The bit in the UN Charter that says that the only exception to peaceful resolution of conflicts is self defense when attacked by armed forces of another country, unless explicitly authorized by the Security Council. The UN charter IS international law.
This war was started in 1990 with Iraqi aggression. And while a cease-fire was in place for around 10 years, the war had not ended. Nor were the terms of the cease-fire maintained.
But, when Republican congressmen are discovered to be gay pederasts, or famous evangelical ministers are outed for using methamphetamines with male prostitutes and the news comes out in the weeks prior to the election...
That's a deliberate attempt to time the news with the election, right?
You do realize that the (former) male prostitute that outed said evangelical minister has stated his motivation WAS, in fact, political and due to upcoming elections? Apparently the minister in question is an active figure in defeating same-sex marriage legislation and other "gay rights" causes.
Which.. of course... doesn't mean every act in the world is timed just right to have the maximum political clout. Or that those who claim otherwise have any true insight.
why could hitler not have discovered the cure for cancer and be the first man on the moon? It's better than the depressing story on Wiki at the moment.
I also understand he was responsible for trippling the population of African elephants during his lifetime.
I'm really forced to wonder if the Slashdot group-think would hate Diebold as much as they do if Gore won in 2000 or Kerry won in 2004. I sincerely doubt it. If anything, they'd probably be considered as heroes in that case.
Why does everything have to be a partisan issue? When we had an article that questioned Venezuelan connections to Sequoia Voting Systems, we got responses about this being a counter to Diebold conspiracies and ample Bush bashing. Now we're equating Diebold's troubles with Slashdot in-jokes and Democrat sour grapes. These are all symptoms of the same problem.
This is something that goes beyond this polarized mental sickness that's seized our political mindset. How these systems work threatens even the most fundimental aspects of our politics. Whether that system is under attack now or not is a very valid discussion - but ultimately moot in this context. If the system is flawed, it WILL be under attack later if not sooner. We had best be concerned that we are allowing a system to go in place that has some degree of checks which will stand up to all enemies of our political process - foreign or domestic (Democrat or Republican).
All in all, if you do upgrade, and change mobo, ring the number to activate, tell the operator that your old mobo failed, and this is what the company sent you as a warranty replacement, and they will activate your system with no further questions asked:)
And you don't see an issue with having to lie like that?
Meanwhile... I've been playing WoW under Cedega rather happily from day 1 (but not without some issues).
I would like to note an interesting occurance. Last Friday, Blizzard did something that caused all Cedega users to crash. Nobody has really come up with the story on what it was. But it didn't seem to involve a client update. And it seemed to be universal to all Cedega users. This occured late Friday night.
Others noted that they were able to get Wine to run WoW. I updated my copy (Debian Unstable), tweaked my WoW settings to force OpenGL, and away I went. I was rather suprised. Wine handles WoW fairly nicely. But it wasn't as fast as Cedega. And there were times when I ran in to glaring video artifacts (I understand there's a WoW-specific patch out there that'll fix this). I was very tempted to cancel my Cedega subscription.
Within 24hrs, Transgaming had an update for Cedega to fix the WoW issue. That's late Saturday night. Not bad. I'm keeping my subscription for now.
Well, I don't believe so, either. If the true picture had been made public right from the beginning, popular support for the war would probably have been so low that the government wouldn't have dared to go to war in the first place.
The problem is that the majority of the public seem to think that the war that started in 1990 had ended.
I would rate seeking compensation for unlicensed clothing as something no less petty than, say, demanding that "GNU" precede the word "Linux" in the name of an operating system.
Don't sell yourself short. I would say it was even more petty.
Interestingly enough, I've never read anything where Daniel Lyons bashes the BSD's or the BSD license. From what I have seen, it would seem that Stallman and GPLv3 are the ones with axes to grind.
I'm not sure what your point is here. If it's that Open Source isn't just the GPL - point taken. But I suspect you're saying more.
Lyons tends to show BSD in a favorable light - mainly because he likes using it as a club to beat on Linux. That doesn't make him a fan of Open Source... or BSD.
