What do you mean, the rig the election and the polls ? Well I guess if you're evil you might as well do it all...
On a serious note, the hate towards republicans and Bush's person from the supposedly "tolerant" democrats is flowing.
Don't you think that this hate, the blindness and stupidity it will inevitably cause, is going to utterly destroy Obama's chances ? How can a democrat, the "party of feminism" for example demand that gov. Palin "take care of her family instead of going for vice president" ? I mean do you seriously expect a position like that to gain you any votes ?
Oh wait, no they don't, they just assume it's because they're power-hungry and eeeeevil!
Except, of course, my candidate. Obama's not evil, he's gonna save us all ! Not like all those other bastards. If they win, clearly the election was rigged.
Thanks for this well-balanced non-alarmist comment. It is truly sad how far global warming insanity has permeated in sites like slashdot.
The world is not going to end (I thought the idiocy of both Iran's ayatollah's prediction of the end of the world and, oh the every-5-years end of the world prediction of jehovah would have been enough to convince anybody, but apparently it wasn't even enough to convince educated people)
We know perfectly well how "she" (that cold piece of rock) will take care of it. High CO2 levels and "high" temperatures are not exactly new and will cause 2 effects : -> increase in plant mass due to higher efficiency photosynthesis and expansion of plants into regions previously inacessible due to higher humidity in the air. So overall... more plants. Less permafrost will allow forests to expand in several very, very large areas that they are now blocked from entering. Both permafrost regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia in the North and Antarctica in the south (Antarctica was once lush forest, and so was Greenland, in fact, greenland was lush forest not too long ago), and also regions where water can't reach at these temperatures. Likewise the top layer of the ocean will heat up, leading to more algae (and *slightly* more storms), more fish, and more O2 production to countermand CO2 production -> those plants will convert CO2 into new plants + O2, thereby providing counterpressure to the changes, which will end in a "new" (or old, depending on what timescale you look) balance. Right now there is, compared to the time when plants conquered the planet, very little CO2 in the air (and I mean VERY little).
The reality is that all co2 that is stored in oil comes from the athmosphere. Therefore even if we burned all of the oil in all of the earth's crust right now, we'd only recreate the athmospheric situation of the age of the dinosaurs, a time when animals roamed over more regions of the earth than they do today. It would be perfectly liveable, and probably even more comfortable, for humans.
And yes, waters would move, weather would change, coastlines would move. But they are moving anyway. It would go *slightly* (sorry but we're talking centimeters per decade, at that speed even a 2000% increase is still beaten comfortably by a handicapped toad being poisoned by the KGB, running microsoft software)
Why don't you set the right example ? I'm sure there's a bridge near you. There's only one way to make sure you don't further contribute to the "CO2 problem"...
The real issue environuts will have with these ships is that they're not "natural". After all what nature does is "right".
(does that include a puma killing your daughter, aliquis, just to see how she squirms, or to teach her cubs to kill ? There is hardly any more natural an act)
Artificially influencing the weater will be very unnatural and thus the gods of gaia and the goracle will not be appeased.
Besides, the goracle currently has gotten (partial) control over the energy infrastructure of the world. You don't seriously think he will give that up without a fight ?
I also would like to say that if this is part of your requirements for a "modern" state to be modern, then you basically mean a Christian state, where religion is a personal choice.
There is no other ideological basis for a state where religion, or more general ideology, is a personal matter. You do not get to leave islam, hinduism, shinto, or communism if you're conscience requires it of you.
That depends. For Christians, with the whole thing about "faith in God" or "Jesus will save you" sentiments... well yes. Faith is a more-or-less private matter. A good Christian FOLLOWS (himself and by himself if necessary) canon "law". He follows Christian doctrine, but does not force it on others. Of course they initiate children into the faith, but at a certain moment they get the choice to follow or refuse (formally that would be first and formal communion), and that choice remains open to them always. The only way for Christian morals to really come out in the open if you ask a Christian to do something that conflicts with Christian doctrine (e.g. abortion, or, more generally murder, or theft, or command slaves, or...).
