Light Peak, if it actually comes out as specified, looks like it will be an awesome advancement: it'll change datacenter storage, home storage, and pretty much everything else overnight.
The crux will be how it's licensed and how it's designed: will it be licensed like USB (ie, liberally) or like Firewire (ie, barely)? Will it be designed to allow for people to abuse the specifications (ie, USB) and still work, or will it be painfully restrictive, allowing only "good" devices to work (ie, Firewire)?
If it behaves as an interface and costs like USB, it'll fly off the shelves, I think. I'm hoping so, and looking forward to it. But, frankly, I can see it becoming the future equivalent of something like iSCSI or FC: too awesome and capable for the consumer, and it's got such an incredible profit margin we're going to keep it Enterprisey.
I plan/hope to migrate all but one or two of my systems (that's 40+) to RAIDed SSDs from the current 10k-15k SAS and SCSI drives in them now. I wouldn't be losing any capacity - much of which is not currently being used, anyway. These aren't storage systems, they're network appliances which back up to actual storage elsewhere (or use the storage on another host).
With hard disk failure rates approaching or surpassing 50% within the first 6 months for some manufacturers and lots (regularly) I'd argue that we've reached the point where SSD system drives Make Sense. They're at least on parity with cheaper OEM drives, and likely with most "Enterprise" disks as well.
It was noble of you to try to wrest control of a troll thread, but your comment loses a lot of credibility for being titled "Re: Do niggers use linux?"
While it's off-topic, it's at least an honest question! I'm sure the slashbots want to know the answer.
Except, restore points aren't useful when they don't work or don't have a restore point from before the change that was made.
Realistically, they need to be granular and track every change.
My experience with restore points has been that they are an absolute necessity on Windows 7, and that they unfortunately do not work all that well. Every third or fourth time I boot W7 (I spend most of my time in Linux with absolutely 0 problems but a couple games...) the damn thing bitches about changes which have been made. Usually it results in uninstalling a program (a game) which was installed multiple weeks and reboots prior, a "existential" driver (keyboard, nvidia card) getting rolled back or uninstalled, and so on. Completely worthless, since there's no apparent cause for the issue (drivers were working fine through multiple reboots).
Just last night I was trying to helpmy mom who installed some hostile software on a W7 machine a week or so back. She wasn't able to use the restore functionality because they only went back a couple days and the ones I'd made after building the system. So the system needs to be reinstalled anyway.
Did he figure out the name of Obama's first pet, where he went to school, his first job, his mother's maiden name, or what? All of those things have got to be fairly easy to work out.
You'd think so, given the vetting which is supposed to go into establishing a person's qualifications for the Office of the President but there's been substantial research into each of those things, and each of them bring up non-trivial questions of the veracity of so-called "established fact". Kinda odd considering the public scrutiny - in the media, government, and otherwise - of every other President to date.
While I agree with you completely, it doesn't seem like it's possible to find MIPS based devices for sale any longer, short of the occasional ancient device or Chinese netbook via eBay.
I suspect the licensing costs are too high or something like that. Back around ~2000 there were a number of handhelds/portables that had MIPS processors; later versions had SmartARM and were not proportionately faster (by clock). MIPS does not appear to have matured as fast as ARM has in terms of most modern features, either - aside from the fact that there are 64 bit MIPS out there and have been for some time.
Frankly, I'd love to get my hands on a "desktop" multicore MIPS or ARM board or four. As much time as I spend computing at home these days, it'd be useful for the power savings alone (no, I'm not keen of turning my computers off; why?)
Even with marginal CPU capability and a 1-4GB RAM limitation, there are many places which could make use of a single-point system which is low heat, low power, and low cost. If the thing has onboard SSL processing built in, it'd be a huge plus.
I can think of about a dozen systems that I manage which I could replace with ARM boards tomorrow to immediate benefit, provided they've got 4GB of RAM and sufficient interfaces (SATA, Eth). Yes, I'd have to rebuild the systems, but it's a fairly inconsequential process.