As for axes to grind - Stallman and the FSF clearly have one. They come right out and say it. The GPL license is as much a manifesto as legal document. Pointing out that they have an agenda is demonstrating the obvious. It doesn't negate the fact that Lyons also has an agenda and that this attack piece is part of it.
Pots of money. Sure - its Federal dollars. But because of the oddities of Federal spending and budgets, one Fed dollar isn't the same as another Fed dollar. It's one thing to say "you will implement this program at whatever cost" and an entirely different matter to say "you will implement this program with this extra pot of money we're allocating to your organization."
I was simply pointing out that the hate on PnPRPGs was (and is) compleatly different then the hate on MMOs. All of the hate on PnP was about it being evil, satan worshiping, getting kids to murder/commit suicide (yes, I have read dark dungeons, yes it is one of my favorite chick tracts ever!). I admit, I am not as old as you all are (I started rping half way through the life of AD&D), and never had to deal with the stupid people untill I was in HS and could easily counter any arguments.
When I was a kid, my grandparents sent me a package that consisted of various anti-D&D literature. I was rather amused that some of it wasn't the normal Chick Tract drek. There was actual talk about psycological behavior and impact - pretty much the same ideas we now refer to as Skinner Box mechanics. This is the very same cautionary tales we now see applied to online games.
Of course, as interesting as the literature was, it came literally packaged with other examples that clearly painted D&D as the evil menace. It all came from a workshop my grandparents attended from their church. Their intents were well-meaning, but clearly misplaced.
From my perspective, there doesn't seem to be much difference between the keyboard and pen-and-paper.
I do tend to find games where time invested==power to get old pretty quick, so the whole rpg thing doens't hold a lot of fascination for me, at least on the surface.
These games are different things to different people. Granted - everyone gets access to the same mechanisms and exposed to the same elements. But how they use them is the difference.
I don't enjoy WoW by trading time for power. I agree... that's got limited appeal. But I do seek that power none the less. Not for its own sake, but as a tool to enable me to do other things.
What I enjoy about WoW is achieving goals and overcoming obsticles... and doing so with a group of other people (even though the occasional rogue-solo IS its own fun). Its a blast to have a group of folks working together like clockwork to take out some instance boss that seems impossible the first run. There's also a satisfaction in forming up a group to take out some griefers preying on your faction or, woe to them, your guildmates.
All this is made easier by the appropriate level, skills, and / or gear. So the skinner box concept remains in full effect. But the difference is that having gotten the Grand Fob of Power isn't as much satisfaction as having killed the Big Lizard who dropped it. Or using the Grand Fob of Power to unlock the Big Door so that our group can go on to the next challenge (or knowing our crew are equiped with Wizziwigs of Woe that'll rip up the next griefer jumping folks on the transport ship).
American armed commandos raping Iraqi women and dragging people out and shooting them or stacking prisoners into butt pyramids is good? American troops kidnapping suspects' wives in the dead of night is good? (Mind you, all of these are documented incidents.) The United States is not one to complain when we've engaged in acts of terror against them.
That's a great list of, to put very lightly, embarassments of US involvement in Iraq. What's it got to do with the current discussion? The point was that a positive portrayal of Muslims in media doesn't start with Bush as an end-boss. I missed the game from the West where you're challenged to build the highest "butt pyramid".
Having said that... your other off-topic points...
Now, let's discuss the real way to win against Muslim terrorists.
a) Offer Muslim women a college education
Good idea. However, very Western. Such behavior would simply fan the flames of the fundimentalists who would see this kind of thing as further proof of Western ideals eroding their culture. Which in turn becomes part of the reason to fight the west. And the next piece of recruitment propoganda.
b) Treat prisoners ethically under the Geneva Conventions
Agreed. Even if we're not required to follow the Geneva Convention in these cases... it would be the right thing to do. A pity that proper behavior is overshadowed by cases of savagery. We might as well hand over propoganda to the fundimentalists.
c) Deliver aid to disaster stricken areas (this worked well for Tehran during their last big quake; too bad Bush squandered all that good will)
Again - the right thing to do. Whether it really gets the US any milage or not would be debatable. The US is involved with a lot of humanitarian efforts. Yet it constantly gets shot at. Kind deeds only go so far.
d) Sell them freedom like we did with the USSR - with a radio free Middle East approach
The USSR crumbled not because of propoganda but because of economics. Yeah - I agree that freedom is a good thing. We should try to convince that part of the world this. But this is too easily wrapped up in the "West destroys our culture" meme.
