1) Lock up the USA. Surround their boarders with huge walls, make sure they don't get out. Cut off communications with them too.
While you state it's not to be taken literally, the problem is that it is fundamentally an oddly very protectionist view--which is the same thing the US has been accused of during various points last decade and certainly the decades previous. Remember, too, that it's a two-way street: World War II may not have been started exclusively by protectionism, but the way Germany was treated following WWI certainly didn't help. (Although I would also argue that the US' lack of interest early on in the war--think "It's Europe's problem, not ours"--certainly wasn't justifiable, and poor England suffered greatly as a result. The flip side is that it taught us a lesson that it is important to have active relations and treaties with our allies; if one is attacked, we must all pitch in.)
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the world (or Europe) cut off all communication and trade with the US. I'm sure you could do without Slashdot, as it's owned by a US corporation. I'm not sure what would be done with Amazon, Google, and other US-based companies that have data centers elsewhere in the world. Maybe we could close them up for since I'm sure it must be a grave burden that most major search providers, in spite of having localized domains and internationalized sites, are often US-based.
This is a world economy, after all, and so it might be more appropriate to place diplomatic pressure on the US than it is to do something so... drastic.
Last.fm has been requiring a subscription in other "less-civilized" countries (for all devices, computers included) like Canada for a while now. $3/month isn't bad for premium services. Additionally, Pandora won't even show us Canadians their home page, let alone stream music to us.
Starting next year [the article date was Sept. 2010, so that means this year], [Re:Sound] wants to charge web-based music sites that stream to mobile devices the greater of two figures: 45 per cent of the site's gross revenues in Canada or 7.5-tenths of a cent for every song streamed.
I've never understood why people think there has to be a "why" they exist.
Be careful. Asking "why" (or more correctly "how" in some cases) is a fundamental question behind much of science, too.
The sad part about articles like this is that they often result in discussions of predominantly atheists (though/. isn't nearly as bad as Reddit) accusing anyone who adheres to any religion in particular (although it's chiefly aimed at Christians, Jews, and sometimes Muslims--they're the ones who believe in a deity and are thus the easiest to poke fun at) as a fool, holding archaic beliefs in a brave new world. While those accusations may be true for most--or, I would argue, the "noisy minority"--a great deal of the US, for example, may be religious but of a more secular flavor of religion.
The problem centers on the relatively few who espouse such outrageous beliefs as the Earth being some 6000 years old. Most secular types, myself included, are at least bright enough to know that the figure was derived initially by Jewish scholars who were likely much more curious about how long ago Adam and Eve popped up--then taken by the Catholics to estimate the date of the creation.
Of course, others still--and I place myself into this group--are religious, and we feel that religion and science both have their place. Religion describes what science cannot (philosophy 101 explains this as the "metaphysical barrier"--i.e. whether there is something that cannot be measure empirically, like a soul, heaven, or whatever afterlife exists in a particular religion); science explains what can be empirically measured and makes reasonable estimates accordingly. Personally, I am religious; I also believe that scientific theories best explain how we got here (think Big Bang, evolution, etc.).
Although, what may surprise you is that neither our existing scientific endeavors nor religion explain why we are here. I'd challenge you to answer that question with either current scientific knowledge, the Bible, or the Torah. I'll even wait.
Slight aside: My response is, like yours--and everyone else's--biased. My religious views are much more secular than most others of my faith, and so the lens through which I see the world is most assuredly tinted. I feel that contraception should be actively encouraged, I dare to claim that the Earth is 4-5 billion years old, and I espouse numerous other views that some of those who share my same faith would scoff at.
So, if my social views are somewhat liberal and my world views use science to explain everything, why then would I consider myself religious?
It gives me inner strength and a peace of mind to feel that there is indeed a higher power. It is fundamentally my choice and my choice alone. The freedom to choose is an important one, and it's one that individuals on both sides of the fence wish desperately to squelch. If you truly believe that we each have a right to choose our own path, don't be one of them.
The trick is to research what hardware in your price range will work with the OS of your choice, which I suspect the OP probably didn't do.
Or just to know something before you buy something.
Which was effectively the point I was trying to make, but thank you for reiterating it.:)
Not all sub-$100 printers are supported (yet) by, for example, foomatic et al, so what I was implying was that it's a good idea to research which hardware will work best for your price range.