(that's what the abortion issue is really about. Christians don't want abortion outlawed, they fully know that cannot be done (someone could do it by punching a woman hard in the stomach), they wish to have complete and rock-solid guarantees that no Christian will be forced to carry out an abortion, and cannot, under any circumstances be pressured to do so. "Progressives" want that gynaecologists cannot refuse to carry out abortions, unless they risk their career and livelihood over it)
Something similar goes for Judaism (but let's say "in practice", because for example the little detail that one of the duties of a Jew is to destroy ("burn" literally) any non-Jewish state still exists and is taught to every Jew, even if it's made VERY clear that this is not to actually be implemented, mitzvot 32 and 33 (this means it's the 32nd and 33rd commandment for a Jew, there are 613 total))
For Islam, Hinduism, or even Shinto, such a religion would cease to exist if pushed into the private realm. In islam you don't have faith in God, "mohammed" doesn't save anyone, nor does allah. Allah is a God of war, a god of victory and defeat, a god for a collective, for an army, for a (closed) society, not for an individual. In islam you're publicly forced into the faith from birth, and it's your duty to do the same to others. At no point is a muslim child asked whether he wants to remain muslim, like this is asked of Christian children (you choose to be Christian, if islam had it's way there would be no choice whatsoever about being muslim or not, either you're part of the islamic society, and get killed for trying to leave it, or you're not. Everybody born into islam is not at liberty to leave, and their parents are to enforce this with the death penalty, if the parents fail, then the neighbours are, and so on). A good muslim doesn't follow sharia "law", a good muslim ENFORCES sharia "law" (I hope you can appreciate the difference) (this principle, repeated about 200 times in the quran is called 'hisbah', and is the ground reason that jihad is mandatory for every muslim, and not just an option. This goes whatever you think the word jihad means, or whatever jihad tactics a given muslim thinks appropriate in a given situation, e.g. lying is also jihad (in fact allah is amongst other things "the best of lyers"), and allah actually both lies and deceives even in the quran, and there is no end to the tales of lies and deceit in the hadith, muhammad fought 14 wars, of which 9 ended in genocide, mostly after mohammad lied to his victims, assured them their safety)
It is a duty for any and all muslims to kill anyone who even appears to leave islam (if Obama is elected, we *WILL* come to know this principle, since his life story would seem to indicate he left islam for Christianity, which forever carries the death penalty in sharia. They don't scream bloody murder about it now, since they think Obama only pretends to have left islam in order to be able to become president of the US (and lying in order to deceive infidels is perfectly legal in islam, even about the gravest of matters. A muslim in the west, for example, is perfectly allowed to lie about having killed someone to escape the american justice system). If he becomes president of the US and does not basic
I think you do not understand networks. You cannot slow down packets one way of the line.
Wait, let me rephrase that. Obviously you can, but you've done nothing. You've got to slow packets both ways in order to create measureable effects. If you don't, it'll be like phoning for a delivery, then have the delivery guy take the interstate at 5pm to your home. It doesn't matter if you have priority for important traffic in one way, you've got to do it both ways in order to get an effect "in the browser".
So you've got to prioritise traffic FROM certain content providers (and ISP's do that in practice as well : you can't beat google's architecture in latency, they pay nearly all isp's to have a private pipe straight into their network core). They're not the only ones who do this. Microsoft does too, and so do a few "content caching" providers.
This means in practice that google, microsoft and a few others don't have to share bandwidth with others, until the "last mile", providing a similar advantage to what inter-isp prioritising would do. In a network-"neutral" world, the one with the biggest pipe to his/her network wins. This is in no way "fair". With inter-isp differential services, one would not need huge infrastructure to get good service to clients. In reality, the isp's could make non-network-neutrality work very well (e.g. you behave well as content provider... no spam... only http traffic... good boy ! you get a notch up in the priority table. Spam... oops... you go down a notch. You're DOSsing ? You go to the complete bottom. You're getting DOSsed ? Fine, every connection except between our proxy and your network gets bottom of the barrel treatment)
So you are opposed to net neutrality ? Because every law I've seen about net neutrality forbids payment of any kind for prioritising traffic by end-users, making your second option worthless.
Big surprise once again... people want basically unlimited amounts of some commodity (bandwith) and there is only finite supply. The fair solution is demand clients pay for it, but good luck trying to get that one sold to slashdotters.
An alternative is prioritisation based on usage limits (which is VERY hard to implement for technical reasons, but let's say it works), which would mean that playing quake (or WoW, or...) online and downloading movies would basically be impossible (unless you accept 10s pings at 19h)
There's just one tiny problem. People lie. We don't know who lies, or when, or about what.
Even if a politician does not lie about his/her values, they might change over the course of their service. So even if they were to tell the truth, this would not be a solution. Given how fast one of the current candidates flipflops on everything, he seems a likely source of quite a few surprises.
There's also good news, by telling people their religion before they start service, they will force themselves "somewhat" to follow that set of values, even if they do not really follow that religion. Example : If a Christian were to lie in Egypt (islamic law excludes non-muslims from politics, and is therefore racist. This law is applied by the supposedly "moderate" muslims of Egypt), for example, to get into government, he would be forced to take up at least a few muslim standpoints. He would, for example, be forced to prevent "open Christians" from becoming police agents.