And failing all that, we can simply wipe them out economically with: e) A Manhattan project-sized push for alternative energy in the West
That would be very cool. I would completely agree with this. And... in this day and age where survival may be linked to oil... one could justify the expense of removing ourselves from oil dependancy.
The reason that is is that a good visual effect is one that doesn't appear "all that spectacular."
One great example of this is Forrest Gump. This movie received numerous awards for its special effects (including the 1995 Oscar for visual effects) despite not being known as a special effects movie.
Personally I wouldn't be shocked if a scandal broke that various journalists were part of a clandestine "psyops" operation to influence US public opinion with relation to Bush's policies.
I don't see why you would expect anything so outwardly illegal. Why would you need a national intelligence agency to do this? The system is already set to be gamed. And there's a whole slew of people who know how to do it. After all, there's not really that much of a difference between the messages "stay the course" and "the suit is back!"
Sure - you would simply go out and hire a PR firm. The risk of someone in that firm not sharing your political views would be too great (and come to think of it, the same thing applies to Government agents - there ARE idealists and patriots in Federal employment). But there are plenty of free agents around and likely you can pick and choose a number of them who are True Believers in the cause.
One point is being missed here: how did they find these 0days? It's easy - they just study the source code and find flaws.
This is the other side of the "many eyes make bugs shallow" coin: many eyes make exploits shallow too. If your bad guys are more motivated than your good guys to find exploitable bugs (and why not, if they're worth $10K each!), open source can be inherently less secure than closed source.
Bigger names than yours have made the same claims in bigger forums than Slashdot. The idea is far from being novel. And it is far from being accepted as a complete truth.
Sure - source code does make bug hunting easier. It is reasonable to expect that access to source code would provide a useful tool for development of an exploit. But such access is far from required. Exploits for proprietary, closed source applications have and continue to be developed. And they are every bit as effective as ones developed with aid of access to source code. This doesn't even consider the bugaboo of having your source code "stolen" - a PR nightmare that a couple major names in the IT industry had to face not so long ago.
It's just good that Firefox has only 10% of the market. If it ever goes over 50% we're in for a security nightmare.
And we've also heard this time and time again. It will be interesting to see how it pans out. One thing to consider is that Firefox is not the only Open Source application to ever go under scrutiny. However, that may be a bit of apples-and-oranges as Firefox does represent a different type of application. The best one can do is look at the numbers today and make some judgements on the future. Firefox shouldn't be considered a silver bullet. But its track record isn't that bad.
There's been complaints for years and years at Mozilla over the dubious quality of some of the Debian patches, not to mention the very large amount of them (Debian users have a hard time getting support in the Mozilla IRC channels because there's a thousand and one new weird issues that are unique to Debian)
I may be witnessing this myself. I've had an odd issue with Debian's Firefox package for the last several revisions. When my laptop is out of its dock (and sans double monitors), Firefox runs but there is no Firefox window. In the dock, Firefox works as expected. The standard stand-alone package from Firefox's site works fine.
Sure - I'll be opening up a bug report with Debian. After I've got a bit more of an understanding of other variables. That's part of the process and I have no issue with it.
However, this issue does seem to demonstrate where the Firefox folks are coming from.
Slashdot Mirror
This war was started in 1990 with Iraqi aggression. And while a cease-fire was in place for around 10 years, the war had not ended. Nor were the terms of the cease-fire maintained.
I'm sure you have something to back up this line of thought.
You do realize that the (former) male prostitute that outed said evangelical minister has stated his motivation WAS, in fact, political and due to upcoming elections? Apparently the minister in question is an active figure in defeating same-sex marriage legislation and other "gay rights" causes.