I'm a bit disappointed that this is coming to pass, as it was a venture project I wanted to possibly get into at some point. I saw the potential, but obviously someone else did, too...
Thus, I might be able to have ARM servers. That excites me. Thermal and power issues at the data center have always been an issue, as I'm sure they have for everyone.
And realistically, many (if not most) systems don't need the power of a multicore Xeon server. I've got older P4 era infrastructure systems which barely even see a 10% load on most days: something like a multicore ARM board with 1GHz cores would be more than enough to handle what these systems do, and those racks would no longer have the heat or power management issues.
What's more, we might start seeing 1/2 rack wide 1U systems. In-chassis system redundancy on a 1U, anyone?
Who the heck sets up a mission-critical system (in this case, quite literally given the city services it fed) and then proceeds to set themselves up as a single point of failure?
You wouldn't happen to know my position's predecessor, would you?
I suspect it's pretty common amongst "genius" administrators who are given free reign over a system. They consider themselves superior and everyone else unable to deal with their awesomeness, regardless of actual ability - so lump their trust of said person right up there with the front desk clerk who has to have his computer wiped weekly due to malware.
As far as my reading of the situation is concerned, he behaved himself in a professional, albeit self-important manner. Maintaining the IT infrastructure of a larger organization is important, so he was probably justified. He was hung out to dry by a bunch of oily suits who wanted vengeance for him making them look bad - pretty typical in politics.
Were it any other career field (professional or otherwise), he'd have been fired and maybe sued. He might be charged with theft or something similar if he walked off something existential to the business or was otherwise malicious. But only in the IT realm can a person get charged with such harsh terms (and consequences) for something like this.
The reality is, he didn't even do that. What happened to him was essentially similar to a boss giving an employee the only set of keys to a building, then firing the person - and then sending his teenage child to collect the keys. Um, yeah... no.
Honestly, how can the man be charged with a denial of service attack when, by very definition of his actions, he did nothing? What's next? Am I going to be charged with a DoS because I overlooked a vulnerability and something gets exploited on my network?
If I were in the position to hire someone with his credentials and mentality, I'd certainly consider his resume (and be sure that the policy & procedures were clearly outlined before he started - as I would with any employee). With Childs (unlike someone who hasn't been tried in such a situation like this, pun not intended), you'd at least be getting a known quantity - someone who is going to protect your assets to the detriment of his own well being.
The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN.
So if I'm unable to administer the Active Directory my coworker is supposed to administer, or he is unable to use change things on my switches or servers, it's a denial of service even if those using said systems can still use them?
That's like saying that putting a lock on a poorly maintained power relay's fence because kids could get in and harm themselves is breaking and entering - or something equally stupid. Anyone who's ever administered anything knows that, if things keep working, no service has been denied.
I suspect that the actual infrared sensors would be mounted in front of the vehicle and telemetric computation would be performed to put the thermal image up in a representative fashion.
Of course, it would still be almost useless during warmer months, particularly in more developed areas. The ambient temperature of a road can remain well over 100F throughout the night, and the air a similar temperature, even if it drops into the 70s. I have no doubt it's worth in the South. Any critters on the road would be 'invisible' to this tech, resulting in people either not using it or trusting it implicitly (and resulting in additional accidents/vehicle damage that would not occur with people simply paying attention).
I don't care how cheap it is; it's still going to make vehicle maintenance expensive.
If you want a device like this, chances are you're either a) out and about on back roads and want animal detection and/or b) spend a lot of time on the highway/interstate/lonely stretches of road where hitting animals or having a HUD would be useful - like a roadtrip. These are scenarios where you're more likely to get rocks thrown at your windshield, causing a crack.
A windshield repair costs, what... $150? And a new one costs several times that. Replacing a windshield with a built-in display is bound to cost more than a decent small, used car.
By any standards, that's not "cheap" - but it is "cheaper". I really hate the word "cheap" because it's come to be almost meaningless: it's got half a dozen meanings and many of them are almost contradictory.
