamhaus, we find that Sprint is working hard to be in the top 3 spam-friendly ISPs, currently hosting 18 sites of known spammers and spam software and ignoring all complaints. If this is what their policy is on personal information, I don't think I want them to know where I am.
"And, if it is, what would such a network be thinking about?"
Sex. Just like everybody else. Especially on the internet.
Now, maybe I paid too close attention to my physics and EE classes, but they might as well ask "What does an electron taste like?" (Yes, I know it's grape-aid)
A conceptual map of the internet would be useful for helping to grasp the concept of the amorphous monstrousity the 'net is, but I'm worried that these electronic cartographers are going in the wrong direction. It's nice that 16th century cartographers put in all those pretty sea serpents and mermaids, but that still doesn't change the facts that South America looks nothing like that, there's a whole other continent in the South Pacific, and there's no Northwest Passage.
Qwest and UUNet I can do without, but Sprint has some darned nifty services (Sprint ION, if it ever gets out the door). That, and us USAA members get all sorts of discounts from Sprint (EarthLink, long distance, PCS, etc.). So my current solution to that problem is to send a letter to USAA (who seem very privacy-oriented) and asking them if they really want to associate with a company that has such a reputation. I figure they can put more pressure on Sprint to change their ways than I can.
They never officially gave a cause (though they first blamed a NATO sub accidentally hitting it). There's been specualtion that there was an accident during what was supposed to be a test of a supercavitating (supersonic) torpedo, but it's generally accepted now by those who study such things that the problem was a plain old torpedo getting old without enough maintenance.
The sun never passes directly over the United States, unless you start taking into account our assorted territories, and even then it'd only be a twice-a-year thing.
"The ad should only show up once per day per user, unless you have turned "cookies" off in your browser."
Let us track your internet browsing through cookies and we won't pester you (quite as much).
"Like many other companies we've responded by trying to innovate for our advertisers"
Because why should we try innovating for our readers when advertising is where the money is?
"so we can remain financially healthy and continue to serve you"
You = advertisers.
"we ask you to consider that the content you come to Salon for -- independent-minded,"
Four legs good, two legs bad!
"thought-provoking,"
Did NASA fake the moon landings?
"unavailable elsewhere"
Just like the goatse.cx site!
"Today we have two ways to support our writers, editors and the rest of the staff"
Well, two ways that we'll admit to.
"If sitting through one five-second ad before you can read an article is simply too much of a delay for you, we offer a Salon Premium subscription as a different way to support Salon."
Ceasing to visit Salon is not an option.
"Our intention, as always, is to bring you the most intelligent,"
From the same people who thought up jump-through advertising!
"provocative,"
Gratuitous use of the word "sex."
"fearless"
Unless somebody threatens with a lawsuit.
"coverage of news"
The kind of news where Bill Clinton's name appears twice on their main page nine months after the end of his presidency.
"and culture"
Insert the word "pop."
"available anywhere."
Anywhere = salon.com
"Well, stop filtering the ads. Read them and click the ones that you are interested in as compared to the other ads.
Even if you are not interested in any of them, click the least offensive."
Unacceptable. I will click on an ad that interests me (and there are very few I've seen on the internet that do that), but I will not click on an ad "so the ads don't get worse." That's like paying your local crime boss "protection" money ("Do business with me and nobody gets hurt.")
"Remember, advertising is a legitimate industry. Let's minimize the amount of social control it has over our lives by treating it as such."
How can you claim that advertising is a "legitimate" industry and then mention trying to "minimize" the amount of control it has over our lives in the same breath?
At any rate, if ads are too annoying on a site, I simply stop visiting it. Ad-blocking software and mechanisms are only useful to me for visiting sites I wouldn't normally visit because of intrusive/annoying advertising. While the "arms race" you discuss may take place over, say, warez sites, it still won't affect the sites that have less intrusive advertising that I don't use blocking software on to begin with.
Besides, Salon is just a wee bit too rabidly leftist for my tastes. And this is from someone peruses the People's Daily website about once a week.
"He's a religous fundamentalist trying to wreck revenge on the United States and western civilisation."
Why? Just because? For the heck of it?
"Yes. He's just a nut."
You really think that somebody who can organize something like what we've seen is "just a nut?" You think that flying planes into buildings almost simultaneously is the "limit" of is stratiegic skills?
If these people were all "just nuts," they'd be easier to spot and we wouldn't have had 9/11.
"You think they'd have messed with 767's if they had nukes?"