If anything depriving these good people of essential services will just be like throwing petrol on a fire...
Oooooh buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn.
(Side note: I'm not sure whether to laugh hysterically in extremely tasteless jest or simply stand with my mouth agape given what's been happening with self-immolation over there...)
I have an HP Laser Printer and an HP Scanner with TMA that I use with Linux more than with Windows. FUD, much?
Seconded. I have an HP laserjet (1020--firmware is uploaded by the driver) that I have plugged into my file server running Gentoo. I have never directly plugged this printer into Windows and it works just fine, even as a home network printer. It behaves well over the network with pretty much every other box in the house.
The trick is to research what hardware in your price range will work with the OS of your choice, which I suspect the OP probably didn't do.
Although I do admit that getting it working when I first got it (~2005) required finding the correct firmware and foomatic drivers and bit of work. Beyond that, I haven't ever had a problem that couldn't be solved by power cycling the device or, failing that, restarting CUPS. I can't really say the same about some of HP's drivers for Windows...
My many year old Logitech works just fine, in fact I don't know of a single optical mouse dying amongst all my friends that use them.
All of my old optical mice (10+ years) still work just fine to this day, so I can certainly agree with this statement. The only thing that seems to have "broken" are the microswitches for the buttons. They still half-work, but they don't always register clicks. The scrollwheels still work, however.
Which brings up another aspect of this: This story can't be good news for Siemens's customer relations, especially with their government customers.
I think it would only be a concern for Siemens if this were something that affected their hardware (and software) in legitimate installations. Harming Iran's nuclear program--or at least helping to--isn't something that's going to give anyone elsewhere in Europe (or the Americas) a second thought when purchasing from them. What it does show is that there was likely cooperation between a few more nations (Germany and Russia were mentioned in another article a couple months back), which suggests to me that the concern over Iran has been building among many, many parties.
Yes, it does demonstrate the capacity for cooperation with various government agencies, but that's something all large companies do to varying extents.
With our allies (yes, this includes Russia, as much as that might surprise those of you who still cling to archaic fears and beliefs), there's a great deal more diplomacy that occurs behind the scenes that we will probably never see. Stuxnet is a good representation of the fruits of these efforts
Or you have to have spys in the Companies providing the parts. Siemens does not have a strong culture of being paranoid, especially not against western/pro-western secret services, with which they probably collaborate anyway when it comes to identifying industrial espionage from other services. I am pretty sure that the BND (German secret service) can ask them for plans and details quite openly (i guess you don't produce parts relevant for nuclear technology or military infrastructure without having liaison officer assigned to you), and probably also for the source code of the embedded SPS modules.
I would guess that your latter suggestion is more correct (following the first sentence, that is). Rather than corporate spies operating under a wing of the government, I would imagine that it instead works akin to: The government sees a specific need of certain operational details related to Company A and B's products; the government sends a liaison officer or representative of their intelligence agency; officer talks with the board of directors about national security and offers payment; the board of directors gets the officer in touch with whomever he needs and then they all go on vacation in the Bahamas for a few weeks.
So yes, absolutely. I'd wager that you're 100% correct. After all, why assign a spy to a company in your own country when you can simply operate directly face-to-face and offer various benefits in exchange for knowledge? (Admittedly, the benefits part may not even exist--I'd imagine certain agreements could be reached just on the pretext of national security alone, among other things. And some companies already have existing government contracts on secretive programs--to extend those wouldn't be much of a stretch.)
Be careful not to make the US as the center of the world for everything. The US is important, but it is not the only thing.
Finally, some sense in this thread! While it bugs me more when my own countrymen can't seem to see passed their nose (e.g. "where's Europe?!"), it bugs me just slightly less when other individuals (probably from the US as well) seem to think that every other nation's reaction is because of US policy without realizing that there are many, many more reasons. The world is too complicated a place, and both political sides here in the US seem to share the same sort of American-centric philosophy at differing extremes.
We can see this also in Wikileaks, where leaders of middle eastern countries wanted the US to take out Iran.
I want to say it surprises me that people forget this (and other facts) so quickly. It doesn't, but I really wish it did.
This is also along similar lines that many of us in the West don't fully appreciate the split that exists between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam, and they most certainly don't like each other. From Saudi Arabia's perspective, not only would their motives be backed by the uncomfortable notion of having a total nutjob nearby, but also partially by this ideological split.