My guess is that HTC wants to be able to either stave off the Apple harassment or they want to gain Exchange connectivity.
Honestly, if HTC were to come out with an Android phone with GOOD exchange support, they'd have a lot of the current WinMo fans in their pocket for the foreseeable future. THere are a lot of WinMo users who are pissed at MS for going to the Apple "only through our portal" way of doing things: they want to tinker. The WinMo mod scene is non-trivial in size, and are composed of largely technical people; this would be a bad thing for MS, but good for everyone else, in all likelihood.
During the greatest recession (depression?) seen anywhere in the past 80 years, the US Federal government has still been allowing the influx of green card and H1B workers. While many Americans are unemployed, the federal government is allowing more foreigners to flood the country.
Protecting the borders is a significant constitutional mandate of the federal government. They're not doing it. It's like having a garbage collector who doesn't collect garbage; he just goes around cleaning pools and fucking pretty housewives.
While there may be no legal justification, Arizona certainly has the moral one in this situation. And there are a LOT of people who are thinking "good on them" for it.
I seem to recall that a typical container ship can hold over 5,000 connex/TEU (20' connex) these days - though the average capacity may have gone down in recent years due to international shipping being on the decline and the large numbers of container ships abandoned in the South Pacific, left to float.
I did the calculations once; a malevolent force with a container ship could amass an invasion force suitable to form a beachhead on an average connex ship. Asia-America, San Diego transit takes (on average) 2 weeks; a single connex could hold a vehicle, 4 men, and all the supplies they'd need for a number of weeks (or some variation thereof) and more; and a ship can hold 5,000+ of these containers, even with air space between them. Yes, it'd be cramped, but that'd be 20k armed, irritable and mobile troops on your front door, instantly and unannounced.
You could probably fit quite a few more in if you had sleeping rotations.
Anti-missile systems, of course. We have those, and we're working on better ones.
But what you fail to realize is that carriers are for a lot more than just planes landing and taking off from the water. Carriers are the modern US military's pack mules: if something is going from A to B and not by C130 or similarly large aircraft, it's going by ship. If it's going by ship, that probably means it's on a carrier.
Food, water, ammunition, gear, and various other supplies travel on carriers. The things have weeks if not months of supplies for their fleet in reserve, as well as excess for things like emergencies (see: hurricane/tsunami relief). They are self-contained international emergency response units and, aside from wielding immense military power, are the biggest thing keeping the teeth in the US military's international and sea presence.
A city can be destroyed by a missile that costs less than what a single city skyscraper would cost, but that doesn't (necessarily) make cities an antiquation.
While it's not a perfect example... Ever play a first person shooter with friends and "friendly fire" on? Or paintball?
Yeah, it's pretty easy to frag a friend. You get used to the game after a while and recognize your teammates by their clothes, or what have you. And you condition yourself to instinctively shoot the opponent and avoid friendlies.
Well, when 90% of the friendlies on the battlefield (or more) are wearing the exact same thing you are, seeing "not us" on the battlefield tends to put up a "shoot me" flag in a person's mind, especially when they're thinking "SHOOT! Oh wait, check for friendlies". That's human preservation.
In contrast, "friendly fire" against the US is somewhat less forgivable. US soldiers and equipment is, proportionately, everywhere. You've got to fuck up something major to hit a US unit/whatever, unless it's by sheer accident and density.
I could have told you that on 9/12. In fact I did tell people that, saying going to war is not the solution, but at the time people were thinking like animals. All they could see was "red" and revenge.
How very astute of you.
I'm sorry to say, but it's not possible to prove something's validity through the failure of your opposition. Yes, it's a start, but as the history of rulers and political systems of the 20th century can attest, it's also a good way to bring a bitter end to things: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and many others said "their ways don't work, follow me" and there was even more suffering than under the previous rule.
The reality is that there are many other ways in which those wars could have been fought - indeed, there are many ways which many people wanted to see those wars fought which never occurred. The actual people who were "thinking like animals" wanted to carpet bomb their countries and utterly destroy them. Between them and your irrationally passive approach, we came up with what we got.
