The microscopic mountainous country that, with some guidance of US, managed to alienate not one but three of its provinces (all three unrelated and not particularly friendly to each other) to the extent that they had to actively seek secession. Then, after years of a stalemate, Georgia government decides that the only way to fix the problem is to fire rockets at residential areas of one of those provinces' capital. All the while the same ethnicity in a similar province in Russia does not have a slightest problem with being a part of the larger country.
US propaganda tried to show you a different picture of what happened before the war there, didn't it?
NATO expands to countries that want to ensure that have nothing to fear from other NATO countries, and support if they get involved into a conflict with non-NATO countries.
None of those countries had a chance to enter into any armed conflict since the end of WWII, and certainly aren't going to have such a chance now (being mostly surrounded by EU members or having a border with something obviously peaceful like Russia or Ukraine). Georgia had conflicts, and that was the reason why it was not allowed into NATO. Speak about only getting something you don't need.
There is a reason that much of the expanding NATO is doing, invovled adding former members of the Warsaw Pact.
Yes, and the reason is, US wants to feed its military contractors and control foreign governments.
However, I do not argue that the US military-industrial complex has used NATO to expand. But That does not mean that NATO was not important, or does not still play an important role.
It doesn't.
However the fact that NATO never accomplished anything other than feeding said complex and involving foreign countries in various failures of US foreign policy, very much does mean it.
I am sure, nuclear-capable countries obtained a very good idea of destructive power of nukes without those "demonstrations". If anything, it identifies American politicians as a special kind of sick people because no one else, before or after those two bombs, even considered such a "test" or "demonstration" on living humans -- it was all empty islands, deserted areas, underground tests, etc.
Starting a fight you don't think you can win is not only risky but enormously stupid.
American logic.
The problem is, Americans want to make every fight a fight they can not possibly lose. What never happens.
Any professional soldier of any nation on this planet, as opposed to only the US, will tell you that their ideal scenario is when they can kill the enemy without any danger to themselves.
Ideal scenarios have a peculiar property of never happening in reality.
As the saying goes, if you find yourself in a fair fight you have failed to adequately plan.
What is this with Americans and the idea of "fair fight"? Can you read?
No, merely a foreigner. Some "history" only exists in American propaganda.
1) Citation? Some projections were made by people that had no knowledge of the nuke project.
Shown already.
2) America soldiers had first-hand experience that Japanese solders were fanatical killing machines, resorting to suicidal raids, and outright suicide or execution of their own soldiers and civilians. Read.
Small number of fanatics and cruelty do not translate into effectiveness on the battlefield. Americans merely were pissing their pants when they met something they could not imagine themselves doing (sacrificing one's life to accomplish a goal).
3) Japan ultimately surrendered without conditions. There was a capitulation treaty that was unacceptable to both parties. And the ultimate proof is this: Nagasaki. Even after Hiroshima, Japan refused to surrender.
This is an irrelevant formality because in fact Japan was granted everything it asked for. At most it added to humiliation of Japan, what clearly was not worth nuking two cities.
4) If you mean by "successful" that it killed a lot of people, I guess you are right. However, the firebombing did little to end the war. Keep in mind that in one night, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more than 100,000 people - more than were killed directly in BOTH atomic bomb attacks. If that's not proof that the atom bomb was the instrument that ended the war, you are an ill-educated idiot.
It does not matter -- for all practical purpose firebombing did everything nukes could do except for the light show and contamination. If you claim that the amount of firebombing was unjustified or excessively cruel for whatever amount of fear it produced (what most likely it was), then nukes did not make things any better.
5) These "cowards" walked willingly into the European front and stood with the bravest in defeating an enemy that was truly immoral. Ever hear of concentration camps, imbecile? And the Pacific campaign was considered a desperate mission likely to fail. That is why the west coast of the USA was preparing for a Japanese invasion. To imply that any of these brave soldiers had a shred of cowardice proves you a pathetic troll or a brainwashed monkey.
No, merely not American. Without the implied respect that Americans have for their military, it's clear that it always was, is, and most likely always will be a bunch of cowards. Their wet dream is to be able to kill anyone, anywhere without a slightest risk for themselves. Someone, give them a Death Note already, they will spend the rest of the military budget inventing a way to squeeze more names in it.
Cold War in the form that it taken place was started to benefit US military-industrial complex that became useless after WWII ended.