Vietnam was a war of equals - the US vs the soviet union+china. It was fought in Vietnam, and often by proxies, but the US constraints in the war were the result of political considerations and a desire to not escalate the war.
The US wasn't really fighting "to win" - or at least not in the usual sense of "win." Propaganda was a big part of the war.
If the US wanted to "win" Vietnam it would have fought much less restricted warfare. For starters, they'd have bombed all strategic targets in the north.
This is exactly right. Vietnam was largely a political war, and it was fought more so in Washington than it was by generals. The consequences of that? Well, the regular, scheduled bombings were part of the reason we lost a number of B-52 crews if I'm not mistaken--and that was something thought up by politicians, not generals.
Interestingly, the Korean War was as much of a proxy war as was Vietnam (actually, more so). There's a fair amount of evidence after the release of certain internal Soviet documents in 2000 that Stalin was directly involved in supporting the North. It's not much of a surprised then that the Korean War ended shortly after Stalin's death. Surprising? Not at all.
Of course linking is the same as publishing. Just like when a journalist reports on a crime, he is an accessory after the fact and punished accordingly. They are the same thing, aren't they?
Jesting or not, that sure seems to have happened to Assange.
"Hey guys, I got some documents that one of your enlisted men leaked to me illegally. Hey, why are you calling for my head?!"
And likewise. Of course we always consider that which we agree with insightful, do we not?;)
Almost all the time, yes, although I do have a number of Slashdotters on my friends list with whom I seldom agree but have a history of making interesting, insightful, or generally useful posts. I use the list mostly for quality control rather than necessarily agreement. It is much more important to me for someone to respectfully disagree, and offer their views in such a manner as to present information that I find genuinely interesting (even if I disagree). However, I suspect I am in the minority. (Aside: Those whom I disagree with whose responses are inflammatory, I often won't bother replying to for obvious reasons--but that can be attributed to lack of quality in addition to the disagreement itself.)
Obama had a very slick image. I know next to nothing about his career in Chicago and he seemed to come out of nowhere to me, but Bloody Hell, did he tick all the right election campaign boxes! I actually recall Mike Huckabee as probably being my preferred candidate. There are many issues I disagreed with him on, but these are mainly issues that he had in common with other mainstream candidates and so mathematically could be cancelled out. What I liked was that he had a clear and positive position on campaign finance reform.
Wikipedia and the resources it links to are also rather sparse about Obama's history. Aside from "community organizer," it's next to impossible to find anything else about him. That he was able to organize a campaign that propelled a relative unknown as well as it did was most impressive. Although, in spite of what the media reported in '08, his victory against McCain was within approximately the same margin or less in most age groups (including young people) as was Bush's against Kerry in '04. I have some relatives overseas in the UK who believed it was a landslide and were rather surprised the the actual results were vastly different from what their media had reported. I suspect part of this may have been due in part to the world's general dislike of the American right (though mostly Bush).
You do raise a good point about Huckabee that I forgot about. He does have some strong views, and I suppose if all else were equal I wouldn't necessarily mind him as a candidate. Being how important image is to the American public, I'm afraid he would be seen as weak and soft handed. I don't dislike the man, and I don't agree with some of the things he has done during his stint as governor. He does have some good ideas, though.
I really hope Romney doesn't make it particularly far. I see him as the principal individual responsible for the mess that is the Affordable Healthcare and Patient Protection Act.
I'm British, btw. I view the country from the outside which has advantages of perspective, but costs me some depth of information. I think I would fare badly in US politics.
I suspected but wasn't about to hazard a guess unless I heard the accent. It's possible to derive one's origin based on their use of language, but sometimes you encounter transplants who may still retain ties or citizenship of one country but live in or identify more with another locale. Likewise, as you undoubtedly may have deduced from my spelling, I'm American. I do have the distinct advantage of having family in both Australia and England, so I would like to believe that I have had at least a small bit more exposure to these cultures than the average American. It's certainly amazing how slang terms can differ between various parts of the UK, the US, and Western/Eastern Australia. Apologies for the grossly tangential thought!
Regardless, I would have suspected that you were a British transplant to the US, and I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry over the fact that you demonstrate a much greater breadth of knowledge than the vast majority of US citizens do about their
Are you truly this deluded about the effects of policies like eating up GM or buying up a few banks ? This leads to less power for the people, and more centralized in wall street and washington.