As for the 9/11 bombers, people seem to forget that it was diversity and open-minded political correctness which brought them here. We've known since the 1970s that their type (affluent Arabic Muslim men) are the stereotype for Islamic terrorism, yet we continued to let them in.
It's more complex than just "better locks"; significantly more so. I and most sane people would agree that is a necessary first step, but it's one step of many.
Proactively ruling out retributive attacks against enemies is just as, if not more, foolish than throwing an inappropriate level of force at a problem. But just because that level of force is ineffective does not mean that force was not the solution you were looking for.
The only countries on the planet which could do what you propose are (short of an out-and-out nuclear exchange):
* China * India
Despite armaments and technology, what it comes down to is transportation and troops, and occupying the land you've conquered. The US doesn't have the manpower for that (and that's why we've effectively lost Afgahnistan/Iraq). That's what kept Rome's expansion working for as long as it did (fresh influx into the armies).
I don't get it either. The only thing I can reason is that it's a dogmatic, rather than logical, problem for these so-called environmental groups.
Your fancy iPod or Macbook? Yeah, heavy metals (batteries and all), plastics, and other materials which are poison to the environment regardless of how they're recycled. They also have a relatively short lifespan.
Burning wood is somehow ecologically unsound to these people. Hello! it's a biofuel, and it's more renewable and maintainable than any of your crap soy/rice/corn ethers for most things.
My favorite are the hybrid car owners. They do realize what their cars are running on, right? A volatile element which has an obscenely short utility life - oh yeah, and they burn copious amounts of gas when they're actually driving at the speed of traffic, going for a trip, or accelerating (much more than an efficient ICE in the same vehicle).
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Light Peak, if it actually comes out as specified, looks like it will be an awesome advancement: it'll change datacenter storage, home storage, and pretty much everything else overnight.
The crux will be how it's licensed and how it's designed: will it be licensed like USB (ie, liberally) or like Firewire (ie, barely)? Will it be designed to allow for people to abuse the specifications (ie, USB) and still work, or will it be painfully restrictive, allowing only "good" devices to work (ie, Firewire)?
If it behaves as an interface and costs like USB, it'll fly off the shelves, I think. I'm hoping so, and looking forward to it. But, frankly, I can see it becoming the future equivalent of something like iSCSI or FC: too awesome and capable for the consumer, and it's got such an incredible profit margin we're going to keep it Enterprisey.
Yet, not everything needs "big-time storage".
I plan/hope to migrate all but one or two of my systems (that's 40+) to RAIDed SSDs from the current 10k-15k SAS and SCSI drives in them now. I wouldn't be losing any capacity - much of which is not currently being used, anyway. These aren't storage systems, they're network appliances which back up to actual storage elsewhere (or use the storage on another host).
With hard disk failure rates approaching or surpassing 50% within the first 6 months for some manufacturers and lots (regularly) I'd argue that we've reached the point where SSD system drives Make Sense. They're at least on parity with cheaper OEM drives, and likely with most "Enterprise" disks as well.
It was noble of you to try to wrest control of a troll thread, but your comment loses a lot of credibility for being titled "Re: Do niggers use linux?"
While it's off-topic, it's at least an honest question! I'm sure the slashbots want to know the answer.
Except, restore points aren't useful when they don't work or don't have a restore point from before the change that was made.
Realistically, they need to be granular and track every change.
My experience with restore points has been that they are an absolute necessity on Windows 7, and that they unfortunately do not work all that well. Every third or fourth time I boot W7 (I spend most of my time in Linux with absolutely 0 problems but a couple games...) the damn thing bitches about changes which have been made. Usually it results in uninstalling a program (a game) which was installed multiple weeks and reboots prior, a "existential" driver (keyboard, nvidia card) getting rolled back or uninstalled, and so on. Completely worthless, since there's no apparent cause for the issue (drivers were working fine through multiple reboots).