Which.. of course... doesn't mean every act in the world is timed just right to have the maximum political clout. Or that those who claim otherwise have any true insight.
I also understand he was responsible for trippling the population of African elephants during his lifetime.
Why does everything have to be a partisan issue? When we had an article that questioned Venezuelan connections to Sequoia Voting Systems, we got responses about this being a counter to Diebold conspiracies and ample Bush bashing. Now we're equating Diebold's troubles with Slashdot in-jokes and Democrat sour grapes. These are all symptoms of the same problem.
This is something that goes beyond this polarized mental sickness that's seized our political mindset. How these systems work threatens even the most fundimental aspects of our politics. Whether that system is under attack now or not is a very valid discussion - but ultimately moot in this context. If the system is flawed, it WILL be under attack later if not sooner. We had best be concerned that we are allowing a system to go in place that has some degree of checks which will stand up to all enemies of our political process - foreign or domestic (Democrat or Republican).
And you don't see an issue with having to lie like that?
Meanwhile... I've been playing WoW under Cedega rather happily from day 1 (but not without some issues).
I would like to note an interesting occurance. Last Friday, Blizzard did something that caused all Cedega users to crash. Nobody has really come up with the story on what it was. But it didn't seem to involve a client update. And it seemed to be universal to all Cedega users. This occured late Friday night.
Others noted that they were able to get Wine to run WoW. I updated my copy (Debian Unstable), tweaked my WoW settings to force OpenGL, and away I went. I was rather suprised. Wine handles WoW fairly nicely. But it wasn't as fast as Cedega. And there were times when I ran in to glaring video artifacts (I understand there's a WoW-specific patch out there that'll fix this). I was very tempted to cancel my Cedega subscription.
Within 24hrs, Transgaming had an update for Cedega to fix the WoW issue. That's late Saturday night. Not bad. I'm keeping my subscription for now.
The problem is that the majority of the public seem to think that the war that started in 1990 had ended.
Don't sell yourself short. I would say it was even more petty.
I'm not sure what your point is here. If it's that Open Source isn't just the GPL - point taken. But I suspect you're saying more.
Lyons tends to show BSD in a favorable light - mainly because he likes using it as a club to beat on Linux. That doesn't make him a fan of Open Source... or BSD.
As for axes to grind - Stallman and the FSF clearly have one. They come right out and say it. The GPL license is as much a manifesto as legal document. Pointing out that they have an agenda is demonstrating the obvious. It doesn't negate the fact that Lyons also has an agenda and that this attack piece is part of it.
Not at all. Mozilla Corporation is, in fact, the Mozilla Foundation. It is all a non-profit entity. It all deals with Open Source software.
The Mozilla Foundation is quite a different animal than Microsoft.
Does Microsoft pay for that kind of work?
Pots of money. Sure - its Federal dollars. But because of the oddities of Federal spending and budgets, one Fed dollar isn't the same as another Fed dollar. It's one thing to say "you will implement this program at whatever cost" and an entirely different matter to say "you will implement this program with this extra pot of money we're allocating to your organization."
When I was a kid, my grandparents sent me a package that consisted of various anti-D&D literature. I was rather amused that some of it wasn't the normal Chick Tract drek. There was actual talk about psycological behavior and impact - pretty much the same ideas we now refer to as Skinner Box mechanics. This is the very same cautionary tales we now see applied to online games.
Of course, as interesting as the literature was, it came literally packaged with other examples that clearly painted D&D as the evil menace. It all came from a workshop my grandparents attended from their church. Their intents were well-meaning, but clearly misplaced.
From my perspective, there doesn't seem to be much difference between the keyboard and pen-and-paper.
These games are different things to different people. Granted - everyone gets access to the same mechanisms and exposed to the same elements. But how they use them is the difference.
I don't enjoy WoW by trading time for power. I agree... that's got limited appeal. But I do seek that power none the less. Not for its own sake, but as a tool to enable me to do other things.
What I enjoy about WoW is achieving goals and overcoming obsticles... and doing so with a group of other people (even though the occasional rogue-solo IS its own fun). Its a blast to have a group of folks working together like clockwork to take out some instance boss that seems impossible the first run. There's also a satisfaction in forming up a group to take out some griefers preying on your faction or, woe to them, your guildmates.