Well said, because in the case of GM, the board of directors needn't be accountable to anyone for their own failure. They get to stay where they are, the government gains control over what they can and cannot produce, and it becomes a win-win for GM and the government. The only people who lose out are the average citizens.
To be fair, a lot of right-wingers want government control of the Internet also. They just differ on what they want controlled. The religious right would love it if everything "harmful to children" (read: anything inappropriate for a 5 year old to read) was taken off the Internet. They've tried multiple times to get laws passed enforcing this but it has always been struck down in the courts. (This coming from the father of a 7 year old and a 3 year old... I'll police how my kids use the Internet, I don't need the government to do my job for me!)
This is true, although I would classify most of them as the ignorant knee-jerkers that both sides of the political spectrum have (the left has their uninformed lunatics, too). You know the sort--it's good until it's something that offends them, then it's bad.
Personally, I self-identify as a right-winger, and I see any form of government control over the Internet as a necessarily bad thing. Although, you could probably convince me otherwise if it were an argument for increasing broadband penetration in areas that aren't well services (my only concern being who would pay for it). So, just to clarify: I believe there are those on either side of the fence who demand control for their own pet reasons, and many of them are largely quite clueless. I don't really see Internet censorship and/or control as a right/left issue as much as I see it as an informed versus uninformed issue.
I doubt you'll be modded down for it. I think people are gradually coming round to the realisation that Republican / Democrat is a lose-lose proposition.
This is a good point--Slashdot tends more toward the left (largely), but I think your assertion is fair and even handed. Although I've seen a great deal more dissent recently by American liberals against Obama (and company), I still sometimes bite my tongue for fear of verbal lashings. It's probably quite silly...
Whilst Obama, at the time he received the reward had done bugger all to earn it, he also hadn't had much time yet to do much harm. I don't know whether he was given the award as an inducement, due to corruption behind the scenes or worst, staggering political naivete on the part of the Nobel Committee.
Hmm. Chicago politics aside--though it's certainly fun for individuals on the American right such as myself to jest about--I wouldn't necessarily ascribe the decision to corruption alone. I think you're correct and that the greatest deciding factor was a culmination of a few things: The historic importance of Obama's election, the excitement worldwide related to Obama and his campaign, and his tremendous success. For many of his supporters, it seemed that the world's opinion would finally begin to swing the pendulum the other way, and other nations might start to like us again. To some extent, I think some of that expectation may have rubbed off on the Nobel Committee as well. Then again, I could be talking completely out of my arse and there's an apolitical, lengthy decision-making process. Given other examples like Kissinger, as you pointed out, I doubt it's a fancy unbiased algorithm...
(Disclosure: I didn't vote for Obama, I disagree with his politics, and I would most certainly be the last person who'd support someone on his side of the fence. That said, I was greatly impressed by the president's campaign and what they were able to accomplish in a very short period of time. I do think he deserves a great deal of credit there, and that's part of my motivation for agreeing with your latter speculation that perhaps it was simply a naive decision on the Committee's behalf. I can't fault them for sharing in the excitement, but it is nevertheless a great shame that very rarely do the truly deserving receive the prize.)
To this day, I'm stunned by the number of people who take as an axiom that he is a good person / force for good and rationalise every action or inaction around that. During the election, I had intelligent people telling me how he would be a great change for good, yet who couldn't talk for a second about the actual policies the Democrats were putting forward.
Definitely. I realize I'm repeating myself here (sorry!), but I sincerely think that sentiment started with the campaign and has been extrapolated by the media and fed to the masses at large as gospel. As a candidate, he looked good. Furthermore, as we Americans are concerned, any candidate that looks good must, by extension, be good. It's absurd.
Admittedly, I had a hard time voting in 2008. I couldn't stand McCain, either! We're consistently presented two choices, and neither happens to be any good.
Before I close this rather lengthy reply, I have an anecdotal example that may help support your last statement, but it may humor you instead to read. During 2008, I was in my last year of college and not one of my peers could explain why they liked Obama more than McCain. Yet they were immensely excited to be voting for Obama because of what everyone else was saying about him. To hell with his policies! He was a guy we could picture playing basketball with. Frighteningly enough, it is that sort of depth that comprises the vast majority of American political thought outside the very small population of individuals who pay some attention to the goings on in Washington. (Overhearing two environmentalists argu
I agree. The Nobel Peace Prize is essentially nothing more than a joke, although the deserving do very rarely receive it (like this year).