Just last night I was trying to helpmy mom who installed some hostile software on a W7 machine a week or so back. She wasn't able to use the restore functionality because they only went back a couple days and the ones I'd made after building the system. So the system needs to be reinstalled anyway.
If you're President Obama? Probably. Nobody would ever be able to figure it out, after all.
Did he figure out the name of Obama's first pet, where he went to school, his first job, his mother's maiden name, or what? All of those things have got to be fairly easy to work out.
You'd think so, given the vetting which is supposed to go into establishing a person's qualifications for the Office of the President but there's been substantial research into each of those things, and each of them bring up non-trivial questions of the veracity of so-called "established fact". Kinda odd considering the public scrutiny - in the media, government, and otherwise - of every other President to date.
What you want is a PC (or a Hackintosh). There's no way Apple is going to release a reasonably priced "game system".
While I agree with you completely, it doesn't seem like it's possible to find MIPS based devices for sale any longer, short of the occasional ancient device or Chinese netbook via eBay.
I suspect the licensing costs are too high or something like that. Back around ~2000 there were a number of handhelds/portables that had MIPS processors; later versions had SmartARM and were not proportionately faster (by clock). MIPS does not appear to have matured as fast as ARM has in terms of most modern features, either - aside from the fact that there are 64 bit MIPS out there and have been for some time.
Frankly, I'd love to get my hands on a "desktop" multicore MIPS or ARM board or four. As much time as I spend computing at home these days, it'd be useful for the power savings alone (no, I'm not keen of turning my computers off; why?)
Even with marginal CPU capability and a 1-4GB RAM limitation, there are many places which could make use of a single-point system which is low heat, low power, and low cost. If the thing has onboard SSL processing built in, it'd be a huge plus.
I can think of about a dozen systems that I manage which I could replace with ARM boards tomorrow to immediate benefit, provided they've got 4GB of RAM and sufficient interfaces (SATA, Eth). Yes, I'd have to rebuild the systems, but it's a fairly inconsequential process.
I'm a bit disappointed that this is coming to pass, as it was a venture project I wanted to possibly get into at some point. I saw the potential, but obviously someone else did, too...
Thus, I might be able to have ARM servers. That excites me. Thermal and power issues at the data center have always been an issue, as I'm sure they have for everyone.
And realistically, many (if not most) systems don't need the power of a multicore Xeon server. I've got older P4 era infrastructure systems which barely even see a 10% load on most days: something like a multicore ARM board with 1GHz cores would be more than enough to handle what these systems do, and those racks would no longer have the heat or power management issues.
What's more, we might start seeing 1/2 rack wide 1U systems. In-chassis system redundancy on a 1U, anyone?
Very exciting.
Who the heck sets up a mission-critical system (in this case, quite literally given the city services it fed) and then proceeds to set themselves up as a single point of failure?
You wouldn't happen to know my position's predecessor, would you?
I suspect it's pretty common amongst "genius" administrators who are given free reign over a system. They consider themselves superior and everyone else unable to deal with their awesomeness, regardless of actual ability - so lump their trust of said person right up there with the front desk clerk who has to have his computer wiped weekly due to malware.
What was his "bad behavior"?
As far as my reading of the situation is concerned, he behaved himself in a professional, albeit self-important manner. Maintaining the IT infrastructure of a larger organization is important, so he was probably justified. He was hung out to dry by a bunch of oily suits who wanted vengeance for him making them look bad - pretty typical in politics.
Were it any other career field (professional or otherwise), he'd have been fired and maybe sued. He might be charged with theft or something similar if he walked off something existential to the business or was otherwise malicious. But only in the IT realm can a person get charged with such harsh terms (and consequences) for something like this.
The reality is, he didn't even do that. What happened to him was essentially similar to a boss giving an employee the only set of keys to a building, then firing the person - and then sending his teenage child to collect the keys. Um, yeah... no.
Honestly, how can the man be charged with a denial of service attack when, by very definition of his actions, he did nothing? What's next? Am I going to be charged with a DoS because I overlooked a vulnerability and something gets exploited on my network?