USSR over its whole history was very conservative with anything related to its expansion or influence abroad -- in fact, it was Trotsky's idea that USSR should encourage and support revolutions abroad while Stalin insisted on developing the country without provoking conflicts even if neighbors are hostile. As we know, Stalin won, and this particular aspect of his policy ended up as a cornerstone of USSR foreign policy. Even supposedly aggressive wars and expansions before WWII (Finland War, Western Ukraine and Belarus, and oh, Baltic States) were clearly defensive in their goals, and assumed that it was possible to keep long-term peace with Germany. From USSR point of view, at the end of WWII, Western allies, after years of keeping themselves away from any fighting in Europe during the war, suddenly started to act as if USSR intends to conquer Europe, NATO was formed as clearly anti-USSR pact, so USSR responded in kind (Warsaw Pact, influence over Eastern Europe), and Cold War became what it was.
Half a century later, NATO _still_ mostly provides an expanded market for US military-industrial complex and doesn't do anything else of importance -- the idea of European countries being attacked is at best laughable now, and yet NATO expands.
Well, as the title indicates, this is a debate. There are points and counterpoints by multiple historians. Please show me evidence (not a debate) that the Japanese were indeed going to sign by a certain date and not pulling for delay tactics.
As long as US propaganda workers are busy creating excuses, everything is a "debate".
Very small percentage of Japanese were involved in this (or willing to be involved in this). Americans made themselves believe that there will be a suicide bomber at every corner.
To ensure that they actually signed it and acted in accordance to it. Hostilities were still occurring while they were still "preparing". You seem to think that war is some sort of gentlemen agreement- it's not.
Nothing says "We are going to let you keep your stupid Emperor" like dropping two nukes on cities with no direct military value.
I was simply responding to your statement, "US already had a very successful firebombing campaign targeted at civilian population." You seem to think it's unfair. It was a tool in the arsenal, and the atomic weapons were a different tool.
While I indeed see that campaign as unnecessarily cruel, my point is that whatever nuclear bombings could accomplish, firebombing accomplished already.
My point indicates that we entered the war after an act of aggression, and after losing a significant potion of our pacific fleet. This is quite the opposite of your statement.
Being forced into the war does not make US military any less cowardly. Not latching onto each and every opportunity, real or imaginary, necessary or pointless, to kill with impunity, would.
No, this is indication that the US stepped up to the plate and freely provided resources after the war to assist in helping the world recover. The US didn't have to- it would have been easier to go back to it's isolationist policy. Instead, it liberated much of Europe and part of Asia from occupation then gave significant resources to recovery.
Blah-blah-blah. US seized the opportunity to create worldwide dependency on its currency while all major countries/regions' economies were in ruins. US milked all advantages of that up to this moment (and now it has credit crisis because it got accustomed to issuing debt/currency like crazy).
War sucks, and it's always easy to say you could have done a better job. In your case, you are trying to demonize an entire society who has contributed greatly to the rest of the world in recent history.
Cry me a river.
You try to paint Americans as cowards and aggressors during perhaps the most difficult and sad sagas in living memory. Frankly it's a damn shame that your bias over more recent events attempts to project this bias over history.
Americans (or at least their beloved government officials) have tendency to act like cowards and aggressors whenever faced with anything difficult or sad.
You come across as quite a hateful person, which is unfortunate as you seem quite intelligent. There's not much that any nation at that time has to be proud of, on any side. To single out the Americans as the bad guys is really putting things in an out of reality perspective.
15 years ago when I have moved to US, I had a much better opinion of Americans -- I thought, they had an improvement over the last half a century comparable to improvement in other developed societies. Now, after seeing you for a decade and a half, I can at most recognize that some people are relatively sane given the circumstances, however the society as a whole is just as thoroughly rotten as it was in the times of WWI, Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, etc.
We didn't literally hand them paper money, you ignorant fool.
No one actually worked for free -- US issued more of its currency backed by foreign goods and labor. This allowed US to establish the use of dollar in international trade, what subsequently allowed to manipulate that trade (in particular oil/energy), and in the end switch to obtaining foreign goods "for free" by racking up trade deficit and paying with its own government's debt and other forms of debt. Current "mortgage crisis" is actually the first instance when this scheme started falling apart -- US ran out of its own consumers who could be used as a reliable conduit in a debt-to-goods scheme.