Well, either it depends on their faith, or not. So let's split up :
-> they're not believers Because it's politically convenient
-> they are believers, then it obviously depends on what they believe in a) Christianity : because they have faith and do not wish to deny their morality. They will however, not let religion decide everything. They *will* however give religion as a reason to force certain actions to protect what they perceive as "human victims", such as babies, to give one hated point. The point being that you do not get to kill anything that is human just to improve your own life. This point can work in the positive also, as it brought an end to slavery (republicans tried to force equality from 1866 onwards, regularly thwarted by democrats until the 1960's) b) Islam : 2 reasons : islam wants to control government to exhort "islamic behavior" from everyone (ie. not just from muslims, islam is many things, but it is not a private faith, it is, among other things, a type of government, which thankfully doesn't exist today). That this forcing of others is a duty for every muslim is repeated about 200 times in the quran, so it couldn't be any clearer. Second reason, obviously, it that they'd (literally) get lynched for not doing so in even "moderate" muslim "nations". Islam not only lets religion decide everything, but prides itself on that ("it decides all aspects of life") and goes horribly far in that deciding, including, to give one ridiculous example, how to wipe your ass. On a more serious note, also including the execution of critics of the government (google asma bint marwan, for the "islamic jurisprudence" on the point of executing critics by the "government") c) atheists. To be completely frank, I haven't got a clue. It is obvious beyond question that atheists proclaim their "faith" even more than the pope these days (whether or not you consider it a true "faith" doesn't matter). Oh with one exception : c bis) communists, by definition atheists, proclaim their affinity for the state because otherwise they'd get killed by whatever agency is "entrusted" with that in that communist state
Just because I say one positive thing about Christianity does not mean you have to act like this. I'm not even going to try to defend my point, because your reaction seems just based on hatred.
A lot of things are both unique and good about Christianity. A lot of other things are bad, or at least questionable. That's my opinion about it.
I am certainly VERY glad the people who built this country had it for a religion. I'm not so sure about it myself. Perhaps that's egoistic beyond belief. Maybe not. But as I said, I thank God, the christian God, for the country I live in. And I am of the opinion that he deserves these thanks whether or not he exists.
Why don't you just look up what EUCOM is, just to give one relevant example out of many.
The US has nuclear weapons INSIDE the capital of the EU. Does that qualify as a "military presence" ? (okay well I suppose not within the "municipal boundary of the EU capital, 10 miles out to be exact. It also has a basis inside the municipal lines)
Yeah about 60 years now behind the times. There was this little party in Europe and when there was this guy with an ugly moustache that started screwing things up. I'm sure you've never heard of it.
Then, after this guy beat up everyone at the party America was invited, and Russia was especially NOT invited, not out of anything resembling good intentions other than beating up mr. Moustache, for he had kicked the crap out of everyone, and America and Russia beat up the asshole.
Ever since then the French were world champion backward marathon runners. It's the same as a regular marathon, but you run in reverse.
America still has large deployments in Europe as a result. So yes you're a bit behind on current events. But make sure not to let facts interfere with your thinking, ok ?
Actually the Israeli guessed the frequency of their radars (well, they measured it), then used a station based in Lebanon to send out a very powerfull pulse on that frequency.
"Hacking" certainly. Backdoor ? No. Just limits of the technology.
Whether that is a bad idea depends on the opportunity cost (and not in U.S. dollars). China gets a hell of a lot more out of trade than mere dollars.
The arabs trade oil for dollars, they're not interested in anything else, and therefore, if oil gets replaced (which will obviously happen), they're up on niagara falls without a paddle and with some ayatollahs and other muslim clergy having spent years mining the bottom of the falls.
China is building an internal economy, with tons upon tons of different stuff, that will provide them with options in the future.
The problem is that when you rely upon currency controls to make ones own products cheaper it tends to cause other problems. Such as minor moves in the value of the Yuan making huge impacts in employment and for the producers in nations to which the items are being sold getting angry at being cheated.
These "impacts" are only huge in absolute numbers, otherwise they're tiny. But yes 1000 people laid off is a lot. Compared to 900 million jobless (what would happen if the US divests from China), it's a spec of dust in the wind.
You're thinking of ancient European wars, which occured "sporadically", and were very rare. Several generations could live without seeing war. The majority of time was spent farming. The muslims, on the other hand, who were always at war (there isn't a single time in muslim history with 10 years of peace, and it's hard to find even 1 year of peace, though it does exist), and spent their ENTIRE time raiding their neighbours, the men, sleeping in mobile tent camps, were constantly at war, never home, and not too bright strategically at all : they often lost (e.g. these are the people who lost with a 200-to-1 advantage against the Jews).
In that situation women obviously all want a man that was a commander of the defending forces, not a soldier of the attackers (and they want a man that is a lot older). He'd be present, and might actually live to see his children (and, hopefully, help).
I would also like to make the point that Christians allow for parents to give up their child, by giving it up for adoption.
Nobody in the catholic church is forcing anyone to care for children for a lifetime. They are merely in favor of NOT KILLING THEM.