Hell yes! The goal of these extremists is to destabalize the US and give their own forces a chance to set up what is essentially a police state across the Muslim world. Think of the Iron Curtain back in the bad old days.
Stratfor.com suggests that bin Laden and his peers feel that they can get the US out of the picture by dragging the US into another Vietnam-esque war, destabalizing the US government as Americans get pissed off once again at the meat grinder war a conventional invasion of Afghanistan would turn out to be.
The reason such an invasion of Afghanistan would be such a pain is because we need to borrow other countries' airspace (if not ground bases). A nuclear attack by these terrorists, on the other hand, would justify a nuclear response by the US on the terrorsits and their sponsor countries (legally if not morally). ICBMs don't need to travel through anybody's airspace but ours and the target's. We might be nice and borrow Pakistan's airspace just long enough to send over B-52s to drop leaflets warning civilians near targets to get out of the way, but that's it.
When it's all over, instead of taking over the Islamic world, there may not be an Islamic world for these people to take over.
These people may be cruel, but they're not stupid. They know they need a US hampered by it's own morality/decadence/sloth (depends on your point of view) than MIRVs raining down on their heads.
... they just got around to calling unsolicited e-mail an electronic attack (which I feel it is). I wouldn't mind having the Feds kick down doors and drag off the people that keep flooding my mailbox with e-mails they pretend I asked for.
"the number one export for the United States is weapons."
Oh? And where do you get your numbers? Either way, I find it hard to believe in light of how the number one exporter of weapons globally is France.
"The middle eastern countries are mostly split into 2 factions."
Oh, I wish.
Israel is one by itself.
Predominantly Muslim countries that are genuinely friendly towards the US (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan) make a second.
Predominantly Muslim countries whose governments are on friendly terms with the United States, but whose populace isn't all that keen on that idea (Yemen comes to mind). That's three.
Predominantly Muslim countries who don't really give a damn one way or another (Afghanistan, Pakistan). Four.
Predominantly Muslim countries that were outright hostile to the US, but now want friendlier relations (Iran, Lybia). Five.
Predominantly Muslim countries that continue to be outright hostile to the US (Iraq).
That's at least six I can divide the Muslim world into. Of course, for a real analysis, you'll need to look at that part of the world on a country-by-country basis, because each one has different relations with the US (we set up diplomatic relations with nation-states, not religions). This is just as generalized as I feel comfortable with.
"The only thing that is going to save us a sane, rational foreign policy that doesn't incense our enemies in the middle east."
It would appear that our enemies in the Middle East are neither all that sane (suicidal) or rational (the only big winner here is Israel). So how will being "sane" and "rational" be all that better?
And besides, it's real easy to be an armchair diplomat than to actually try to deal with internatonal relations. I note that you only call for vague improvements with no specific ideas on how to make those improvements.
Your ally is using military force against terrorist cells targeting civilians. How do you respond? Do you tell them that they shouldn't defend themselves as scores of their civilians are brutally murdered, or do aid them with materiel that may itself be used against civilian targets?
Your main enemy (militarily, economically, philosophically) is backing one side in a war against another side that has a habit of using weapons of mass destruction. Do you let your arch-rival take control of oil fields vital to the survival of the Western world while continuing to spread a philosophy that is hostile to you, or do you turn a blind eye to chemical weapon attacks by their enemies?
During hostilities involving one of your allies, you have an intelligence-gathering ship off-shore, feeding information to another one of your allies. That second ally, in turn, feeds that information to the enemy of your first ally. The first ally then proceeds to attack and disable your ship, killing scores of her crew. Do you cry out for retribution while it is shown how you're not as good an ally as you should have been (helping their enemies shoot their planes from the sky), or do you sweep it under the rug as a misunderstanding, outraging survivors of the attack?
These aren't so cut-and-dry that a lack of US arms would have solved the problem, and these are all situations that US foreign policy makers needed to deal with in the Middle East (along with scores of other extremely ugly, no-win situations).
While it's real easy for people like you to sit in your comfortable desk chairs and pound away at a keyboard, there are life-and-death decisions that need to be made, ones where people will die no matter what you do, people will be hostile towards you no matter what you do, and no two people agree on who the good guys and the bad guys are.
If we get involved, people are slaughtered. If we don't get involved, people are slaughtered. The only difference is that in the second one we actually fucking TRIED to do something, instead of just abandoning those people to their hapless fate.
Welcome to real life.
First we have:
"I would hope that each of you would send this to as many people as you can and emphasize that they should send it to as many of their friends until this letter is sent to every person on the web."