I'll likely get modded down for pointing this out, but another such example of questionable winners is Barack Obama. He won it for what has largely been demonstrated to be campaign promises, and I find it hard to believe that no one else was nominated who accomplished more for the world and for peace in general in 2009. Of course, we won't know the answer until 2059 or later. Perhaps 2009 was just simply a bad year for nominees, but I can't shake the fact that the picks are very often highly politically motivated (Obama was the 4th US president to receive the award--and the 3rd to receive it while in office; some could rightly observe that the prize seems biased in favor of US presidents).
I'm sure one could put a pound of C4 up the ass, model a shaped charge in the toilet against the side of the plane or the floor, depending on where the tanks are.
I know you may think you were joking (or perhaps you read the article last year), but someone has actually managed to attempt an assassination (ass-ination?) using--wait for it--one pound of explosives in their colon. The target was Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, and the assassin managed to fit a pound of PETN inside his posterior.
Times like these make me wish IBM had bought Sun instead. At least they're a services company, so they know how that ecosystem works, and their existing investment in Java would've been better for us all...
Good catch; I was hoping someone would point that out for the OP! This part always bugs me--it's as if a great many people completely (and conveniently?) forget that WebKit is a fork. Granted, it's a highly modified fork, but a fork is a fork is a fork...
I think a lot of the JRuby effort will be moving to Rubinius (which I think uses LLVM instead of JVM). Jython appears to be abandoned. NetRexx hasn't seen any development activity in several years, but is being transitioned from IBM to a foundation (RexxLA) in the hope of jump-starting it.
I don't think Jython has been abandoned. It has a low volume but still pretty active mailing list and the latest RC was released in October. Jython has traditionally had a slow development/release process as far back as I can remember.
That reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said in his comments on the Criterion Collection edition of Brazil: that he had intended it as satire, but after September 11th, it had begun to look like reality.
What's sad is that it now appears that every "good idea" in politics started out as satire...
Slashdot Mirror
While you state it's not to be taken literally, the problem is that it is fundamentally an oddly very protectionist view--which is the same thing the US has been accused of during various points last decade and certainly the decades previous. Remember, too, that it's a two-way street: World War II may not have been started exclusively by protectionism, but the way Germany was treated following WWI certainly didn't help. (Although I would also argue that the US' lack of interest early on in the war--think "It's Europe's problem, not ours"--certainly wasn't justifiable, and poor England suffered greatly as a result. The flip side is that it taught us a lesson that it is important to have active relations and treaties with our allies; if one is attacked, we must all pitch in.)
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the world (or Europe) cut off all communication and trade with the US. I'm sure you could do without Slashdot, as it's owned by a US corporation. I'm not sure what would be done with Amazon, Google, and other US-based companies that have data centers elsewhere in the world. Maybe we could close them up for since I'm sure it must be a grave burden that most major search providers, in spite of having localized domains and internationalized sites, are often US-based.
This is a world economy, after all, and so it might be more appropriate to place diplomatic pressure on the US than it is to do something so... drastic.
Probably because, while it's bad enough here in the US, it's far worse with regards to the record labels in Canada and streaming music services. It also looks like this year it stands to get worse:
45%...
Be careful. Asking "why" (or more correctly "how" in some cases) is a fundamental question behind much of science, too.
The sad part about articles like this is that they often result in discussions of predominantly atheists (though /. isn't nearly as bad as Reddit) accusing anyone who adheres to any religion in particular (although it's chiefly aimed at Christians, Jews, and sometimes Muslims--they're the ones who believe in a deity and are thus the easiest to poke fun at) as a fool, holding archaic beliefs in a brave new world. While those accusations may be true for most--or, I would argue, the "noisy minority"--a great deal of the US, for example, may be religious but of a more secular flavor of religion.
The problem centers on the relatively few who espouse such outrageous beliefs as the Earth being some 6000 years old. Most secular types, myself included, are at least bright enough to know that the figure was derived initially by Jewish scholars who were likely much more curious about how long ago Adam and Eve popped up--then taken by the Catholics to estimate the date of the creation.