That's another issue I have with abortion : in the end the impulse at the basis of an abortion is either shame ("nobody must know") or jealousy ("if I can't have this baby, nobody can"), and VERY rarely mercy. Oh sure people fake that often enough, but whatever you think about orphans, killing them is *not* the better option. "Saving someone from life" is not helping them now anymore than when hitler made said claim, for the same reason : that they were "faulty" in some way.
I'll say it again: The pro-life movement is the only movement in the history of the world who advocate a life sentence for *not* committing murder.
Actually your parents were forced to have you. Even if mostly by the fact that it wasn't know, and not very safe, but also because nobody would do it. So they were in fact "forced".
Whether they wanted to or not, in the case of you parents, is a question mostly independant of that.
So I ask you again : you apparently believe you are a "curse" and a "life sentence". Should I fix that for you ?
So they claim to follow the current fashionable fad. 200 years ago all of them (except Christianity) sang the praises of slavery. Hinduism still does (in case you disagree, look up what a "dalit" is). So does islam (from real scholars you find "slavery may be out of fashion, but remains legal" type of standpoints), but "progressives" will scream how this isn't true, despite knowing perfectly well that these books won't change (in fact that seems to be their main selling point).
Even in these articles you see, e.g. in the Buddhist one at the very end, that they consider human concerns absolutely superior to nature's, and he acknowledges that the "cycle of life" must be kept at bay, which does not really agree with your point.
And no offence, do you seriously believe the islamic article is not a response to the fad-of-the-day that is environmentalism.
This article states, without reference to any islamic text, that protecting the environment is "good", and proceeds to show that doing good is mandatory. That's obviously the wrong approach to this.
Besides, what you can deduce from those texts is that islam de-emphasizes agriculture. It emphasizes taking from nature what you need, ie. hunting. Combined with population growth, that path only leads in one direction, and it isn't "preservation of the environment".
Let's also not forget history : when islam conquered northern africa, it was nearly 80% forest (the richest part of the Roman empire). We all know what it looks like today. If this was not caused by muslims, it could have been prevented by them, for example by irrigation, as the Jews demonstrate in Israel.
If you want to see just how far islam goes in this "raiding culture" stuff, just read this. You will note, that the points of this article are much better founded in islamic sources than your environmentalism reference. It clearly mentions that muslims are to conquer everything, and enslave any women and/or men they capture. If you call that "protecting the environment" you're insane.
So no I don't believe these articles demonstrate, at all, that you're right. In fact, if you read them anywhere near critically, you'll see my point confirmed.
The disadvantage of that is that children do not have fathers, at best someone who "probably had something to do with it".
Obviously families are impossible in that sort of situations. Meaning the man cannot live with his children. (Except if the woman (temporariliy ?) switches to monogamy)
Of course, temporarily is a relative term, since we're talking 20 years or so + 2 or 3 for each additional child. So if you intend to have 4 kids, we're talking 30 years.
So in practice "temporarily" will be rougly equivalent to "until death", at the very least until pension, and after 30 years, will you really want to separate ?
Muslims don't believe they're stewards of the earth, they don't believe they have any control at all (given their average government, that may be a truth however). Muslims have predatory farming practices. Only Jews really believe in their stewardship of the earth, and Christians believe they're stewards, not of the earth, but of Gods people, for them earth is a tool to grow humanity. Sure, abuse is to be prevented, and it must remain possible to keep doing that in the long term, but that's it. If that means covering the planet in solar panels, eradicating all but token forests, then that should be fine with Christian theology. The main difference between muslim views and christian ones is that Christians believe they can change the earth to do their bidding. So do Jews, but they try to change the earth only insofar necessary to protect what is already there.
In the Dharmic faiths certainly the Sikh, but they're not alone in this don't believe they steward the earth.
And Taoic religions don't even believe the earth exists, never mind that it is to be cared for. Their "average" principle is that the earth will die anyway - a millenia earlier or later doesn't really change things. Neither does a million years earlier. Every last Taoic faith agrees with Christianity in that it considers human concern superior to nature's concerns.
Even your "not being wiped off the planet" stuff is ridiculous. In an extremely broad sense you're perhaps right, but then you'd have to include the hindu ideal, put somewhat disrespectfully : to pursue money, sex and enlightenment (which used to be in practice equivalent to holding political power, even if not in theory).
That's how a Hindu prevents himself from being "wiped off the earth" : money, sex and power. Christians would advise abstention from same (esp. power) in order to prevent being wiped off the earth. Sorry if I offend anyone's sensibilities, but I am trying to make the point that there are differences between religions, that can often spill over, esp. with a certain religion, into the political realm, GW policy being part of that.
So really you're only right for a single, tiny religion, Judaism.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean, the rig the election and the polls ? Well I guess if you're evil you might as well do it all ...
On a serious note, the hate towards republicans and Bush's person from the supposedly "tolerant" democrats is flowing.