If I were in the position to hire someone with his credentials and mentality, I'd certainly consider his resume (and be sure that the policy & procedures were clearly outlined before he started - as I would with any employee). With Childs (unlike someone who hasn't been tried in such a situation like this, pun not intended), you'd at least be getting a known quantity - someone who is going to protect your assets to the detriment of his own well being.
Take some time to think, you say?
How about this juror's thinking?
The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN.
So if I'm unable to administer the Active Directory my coworker is supposed to administer, or he is unable to use change things on my switches or servers, it's a denial of service even if those using said systems can still use them?
That's like saying that putting a lock on a poorly maintained power relay's fence because kids could get in and harm themselves is breaking and entering - or something equally stupid. Anyone who's ever administered anything knows that, if things keep working, no service has been denied.
How Orwellian. :(
I suspect that the actual infrared sensors would be mounted in front of the vehicle and telemetric computation would be performed to put the thermal image up in a representative fashion.
Of course, it would still be almost useless during warmer months, particularly in more developed areas. The ambient temperature of a road can remain well over 100F throughout the night, and the air a similar temperature, even if it drops into the 70s. I have no doubt it's worth in the South. Any critters on the road would be 'invisible' to this tech, resulting in people either not using it or trusting it implicitly (and resulting in additional accidents/vehicle damage that would not occur with people simply paying attention).
I don't care how cheap it is; it's still going to make vehicle maintenance expensive.
If you want a device like this, chances are you're either a) out and about on back roads and want animal detection and/or b) spend a lot of time on the highway/interstate/lonely stretches of road where hitting animals or having a HUD would be useful - like a roadtrip. These are scenarios where you're more likely to get rocks thrown at your windshield, causing a crack.
A windshield repair costs, what... $150? And a new one costs several times that. Replacing a windshield with a built-in display is bound to cost more than a decent small, used car.
By any standards, that's not "cheap" - but it is "cheaper". I really hate the word "cheap" because it's come to be almost meaningless: it's got half a dozen meanings and many of them are almost contradictory.
The one that wants to sleep with his sister?
Yep, that's the one. :P
My guess is that HTC wants to be able to either stave off the Apple harassment or they want to gain Exchange connectivity.
Honestly, if HTC were to come out with an Android phone with GOOD exchange support, they'd have a lot of the current WinMo fans in their pocket for the foreseeable future. THere are a lot of WinMo users who are pissed at MS for going to the Apple "only through our portal" way of doing things: they want to tinker. The WinMo mod scene is non-trivial in size, and are composed of largely technical people; this would be a bad thing for MS, but good for everyone else, in all likelihood.
You may be correct. However:
During the greatest recession (depression?) seen anywhere in the past 80 years, the US Federal government has still been allowing the influx of green card and H1B workers. While many Americans are unemployed, the federal government is allowing more foreigners to flood the country.
Protecting the borders is a significant constitutional mandate of the federal government. They're not doing it. It's like having a garbage collector who doesn't collect garbage; he just goes around cleaning pools and fucking pretty housewives.
While there may be no legal justification, Arizona certainly has the moral one in this situation. And there are a LOT of people who are thinking "good on them" for it.
I seem to recall that a typical container ship can hold over 5,000 connex/TEU (20' connex) these days - though the average capacity may have gone down in recent years due to international shipping being on the decline and the large numbers of container ships abandoned in the South Pacific, left to float.
I did the calculations once; a malevolent force with a container ship could amass an invasion force suitable to form a beachhead on an average connex ship. Asia-America, San Diego transit takes (on average) 2 weeks; a single connex could hold a vehicle, 4 men, and all the supplies they'd need for a number of weeks (or some variation thereof) and more; and a ship can hold 5,000+ of these containers, even with air space between them. Yes, it'd be cramped, but that'd be 20k armed, irritable and mobile troops on your front door, instantly and unannounced.
You could probably fit quite a few more in if you had sleeping rotations.
So how do you protect against a missile?