Of course, others still--and I place myself into this group--are religious, and we feel that religion and science both have their place. Religion describes what science cannot (philosophy 101 explains this as the "metaphysical barrier"--i.e. whether there is something that cannot be measure empirically, like a soul, heaven, or whatever afterlife exists in a particular religion); science explains what can be empirically measured and makes reasonable estimates accordingly. Personally, I am religious; I also believe that scientific theories best explain how we got here (think Big Bang, evolution, etc.).
Although, what may surprise you is that neither our existing scientific endeavors nor religion explain why we are here. I'd challenge you to answer that question with either current scientific knowledge, the Bible, or the Torah. I'll even wait.
Slight aside: My response is, like yours--and everyone else's--biased. My religious views are much more secular than most others of my faith, and so the lens through which I see the world is most assuredly tinted. I feel that contraception should be actively encouraged, I dare to claim that the Earth is 4-5 billion years old, and I espouse numerous other views that some of those who share my same faith would scoff at.
So, if my social views are somewhat liberal and my world views use science to explain everything, why then would I consider myself religious?
It gives me inner strength and a peace of mind to feel that there is indeed a higher power. It is fundamentally my choice and my choice alone. The freedom to choose is an important one, and it's one that individuals on both sides of the fence wish desperately to squelch. If you truly believe that we each have a right to choose our own path, don't be one of them.
Which was effectively the point I was trying to make, but thank you for reiterating it. :)
Not all sub-$100 printers are supported (yet) by, for example, foomatic et al, so what I was implying was that it's a good idea to research which hardware will work best for your price range.
Oooooh buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn.
(Side note: I'm not sure whether to laugh hysterically in extremely tasteless jest or simply stand with my mouth agape given what's been happening with self-immolation over there...)
And 97% of all Slashdotters share 100% of their DNA with apes.
Err wait, where were we again?
Seconded. I have an HP laserjet (1020--firmware is uploaded by the driver) that I have plugged into my file server running Gentoo. I have never directly plugged this printer into Windows and it works just fine, even as a home network printer. It behaves well over the network with pretty much every other box in the house.
The trick is to research what hardware in your price range will work with the OS of your choice, which I suspect the OP probably didn't do.
Although I do admit that getting it working when I first got it (~2005) required finding the correct firmware and foomatic drivers and bit of work. Beyond that, I haven't ever had a problem that couldn't be solved by power cycling the device or, failing that, restarting CUPS. I can't really say the same about some of HP's drivers for Windows...
You're definitely right; that's FUD.
All of my old optical mice (10+ years) still work just fine to this day, so I can certainly agree with this statement. The only thing that seems to have "broken" are the microswitches for the buttons. They still half-work, but they don't always register clicks. The scrollwheels still work, however.
I think it would only be a concern for Siemens if this were something that affected their hardware (and software) in legitimate installations. Harming Iran's nuclear program--or at least helping to--isn't something that's going to give anyone elsewhere in Europe (or the Americas) a second thought when purchasing from them. What it does show is that there was likely cooperation between a few more nations (Germany and Russia were mentioned in another article a couple months back), which suggests to me that the concern over Iran has been building among many, many parties.
Yes, it does demonstrate the capacity for cooperation with various government agencies, but that's something all large companies do to varying extents.
With our allies (yes, this includes Russia, as much as that might surprise those of you who still cling to archaic fears and beliefs), there's a great deal more diplomacy that occurs behind the scenes that we will probably never see. Stuxnet is a good representation of the fruits of these efforts
I would guess that your latter suggestion is more correct (following the first sentence, that is). Rather than corporate spies operating under a wing of the government, I would imagine that it instead works akin to: The government sees a specific need of certain operational details related to Company A and B's products; the government sends a liaison officer or representative of their intelligence agency; officer talks with the board of directors about national security and offers payment; the board of directors gets the officer in touch with whomever he needs and then they all go on vacation in the Bahamas for a few weeks.
So yes, absolutely. I'd wager that you're 100% correct. After all, why assign a spy to a company in your own country when you can simply operate directly face-to-face and offer various benefits in exchange for knowledge? (Admittedly, the benefits part may not even exist--I'd imagine certain agreements could be reached just on the pretext of national security alone, among other things. And some companies already have existing government contracts on secretive programs--to extend those wouldn't be much of a stretch.)