Don't you think that this hate, the blindness and stupidity it will inevitably cause, is going to utterly destroy Obama's chances ? How can a democrat, the "party of feminism" for example demand that gov. Palin "take care of her family instead of going for vice president" ? I mean do you seriously expect a position like that to gain you any votes ?
Oh wait, no they don't, they just assume it's because they're power-hungry and eeeeevil!
Except, of course, my candidate. Obama's not evil, he's gonna save us all ! Not like all those other bastards. If they win, clearly the election was rigged.
Thanks for this well-balanced non-alarmist comment. It is truly sad how far global warming insanity has permeated in sites like slashdot.
The world is not going to end (I thought the idiocy of both Iran's ayatollah's prediction of the end of the world and, oh the every-5-years end of the world prediction of jehovah would have been enough to convince anybody, but apparently it wasn't even enough to convince educated people)
We know perfectly well how "she" (that cold piece of rock) will take care of it. High CO2 levels and "high" temperatures are not exactly new and will cause 2 effects : ... more plants. Less permafrost will allow forests to expand in several very, very large areas that they are now blocked from entering. Both permafrost regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia in the North and Antarctica in the south (Antarctica was once lush forest, and so was Greenland, in fact, greenland was lush forest not too long ago), and also regions where water can't reach at these temperatures. Likewise the top layer of the ocean will heat up, leading to more algae (and *slightly* more storms), more fish, and more O2 production to countermand CO2 production
-> increase in plant mass due to higher efficiency photosynthesis and expansion of plants into regions previously inacessible due to higher humidity in the air. So overall
-> those plants will convert CO2 into new plants + O2, thereby providing counterpressure to the changes, which will end in a "new" (or old, depending on what timescale you look) balance. Right now there is, compared to the time when plants conquered the planet, very little CO2 in the air (and I mean VERY little).
The reality is that all co2 that is stored in oil comes from the athmosphere. Therefore even if we burned all of the oil in all of the earth's crust right now, we'd only recreate the athmospheric situation of the age of the dinosaurs, a time when animals roamed over more regions of the earth than they do today. It would be perfectly liveable, and probably even more comfortable, for humans.
And yes, waters would move, weather would change, coastlines would move. But they are moving anyway. It would go *slightly* (sorry but we're talking centimeters per decade, at that speed even a 2000% increase is still beaten comfortably by a handicapped toad being poisoned by the KGB, running microsoft software)
Why don't you set the right example ? I'm sure there's a bridge near you. There's only one way to make sure you don't further contribute to the "CO2 problem" ...
But that's unnatural. Gaia, the god of the environuts, will not be appeased.
After all, everyone and everything is just "naturally good".
The real issue environuts will have with these ships is that they're not "natural". After all what nature does is "right".
(does that include a puma killing your daughter, aliquis, just to see how she squirms, or to teach her cubs to kill ? There is hardly any more natural an act)
Artificially influencing the weater will be very unnatural and thus the gods of gaia and the goracle will not be appeased.
Besides, the goracle currently has gotten (partial) control over the energy infrastructure of the world. You don't seriously think he will give that up without a fight ?
I also would like to say that if this is part of your requirements for a "modern" state to be modern, then you basically mean a Christian state, where religion is a personal choice.
There is no other ideological basis for a state where religion, or more general ideology, is a personal matter. You do not get to leave islam, hinduism, shinto, or communism if you're conscience requires it of you.
That depends. For Christians, with the whole thing about "faith in God" or "Jesus will save you" sentiments ... well yes. Faith is a more-or-less private matter. A good Christian FOLLOWS (himself and by himself if necessary) canon "law". He follows Christian doctrine, but does not force it on others. Of course they initiate children into the faith, but at a certain moment they get the choice to follow or refuse (formally that would be first and formal communion), and that choice remains open to them always. The only way for Christian morals to really come out in the open if you ask a Christian to do something that conflicts with Christian doctrine (e.g. abortion, or, more generally murder, or theft, or command slaves, or ...).