And then we have:
"webmaster@NOSPAM!str8dog.com"
So we should spam everybody but you?
Personally, I'm getting worried that we're getting just a little too nationalistic for our own good.
" I've been hearing about the proposal to beef up security for domestic flights in the USA: bravo!"
You may be cheering, but I'm not a big fan of cops with automatic weapons, and that's what I've been seeing from footage of the local airports.
It's always made more sense to me since Lockerbie wasn't the target, just what happened to be under the plane at the time of deonnation.
"why did we have to invade Japan? Why did it need to surrender? It was blockaded, it couldn't mount any significant attack that wouldn't have met russian and american forces, so why were the only choices invasion or nuclear attack?"
Well, besides the fact that the Allies decided they needed unconditional surrenders at Yalta, while the Japanese islands were isolated, their troops were still free to rape/pilage/burn/use biological weapons (!) on mainland Asia. Also, there was no telling what they might be able to do with the resources they had (scrape together enough to build those submersible carriers they were talking about, starting putting anthrax on those balloons they were sending over the NW USA...).
"Why not nuke a naval base?"
You mean like Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
"Why not shell targets from the shore"
1.) If you can hit them, they can hit you.
2.) Ground targets can be buried, reinfoced with feet of concrete, dispersed along the countryside, etc. Dreadnaughts tend to stand out like sore thumbs, and must obey the laws of hydrodynamics.
3.) 16" guns only reach so far in-land.
"focus on anti-aircraft capabilities,"
1.) If you can hit them, they can hit you.
2.) Air power isn't the end-all be-all of military campaigns. Never has been, never will be. Consider the examples of the Battle of Britain, Vietnam and Yugoslavia.
"non-stop carpet bombings of military targets?"
Who said we weren't?
"Why not send every american soldier home, away from the obviously defeated Japan, and let the threat of taking on the world alone have it's effect?"
If they were willing to stare down the idea of nuclear annihilation (even welcome it), why would they be worried about that? Going down in a fight against the world would bring great honor and glory. Just the way a samurai hopes to die.
"Why no 'warning shot' over the water to see if letting Japan see the effects of a weapon that was, at that time, mistakenly thought to be the end of the world, would inspire and end to aggression, and possibly a surrender?"
What if it didn't work? Better yet, if a "warning shot" would have been effective, wouldn't Hiroshima have been that much more effective?
"Surely it's not possible that our immediate reaction was mass murder, because the people and the government wanted revenge, or because the government wanted to flex it's muscles for the world..."
Yeah, nothing to do with the fact that this was after almost four years of involvement in the greatest conflagration the world has ever known, or that we had these bombs already after a heated arms race with the Germans, or...
"I know of no precision nuke that wouldn't kill or irradiate nearby civilians."
You should talk to the Indians (and possibly Pakistanis), then. They seem to have mastered the art of making extremely clean, sub-kiloton tactical nukes. Fall-out is a sign of inefficiency, and we've had over 50 years to work on it.
"There was no justification for it in Nagasaki or Hiroshima"
Oh?
The US submarine force does to Japan what Germany has only dreamed of doing to the UK for decades: A total blokade. Japan slowly starts to starve. They don't surrender. Heck, they're busy training children in school how to use a bamboo spear to help fend off an American invasion.
The US bombs Hiroshima. They don't surrender.
The US bombs Nagasaki. They don't surrender.
The USSR (after having won their Great Patriotic War) declares war on Japan.
A few days later, Emperor Hirohito records a surrender message to be broadcast the next day. That night the Japanese Army tries to stage a coup to keep the emperor from surrendering. They wanted to die a glorious death rather than surrender.
And even after all that, starved, bombed, and a few million angry Soviets on their back, it takes OVER A MONTH for them to finally sign the official surrender.
Anybody who thinks that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't justified either doesn't know the facts or is underestimating the willingness of the Japanese to die for their emperor. Consider the fact that it took two bombs.
"If you can tell me that killing hundreds of thousands of civilians to save the American lives that would be lost in an assault (as was the excuse given after WW2), then you're telling me that America stands for nothing that it was meant to stand for."
America doesn't stand for throwing perfectly good young boys into a meat grinder for no damned good reason, just to satisfy some bushido sensibilities. We don't use human wave tactics for a reason, and its not for want of troops.
Besides, US troops aren't the only ones that were saved. If the Japanese had their way, their country would have ceased to be in the process of conquering it.
"We can't claim that our armed forces exist to fight and die in the name of freedom and basic human rights, when we're willing to forcefully trade civilian lives for those of our armed forces."