Finally, some sense in this thread! While it bugs me more when my own countrymen can't seem to see passed their nose (e.g. "where's Europe?!"), it bugs me just slightly less when other individuals (probably from the US as well) seem to think that every other nation's reaction is because of US policy without realizing that there are many, many more reasons. The world is too complicated a place, and both political sides here in the US seem to share the same sort of American-centric philosophy at differing extremes.
I want to say it surprises me that people forget this (and other facts) so quickly. It doesn't, but I really wish it did.
This is also along similar lines that many of us in the West don't fully appreciate the split that exists between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam, and they most certainly don't like each other. From Saudi Arabia's perspective, not only would their motives be backed by the uncomfortable notion of having a total nutjob nearby, but also partially by this ideological split.
This is exactly right. Vietnam was largely a political war, and it was fought more so in Washington than it was by generals. The consequences of that? Well, the regular, scheduled bombings were part of the reason we lost a number of B-52 crews if I'm not mistaken--and that was something thought up by politicians, not generals.
Interestingly, the Korean War was as much of a proxy war as was Vietnam (actually, more so). There's a fair amount of evidence after the release of certain internal Soviet documents in 2000 that Stalin was directly involved in supporting the North. It's not much of a surprised then that the Korean War ended shortly after Stalin's death. Surprising? Not at all.
Jesting or not, that sure seems to have happened to Assange.
"Hey guys, I got some documents that one of your enlisted men leaked to me illegally. Hey, why are you calling for my head?!"
Almost all the time, yes, although I do have a number of Slashdotters on my friends list with whom I seldom agree but have a history of making interesting, insightful, or generally useful posts. I use the list mostly for quality control rather than necessarily agreement. It is much more important to me for someone to respectfully disagree, and offer their views in such a manner as to present information that I find genuinely interesting (even if I disagree). However, I suspect I am in the minority. (Aside: Those whom I disagree with whose responses are inflammatory, I often won't bother replying to for obvious reasons--but that can be attributed to lack of quality in addition to the disagreement itself.)
Wikipedia and the resources it links to are also rather sparse about Obama's history. Aside from "community organizer," it's next to impossible to find anything else about him. That he was able to organize a campaign that propelled a relative unknown as well as it did was most impressive. Although, in spite of what the media reported in '08, his victory against McCain was within approximately the same margin or less in most age groups (including young people) as was Bush's against Kerry in '04. I have some relatives overseas in the UK who believed it was a landslide and were rather surprised the the actual results were vastly different from what their media had reported. I suspect part of this may have been due in part to the world's general dislike of the American right (though mostly Bush).
You do raise a good point about Huckabee that I forgot about. He does have some strong views, and I suppose if all else were equal I wouldn't necessarily mind him as a candidate. Being how important image is to the American public, I'm afraid he would be seen as weak and soft handed. I don't dislike the man, and I don't agree with some of the things he has done during his stint as governor. He does have some good ideas, though.
I really hope Romney doesn't make it particularly far. I see him as the principal individual responsible for the mess that is the Affordable Healthcare and Patient Protection Act.
I suspected but wasn't about to hazard a guess unless I heard the accent. It's possible to derive one's origin based on their use of language, but sometimes you encounter transplants who may still retain ties or citizenship of one country but live in or identify more with another locale. Likewise, as you undoubtedly may have deduced from my spelling, I'm American. I do have the distinct advantage of having family in both Australia and England, so I would like to believe that I have had at least a small bit more exposure to these cultures than the average American. It's certainly amazing how slang terms can differ between various parts of the UK, the US, and Western/Eastern Australia. Apologies for the grossly tangential thought!
Regardless, I would have suspected that you were a British transplant to the US, and I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry over the fact that you demonstrate a much greater breadth of knowledge than the vast majority of US citizens do about their
Well said, because in the case of GM, the board of directors needn't be accountable to anyone for their own failure. They get to stay where they are, the government gains control over what they can and cannot produce, and it becomes a win-win for GM and the government. The only people who lose out are the average citizens.
This is true, although I would classify most of them as the ignorant knee-jerkers that both sides of the political spectrum have (the left has their uninformed lunatics, too). You know the sort--it's good until it's something that offends them, then it's bad.
Personally, I self-identify as a right-winger, and I see any form of government control over the Internet as a necessarily bad thing. Although, you could probably convince me otherwise if it were an argument for increasing broadband penetration in areas that aren't well services (my only concern being who would pay for it). So, just to clarify: I believe there are those on either side of the fence who demand control for their own pet reasons, and many of them are largely quite clueless. I don't really see Internet censorship and/or control as a right/left issue as much as I see it as an informed versus uninformed issue.