(that's what the abortion issue is really about. Christians don't want abortion outlawed, they fully know that cannot be done (someone could do it by punching a woman hard in the stomach), they wish to have complete and rock-solid guarantees that no Christian will be forced to carry out an abortion, and cannot, under any circumstances be pressured to do so. "Progressives" want that gynaecologists cannot refuse to carry out abortions, unless they risk their career and livelihood over it)
Something similar goes for Judaism (but let's say "in practice", because for example the little detail that one of the duties of a Jew is to destroy ("burn" literally) any non-Jewish state still exists and is taught to every Jew, even if it's made VERY clear that this is not to actually be implemented, mitzvot 32 and 33 (this means it's the 32nd and 33rd commandment for a Jew, there are 613 total))
For Islam, Hinduism, or even Shinto, such a religion would cease to exist if pushed into the private realm. In islam you don't have faith in God, "mohammed" doesn't save anyone, nor does allah. Allah is a God of war, a god of victory and defeat, a god for a collective, for an army, for a (closed) society, not for an individual. In islam you're publicly forced into the faith from birth, and it's your duty to do the same to others. At no point is a muslim child asked whether he wants to remain muslim, like this is asked of Christian children (you choose to be Christian, if islam had it's way there would be no choice whatsoever about being muslim or not, either you're part of the islamic society, and get killed for trying to leave it, or you're not. Everybody born into islam is not at liberty to leave, and their parents are to enforce this with the death penalty, if the parents fail, then the neighbours are, and so on). A good muslim doesn't follow sharia "law", a good muslim ENFORCES sharia "law" (I hope you can appreciate the difference) (this principle, repeated about 200 times in the quran is called 'hisbah', and is the ground reason that jihad is mandatory for every muslim, and not just an option. This goes whatever you think the word jihad means, or whatever jihad tactics a given muslim thinks appropriate in a given situation, e.g. lying is also jihad (in fact allah is amongst other things "the best of lyers"), and allah actually both lies and deceives even in the quran, and there is no end to the tales of lies and deceit in the hadith, muhammad fought 14 wars, of which 9 ended in genocide, mostly after mohammad lied to his victims, assured them their safety)
It is a duty for any and all muslims to kill anyone who even appears to leave islam (if Obama is elected, we *WILL* come to know this principle, since his life story would seem to indicate he left islam for Christianity, which forever carries the death penalty in sharia. They don't scream bloody murder about it now, since they think Obama only pretends to have left islam in order to be able to become president of the US (and lying in order to deceive infidels is perfectly legal in islam, even about the gravest of matters. A muslim in the west, for example, is perfectly allowed to lie about having killed someone to escape the american justice system). If he becomes president of the US and does not basic
I think you do not understand networks. You cannot slow down packets one way of the line.
Wait, let me rephrase that. Obviously you can, but you've done nothing. You've got to slow packets both ways in order to create measureable effects. If you don't, it'll be like phoning for a delivery, then have the delivery guy take the interstate at 5pm to your home. It doesn't matter if you have priority for important traffic in one way, you've got to do it both ways in order to get an effect "in the browser".
So you've got to prioritise traffic FROM certain content providers (and ISP's do that in practice as well : you can't beat google's architecture in latency, they pay nearly all isp's to have a private pipe straight into their network core). They're not the only ones who do this. Microsoft does too, and so do a few "content caching" providers.
This means in practice that google, microsoft and a few others don't have to share bandwidth with others, until the "last mile", providing a similar advantage to what inter-isp prioritising would do. In a network-"neutral" world, the one with the biggest pipe to his/her network wins. This is in no way "fair". With inter-isp differential services, one would not need huge infrastructure to get good service to clients. In reality, the isp's could make non-network-neutrality work very well (e.g. you behave well as content provider ... no spam ... only http traffic ... good boy ! you get a notch up in the priority table. Spam ... oops ... you go down a notch. You're DOSsing ? You go to the complete bottom. You're getting DOSsed ? Fine, every connection except between our proxy and your network gets bottom of the barrel treatment)
So you are opposed to net neutrality ? Because every law I've seen about net neutrality forbids payment of any kind for prioritising traffic by end-users, making your second option worthless.
Big surprise once again ... people want basically unlimited amounts of some commodity (bandwith) and there is only finite supply. The fair solution is demand clients pay for it, but good luck trying to get that one sold to slashdotters.
An alternative is prioritisation based on usage limits (which is VERY hard to implement for technical reasons, but let's say it works), which would mean that playing quake (or WoW, or ...) online and downloading movies would basically be impossible (unless you accept 10s pings at 19h)
Well yes - obviously.
There's just one tiny problem. People lie. We don't know who lies, or when, or about what.
Even if a politician does not lie about his/her values, they might change over the course of their service. So even if they were to tell the truth, this would not be a solution. Given how fast one of the current candidates flipflops on everything, he seems a likely source of quite a few surprises.
There's also good news, by telling people their religion before they start service, they will force themselves "somewhat" to follow that set of values, even if they do not really follow that religion. Example : If a Christian were to lie in Egypt (islamic law excludes non-muslims from politics, and is therefore racist. This law is applied by the supposedly "moderate" muslims of Egypt), for example, to get into government, he would be forced to take up at least a few muslim standpoints. He would, for example, be forced to prevent "open Christians" from becoming police agents.