We don't. We don't want our soldiers to die for the state. We expect our citizen-soldiers to protect us from aggressors and to visit harm upon those aggressors. They're there to kill people and break things, not to die.
When push comes to shove, foreign nationals don't vote, so one American life will always be worth more than one foreign life.
" I find it highly ironic that, yet again, everyone instantly jumps to the conclusion that it was Arabs who are behind these tragedies. Does anyone else remember Oklahoma City, and the rush to judgement there, when in the end it was a white hick with a gap tooth."
You failed to mention that since that time, two US embassies and a US destroyer were bombed, and Islamic extremists were responsible. Heck, the last time the World Trade Center was attacked, it was Islamic militants. It would seem safe to say that OK City was the exception rather than the rule.
"Let's face it, there's a whole lot of people out there that hate the US, and for good reason (I was going to put a list here, but it's really just about everyone except Israel, Japan, Western Europe, and Canada)."
Iran is democratizing little by little and is interested in normalizing relations with us. Lybia is desparately trying to find a way to get back on our good side without taking credit for Pan Am 103 (and may end up doing it anyway). More and more Eastern European countries want to join NATO. Several countries in South America want to join NAFTA (and is more or less the impetus behind the FTAA).
In general, its quite safe to say that the US-haters out there are a very vocal minority. In fact, Americans abroad get a bad rap because we tend to assume that everybody hates us.
"it's about time they stood up for themselves."
You describe what they did as "standing up for themselves?" I'm not sure whether to be angry at you or pity you.
"And, before you say "economic domination does not merit this kind of response" - let me pose this question - what other way is there to respond when you are facing an opponent who has the money, owns the world legal system (has the money), and owns large numbers of world politicians (has the money)?"
"The money" you describe tend not to ride on commercial jets. "The money" tends not to work in the World Trade Center (they just do business through them). "The money" tends not to work above-ground in the Pentagon. And yet these people saw fit to kill all these incidentals.
"Furthermore let's hope American citizens wake up to what their government and corporations are doing around the world in time to prevent more of these attacks, before they happen, because that is the only way to eliminate the problem."
OK, let me get this straight: You imply that what was done today was because of the way we treat the rest of the world, especially civillians. You imply that civillians are killed or exploited or whatever by the US. THAT justified killing a whole mess of our civilians.
HOWEVER, having OUR civilians slaughtered by the thouands means we have to tip-toe where everybody else can violate Geneva conventions as they please?
While I agree we need to be tempered while deciding on a response, your "logic" is extremely two-faced.
Sounds like they're trying to have consumers confuse their new product with eComStation.
"This hipothesis of a giant blach hole at the center of the galaxy is really interesting... too bad we won't have the galactic center exploding, as in Larry Niven's "Known Universe" books."
You mean the center of the universe. And we can't look at the "center" of the universe all that easily because that would require pointing our telescpes in a direction that is perpendicular to everything.
You need two computers for this to work:
Get a retail copy of XP, so they can't complain about EULA violations.
Install it on one of your machines. Register and validate it. Then wipe the partition.
Install it on your second machine. When prompted, call Microsoft and have them re-validate your install on this machine now. Then wipe that partition and re-install back on the first machine.
Repeat hourly until you start getting busy signals when you call their number.
Why do I have visions of new computers plugging into a 230V AC socket, like dryers and ovens? 130 watts an awful lot of juice when you consider most power supplies only put out around 5 volts DC or so.
For those that don't remember their EE or physics courses: watts = volts * amps. And one amp through your torso is enough to kill just about anybody.
Interfacing your brain directly to a piece of electronics is all well and good until you start thinking about all the problems computers have nowadays with electronic attacks. Maybe I've seen Ghost in the Shell one too many times, but I want to be DAMNED sure about the computer I'm plugging directly into my brain.
"They balance it against gravity to measure it? Wouldn't that be really, really inaccurate, since gravity varies by altitude, local density variations, etc? Did I misunderstand what I just read?"
We're not talking about spring scales and such, it's a beam balance. It compares the weight of whatever you're trying to find the weight of on one side to the weight of the official kilogram on the other. The idea is that, if the beam is level, the weight of the kilogram mass on one side is the same as the stuff you're measuring on the other, so the masses must be the same.
Sure, the gravitic attraction on the two samples will be slightly different over the length of the beam (say 8"), but the difference is disgustingly negligible.
One is noting but a bunch of corporate whores, selling themselves out for just a little bit more power over its consumers, trying to claim status as a cultural icon and a driving force in Western societies and economies, while the other is operated by Microsoft.