All this is made easier by the appropriate level, skills, and / or gear. So the skinner box concept remains in full effect. But the difference is that having gotten the Grand Fob of Power isn't as much satisfaction as having killed the Big Lizard who dropped it. Or using the Grand Fob of Power to unlock the Big Door so that our group can go on to the next challenge (or knowing our crew are equiped with Wizziwigs of Woe that'll rip up the next griefer jumping folks on the transport ship).
It's funny that you say that... I seem to remember people asking for just that when you made the connection in your speech.
That's a great list of, to put very lightly, embarassments of US involvement in Iraq. What's it got to do with the current discussion? The point was that a positive portrayal of Muslims in media doesn't start with Bush as an end-boss. I missed the game from the West where you're challenged to build the highest "butt pyramid".
Having said that... your other off-topic points...
Good idea. However, very Western. Such behavior would simply fan the flames of the fundimentalists who would see this kind of thing as further proof of Western ideals eroding their culture. Which in turn becomes part of the reason to fight the west. And the next piece of recruitment propoganda.
Agreed. Even if we're not required to follow the Geneva Convention in these cases... it would be the right thing to do. A pity that proper behavior is overshadowed by cases of savagery. We might as well hand over propoganda to the fundimentalists.
Again - the right thing to do. Whether it really gets the US any milage or not would be debatable. The US is involved with a lot of humanitarian efforts. Yet it constantly gets shot at. Kind deeds only go so far.
The USSR crumbled not because of propoganda but because of economics. Yeah - I agree that freedom is a good thing. We should try to convince that part of the world this. But this is too easily wrapped up in the "West destroys our culture" meme.
That would be very cool. I would completely agree with this. And... in this day and age where survival may be linked to oil... one could justify the expense of removing ourselves from oil dependancy.
One great example of this is Forrest Gump. This movie received numerous awards for its special effects (including the 1995 Oscar for visual effects) despite not being known as a special effects movie.
I don't see why you would expect anything so outwardly illegal. Why would you need a national intelligence agency to do this? The system is already set to be gamed. And there's a whole slew of people who know how to do it. After all, there's not really that much of a difference between the messages "stay the course" and "the suit is back!"
Sure - you would simply go out and hire a PR firm. The risk of someone in that firm not sharing your political views would be too great (and come to think of it, the same thing applies to Government agents - there ARE idealists and patriots in Federal employment). But there are plenty of free agents around and likely you can pick and choose a number of them who are True Believers in the cause.
Bigger names than yours have made the same claims in bigger forums than Slashdot. The idea is far from being novel. And it is far from being accepted as a complete truth.
Sure - source code does make bug hunting easier. It is reasonable to expect that access to source code would provide a useful tool for development of an exploit. But such access is far from required. Exploits for proprietary, closed source applications have and continue to be developed. And they are every bit as effective as ones developed with aid of access to source code. This doesn't even consider the bugaboo of having your source code "stolen" - a PR nightmare that a couple major names in the IT industry had to face not so long ago.
And we've also heard this time and time again. It will be interesting to see how it pans out. One thing to consider is that Firefox is not the only Open Source application to ever go under scrutiny. However, that may be a bit of apples-and-oranges as Firefox does represent a different type of application. The best one can do is look at the numbers today and make some judgements on the future. Firefox shouldn't be considered a silver bullet. But its track record isn't that bad.
I may be witnessing this myself. I've had an odd issue with Debian's Firefox package for the last several revisions. When my laptop is out of its dock (and sans double monitors), Firefox runs but there is no Firefox window. In the dock, Firefox works as expected. The standard stand-alone package from Firefox's site works fine.
Sure - I'll be opening up a bug report with Debian. After I've got a bit more of an understanding of other variables. That's part of the process and I have no issue with it.
However, this issue does seem to demonstrate where the Firefox folks are coming from.
Wait. Are we still in the 1980's?
Wait. How does "it takes a village" work in to that?
It might help some of these jokes from going over people's heads.