Well, either it depends on their faith, or not. So let's split up :
-> they're not believers
Because it's politically convenient
-> they are believers, then it obviously depends on what they believe in
a) Christianity : because they have faith and do not wish to deny their morality. They will however, not let religion decide everything. They *will* however give religion as a reason to force certain actions to protect what they perceive as "human victims", such as babies, to give one hated point. The point being that you do not get to kill anything that is human just to improve your own life. This point can work in the positive also, as it brought an end to slavery (republicans tried to force equality from 1866 onwards, regularly thwarted by democrats until the 1960's)
b) Islam : 2 reasons : islam wants to control government to exhort "islamic behavior" from everyone (ie. not just from muslims, islam is many things, but it is not a private faith, it is, among other things, a type of government, which thankfully doesn't exist today). That this forcing of others is a duty for every muslim is repeated about 200 times in the quran, so it couldn't be any clearer. Second reason, obviously, it that they'd (literally) get lynched for not doing so in even "moderate" muslim "nations". Islam not only lets religion decide everything, but prides itself on that ("it decides all aspects of life") and goes horribly far in that deciding, including, to give one ridiculous example, how to wipe your ass. On a more serious note, also including the execution of critics of the government (google asma bint marwan, for the "islamic jurisprudence" on the point of executing critics by the "government")
c) atheists. To be completely frank, I haven't got a clue. It is obvious beyond question that atheists proclaim their "faith" even more than the pope these days (whether or not you consider it a true "faith" doesn't matter). Oh with one exception :
c bis) communists, by definition atheists, proclaim their affinity for the state because otherwise they'd get killed by whatever agency is "entrusted" with that in that communist state
Just because I say one positive thing about Christianity does not mean you have to act like this. I'm not even going to try to defend my point, because your reaction seems just based on hatred.
A lot of things are both unique and good about Christianity. A lot of other things are bad, or at least questionable. That's my opinion about it.
I am certainly VERY glad the people who built this country had it for a religion. I'm not so sure about it myself. Perhaps that's egoistic beyond belief. Maybe not. But as I said, I thank God, the christian God, for the country I live in. And I am of the opinion that he deserves these thanks whether or not he exists.
Why don't you just look up what EUCOM is, just to give one relevant example out of many.
The US has nuclear weapons INSIDE the capital of the EU. Does that qualify as a "military presence" ? (okay well I suppose not within the "municipal boundary of the EU capital, 10 miles out to be exact. It also has a basis inside the municipal lines)
Yeah about 60 years now behind the times. There was this little party in Europe and when there was this guy with an ugly moustache that started screwing things up. I'm sure you've never heard of it.
Then, after this guy beat up everyone at the party America was invited, and Russia was especially NOT invited, not out of anything resembling good intentions other than beating up mr. Moustache, for he had kicked the crap out of everyone, and America and Russia beat up the asshole.
Ever since then the French were world champion backward marathon runners. It's the same as a regular marathon, but you run in reverse.
America still has large deployments in Europe as a result. So yes you're a bit behind on current events. But make sure not to let facts interfere with your thinking, ok ?
Actually the Israeli guessed the frequency of their radars (well, they measured it), then used a station based in Lebanon to send out a very powerfull pulse on that frequency.
"Hacking" certainly. Backdoor ? No. Just limits of the technology.
Whether that is a bad idea depends on the opportunity cost (and not in U.S. dollars). China gets a hell of a lot more out of trade than mere dollars.
The arabs trade oil for dollars, they're not interested in anything else, and therefore, if oil gets replaced (which will obviously happen), they're up on niagara falls without a paddle and with some ayatollahs and other muslim clergy having spent years mining the bottom of the falls.
China is building an internal economy, with tons upon tons of different stuff, that will provide them with options in the future.
The problem is that when you rely upon currency controls to make ones own products cheaper it tends to cause other problems. Such as minor moves in the value of the Yuan making huge impacts in employment and for the producers in nations to which the items are being sold getting angry at being cheated.
These "impacts" are only huge in absolute numbers, otherwise they're tiny. But yes 1000 people laid off is a lot. Compared to 900 million jobless (what would happen if the US divests from China), it's a spec of dust in the wind.
Not to mention EU - US dependency. That's gotta be even more than US - China interdependency.
I mean didn't Russia just demonstrate in Georgia what they'd do if America were to leave the EU ?
You're thinking of ancient European wars, which occured "sporadically", and were very rare. Several generations could live without seeing war. The majority of time was spent farming. The muslims, on the other hand, who were always at war (there isn't a single time in muslim history with 10 years of peace, and it's hard to find even 1 year of peace, though it does exist), and spent their ENTIRE time raiding their neighbours, the men, sleeping in mobile tent camps, were constantly at war, never home, and not too bright strategically at all : they often lost (e.g. these are the people who lost with a 200-to-1 advantage against the Jews).
In that situation women obviously all want a man that was a commander of the defending forces, not a soldier of the attackers (and they want a man that is a lot older). He'd be present, and might actually live to see his children (and, hopefully, help).
I would also like to make the point that Christians allow for parents to give up their child, by giving it up for adoption.
Nobody in the catholic church is forcing anyone to care for children for a lifetime. They are merely in favor of NOT KILLING THEM.