Anti-missile systems, of course. We have those, and we're working on better ones.
But what you fail to realize is that carriers are for a lot more than just planes landing and taking off from the water. Carriers are the modern US military's pack mules: if something is going from A to B and not by C130 or similarly large aircraft, it's going by ship. If it's going by ship, that probably means it's on a carrier.
Food, water, ammunition, gear, and various other supplies travel on carriers. The things have weeks if not months of supplies for their fleet in reserve, as well as excess for things like emergencies (see: hurricane/tsunami relief). They are self-contained international emergency response units and, aside from wielding immense military power, are the biggest thing keeping the teeth in the US military's international and sea presence.
A city can be destroyed by a missile that costs less than what a single city skyscraper would cost, but that doesn't (necessarily) make cities an antiquation.
While it's not a perfect example... Ever play a first person shooter with friends and "friendly fire" on? Or paintball?
Yeah, it's pretty easy to frag a friend. You get used to the game after a while and recognize your teammates by their clothes, or what have you. And you condition yourself to instinctively shoot the opponent and avoid friendlies.
Well, when 90% of the friendlies on the battlefield (or more) are wearing the exact same thing you are, seeing "not us" on the battlefield tends to put up a "shoot me" flag in a person's mind, especially when they're thinking "SHOOT! Oh wait, check for friendlies". That's human preservation.
In contrast, "friendly fire" against the US is somewhat less forgivable. US soldiers and equipment is, proportionately, everywhere. You've got to fuck up something major to hit a US unit/whatever, unless it's by sheer accident and density.
I could have told you that on 9/12.
In fact I did tell people that, saying going to war is not the solution,
but at the time people were thinking like animals. All they could see was "red" and revenge.
How very astute of you.
I'm sorry to say, but it's not possible to prove something's validity through the failure of your opposition. Yes, it's a start, but as the history of rulers and political systems of the 20th century can attest, it's also a good way to bring a bitter end to things: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and many others said "their ways don't work, follow me" and there was even more suffering than under the previous rule.
The reality is that there are many other ways in which those wars could have been fought - indeed, there are many ways which many people wanted to see those wars fought which never occurred. The actual people who were "thinking like animals" wanted to carpet bomb their countries and utterly destroy them. Between them and your irrationally passive approach, we came up with what we got.
As for the 9/11 bombers, people seem to forget that it was diversity and open-minded political correctness which brought them here. We've known since the 1970s that their type (affluent Arabic Muslim men) are the stereotype for Islamic terrorism, yet we continued to let them in.
It's more complex than just "better locks"; significantly more so. I and most sane people would agree that is a necessary first step, but it's one step of many.
Proactively ruling out retributive attacks against enemies is just as, if not more, foolish than throwing an inappropriate level of force at a problem. But just because that level of force is ineffective does not mean that force was not the solution you were looking for.
The only countries on the planet which could do what you propose are (short of an out-and-out nuclear exchange):
* China
* India
Despite armaments and technology, what it comes down to is transportation and troops, and occupying the land you've conquered. The US doesn't have the manpower for that (and that's why we've effectively lost Afgahnistan/Iraq). That's what kept Rome's expansion working for as long as it did (fresh influx into the armies).
Your exceptions might be better, but your average stinks. :P
I don't get it either. The only thing I can reason is that it's a dogmatic, rather than logical, problem for these so-called environmental groups.
Your fancy iPod or Macbook? Yeah, heavy metals (batteries and all), plastics, and other materials which are poison to the environment regardless of how they're recycled. They also have a relatively short lifespan.
Burning wood is somehow ecologically unsound to these people. Hello! it's a biofuel, and it's more renewable and maintainable than any of your crap soy/rice/corn ethers for most things.
My favorite are the hybrid car owners. They do realize what their cars are running on, right? A volatile element which has an obscenely short utility life - oh yeah, and they burn copious amounts of gas when they're actually driving at the speed of traffic, going for a trip, or accelerating (much more than an efficient ICE in the same vehicle).