This is a good point--Slashdot tends more toward the left (largely), but I think your assertion is fair and even handed. Although I've seen a great deal more dissent recently by American liberals against Obama (and company), I still sometimes bite my tongue for fear of verbal lashings. It's probably quite silly...
Hmm. Chicago politics aside--though it's certainly fun for individuals on the American right such as myself to jest about--I wouldn't necessarily ascribe the decision to corruption alone. I think you're correct and that the greatest deciding factor was a culmination of a few things: The historic importance of Obama's election, the excitement worldwide related to Obama and his campaign, and his tremendous success. For many of his supporters, it seemed that the world's opinion would finally begin to swing the pendulum the other way, and other nations might start to like us again. To some extent, I think some of that expectation may have rubbed off on the Nobel Committee as well. Then again, I could be talking completely out of my arse and there's an apolitical, lengthy decision-making process. Given other examples like Kissinger, as you pointed out, I doubt it's a fancy unbiased algorithm...
(Disclosure: I didn't vote for Obama, I disagree with his politics, and I would most certainly be the last person who'd support someone on his side of the fence. That said, I was greatly impressed by the president's campaign and what they were able to accomplish in a very short period of time. I do think he deserves a great deal of credit there, and that's part of my motivation for agreeing with your latter speculation that perhaps it was simply a naive decision on the Committee's behalf. I can't fault them for sharing in the excitement, but it is nevertheless a great shame that very rarely do the truly deserving receive the prize.)
Definitely. I realize I'm repeating myself here (sorry!), but I sincerely think that sentiment started with the campaign and has been extrapolated by the media and fed to the masses at large as gospel. As a candidate, he looked good. Furthermore, as we Americans are concerned, any candidate that looks good must, by extension, be good. It's absurd.
Admittedly, I had a hard time voting in 2008. I couldn't stand McCain, either! We're consistently presented two choices, and neither happens to be any good.
Before I close this rather lengthy reply, I have an anecdotal example that may help support your last statement, but it may humor you instead to read. During 2008, I was in my last year of college and not one of my peers could explain why they liked Obama more than McCain. Yet they were immensely excited to be voting for Obama because of what everyone else was saying about him. To hell with his policies! He was a guy we could picture playing basketball with. Frighteningly enough, it is that sort of depth that comprises the vast majority of American political thought outside the very small population of individuals who pay some attention to the goings on in Washington. (Overhearing two environmentalists argu
I agree. The Nobel Peace Prize is essentially nothing more than a joke, although the deserving do very rarely receive it (like this year).
I'll likely get modded down for pointing this out, but another such example of questionable winners is Barack Obama. He won it for what has largely been demonstrated to be campaign promises, and I find it hard to believe that no one else was nominated who accomplished more for the world and for peace in general in 2009. Of course, we won't know the answer until 2059 or later. Perhaps 2009 was just simply a bad year for nominees, but I can't shake the fact that the picks are very often highly politically motivated (Obama was the 4th US president to receive the award--and the 3rd to receive it while in office; some could rightly observe that the prize seems biased in favor of US presidents).
I know you may think you were joking (or perhaps you read the article last year), but someone has actually managed to attempt an assassination (ass-ination?) using--wait for it--one pound of explosives in their colon. The target was Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, and the assassin managed to fit a pound of PETN inside his posterior.
Times like these make me wish IBM had bought Sun instead. At least they're a services company, so they know how that ecosystem works, and their existing investment in Java would've been better for us all...
Someone could hire him as an advisor then do precisely the opposite of what he suggests!
Good catch; I was hoping someone would point that out for the OP! This part always bugs me--it's as if a great many people completely (and conveniently?) forget that WebKit is a fork. Granted, it's a highly modified fork, but a fork is a fork is a fork...
I don't think Jython has been abandoned. It has a low volume but still pretty active mailing list and the latest RC was released in October. Jython has traditionally had a slow development/release process as far back as I can remember.
Slow but steady development != abandoned.
Other than that, you're spot on. :)
And when you buy a cheaper multicore processor from AMD, you can spend the difference on more RAM! :)
What's sad is that it now appears that every "good idea" in politics started out as satire...