That's another issue I have with abortion : in the end the impulse at the basis of an abortion is either shame ("nobody must know") or jealousy ("if I can't have this baby, nobody can"), and VERY rarely mercy. Oh sure people fake that often enough, but whatever you think about orphans, killing them is *not* the better option. "Saving someone from life" is not helping them now anymore than when hitler made said claim, for the same reason : that they were "faulty" in some way.
Allow me to quote what you said :
I'll say it again:
The pro-life movement is the only movement in the history of the world who advocate a life sentence for *not* committing murder.
Actually your parents were forced to have you. Even if mostly by the fact that it wasn't know, and not very safe, but also because nobody would do it. So they were in fact "forced".
Whether they wanted to or not, in the case of you parents, is a question mostly independant of that.
So I ask you again : you apparently believe you are a "curse" and a "life sentence". Should I fix that for you ?
So they claim to follow the current fashionable fad. 200 years ago all of them (except Christianity) sang the praises of slavery. Hinduism still does (in case you disagree, look up what a "dalit" is). So does islam (from real scholars you find "slavery may be out of fashion, but remains legal" type of standpoints), but "progressives" will scream how this isn't true, despite knowing perfectly well that these books won't change (in fact that seems to be their main selling point).
Even in these articles you see, e.g. in the Buddhist one at the very end, that they consider human concerns absolutely superior to nature's, and he acknowledges that the "cycle of life" must be kept at bay, which does not really agree with your point.
And no offence, do you seriously believe the islamic article is not a response to the fad-of-the-day that is environmentalism.
This article states, without reference to any islamic text, that protecting the environment is "good", and proceeds to show that doing good is mandatory. That's obviously the wrong approach to this.
Besides, what you can deduce from those texts is that islam de-emphasizes agriculture. It emphasizes taking from nature what you need, ie. hunting. Combined with population growth, that path only leads in one direction, and it isn't "preservation of the environment".
Let's also not forget history : when islam conquered northern africa, it was nearly 80% forest (the richest part of the Roman empire). We all know what it looks like today. If this was not caused by muslims, it could have been prevented by them, for example by irrigation, as the Jews demonstrate in Israel.
If you want to see just how far islam goes in this "raiding culture" stuff, just read this. You will note, that the points of this article are much better founded in islamic sources than your environmentalism reference. It clearly mentions that muslims are to conquer everything, and enslave any women and/or men they capture. If you call that "protecting the environment" you're insane.
So no I don't believe these articles demonstrate, at all, that you're right. In fact, if you read them anywhere near critically, you'll see my point confirmed.
The disadvantage of that is that children do not have fathers, at best someone who "probably had something to do with it".
Obviously families are impossible in that sort of situations. Meaning the man cannot live with his children. (Except if the woman (temporariliy ?) switches to monogamy)
Of course, temporarily is a relative term, since we're talking 20 years or so + 2 or 3 for each additional child. So if you intend to have 4 kids, we're talking 30 years.
So in practice "temporarily" will be rougly equivalent to "until death", at the very least until pension, and after 30 years, will you really want to separate ?
Actually you're very wrong on all 3 counts.
Muslims don't believe they're stewards of the earth, they don't believe they have any control at all (given their average government, that may be a truth however). Muslims have predatory farming practices. Only Jews really believe in their stewardship of the earth, and Christians believe they're stewards, not of the earth, but of Gods people, for them earth is a tool to grow humanity. Sure, abuse is to be prevented, and it must remain possible to keep doing that in the long term, but that's it. If that means covering the planet in solar panels, eradicating all but token forests, then that should be fine with Christian theology. The main difference between muslim views and christian ones is that Christians believe they can change the earth to do their bidding. So do Jews, but they try to change the earth only insofar necessary to protect what is already there.
In the Dharmic faiths certainly the Sikh, but they're not alone in this don't believe they steward the earth.
And Taoic religions don't even believe the earth exists, never mind that it is to be cared for. Their "average" principle is that the earth will die anyway - a millenia earlier or later doesn't really change things. Neither does a million years earlier. Every last Taoic faith agrees with Christianity in that it considers human concern superior to nature's concerns.
Even your "not being wiped off the planet" stuff is ridiculous. In an extremely broad sense you're perhaps right, but then you'd have to include the hindu ideal, put somewhat disrespectfully : to pursue money, sex and enlightenment (which used to be in practice equivalent to holding political power, even if not in theory).
That's how a Hindu prevents himself from being "wiped off the earth" : money, sex and power. Christians would advise abstention from same (esp. power) in order to prevent being wiped off the earth. Sorry if I offend anyone's sensibilities, but I am trying to make the point that there are differences between religions, that can often spill over, esp. with a certain religion, into the political realm, GW policy being part of that.
So really you're only right for a single, tiny religion, Judaism.