Materials and services were provided for free.
"Free" goods were only provided DURING the war. Most of them were of questionable quality, though it's completely irrelevant to post-WWII arrangements.
First talks were started almost month before the surrender. The talks between Japan, US and Russia spent a month bickering about calling the surrender "unconditional", and in fact Japan ended up keeping everything it tried to keep. It boggles my mind how splitting diplomatic hairs could be considered worth two cities being nuked.
I've thought a lot about this situation, and on reflection I think the way it went down was probably (as horrible as this sounds) a best-case. Nuclear weapon technology was coming. The soviets were going to have it eventually, we got to it first and we dropped the only two we had.
So the true reason for bombing Japan was threatening USSR?
Congratulations, this is a plausible explanation. Too bad, I am Russian.
#2: Kamakazi pilots were the original suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are ineffective in battle.
#3: It's war- you play to win. With that threat, it strongly encouraged the Japanese to quickly sign the treaty and stick to it.
Japanese already prepared to sign the treaty. What the fuck else could Americans want?
#4: So did Germany. If one side ups the ante, you don't have much of a choice but to ante up yourself or fold (surrender).
I don't see an argument here. When Germany did that, it was very effective at both killing people and conquering territory. So was US in Japan. How did two nukes change this situation?
For #5, I do believe we entered the war after the Japanese kicked the shit out of us at Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack.
How is it relevant?
You forgot #6: The US Government financed the rebuilding of Europe (after kicking the shit out of the Nazis), and forgave all that debt.
Was printing green paper supposed to be a justification of nuclear bombing of Japan or given as a proof of great bravery?
1. Projected deaths were artificially inflated to justify the use of nukes. 2. Racist Americans assumed Japanese soldiers to be fanatical killing machines. 3. US and Japan already were prepared to sign a capitulation treaty that was an equivalent of one that ended up being signed after the bombing. 4. US already had a very successful firebombing campaign targeted at civilian population.
And last but not least:
5. US military is widely celebrated as a bunch of extraordinary cowards who go to war only after being convinced that they will kill their enemies without endangering themselves. Said bunch of cowards always acts surprised and terrified when their invincible warriors end up dead or captured, and proclaims that it only happens because their enemies are immoral war criminals.
For games the subscription model works because individual games are cheap, and users want to new games to become available to them, so even if they just buy games, they end up spending some amount of their money per month, paying it to the same game publishers. Subscription model does not make them pay more or exert significantly more control over users, however it provides convenience. And users usually still can get their own copies of the games that last forever.
With services subscription fees work because services usually provide something that can't be achieved by most users by merely installing and maintaining something locally. Say, Livejournal provides community aggregation and interaction that can not be easily implemented by individual users running their own blog sites. Still all "major" blogs are all hosted on their own sites because they do not need Livejournal features but benefit from the author having full control over all aspects of the site.
With OS and major applications the products are expensive (unless they are free), they don't change significantly, and OS/application vendors usually provide patches for free to all users who bought the product from them, so subscription provides no advantages and plenty of disadvantages. Support may take form of subscription, and in the case of free/open application it may be the only thing user will be willing to pay for, however it does not change the way user accesses and uses the product, only the way he obtains support for it.
Neither Linux 2.4, nor Ubuntu 8.04 were known as major failures. Later versions improved on something that already was decent (with various amount of changes -- obviously there are more differences between Linux 2.4 and 2.6 than between incremental distro versions).
Vista, on the other hand, is widely recognized as a failure, full of both design and implementation mistakes. Incremental changes can't solve this.
Are you willing to pay higher taxes to offer streaming in several formats?
Yes.
If yes, please go lobby the administration.
Lobbying is literally millions times more expensive than total increase in taxes to implement this. Hell, a plane ticket from most of US to Washington is more expensive than total cost of configuring the whole thing.
If no, then would you rather they not offer any kind of user-friendly way to stream video? I would say "make it like youtube" is a critical requirement for the website.
You are ignorant and likely also stupid.
They can stream it in Ogg Theora (that would be completely open format, completely open codec and completely open software) or any incarnation of MPEG (they all have free software implementations and therefore supported). The only reason for Flash being used as a player is the fact that Microsoft Media Player never was distributed with a decent set of codecs. The use of plugins and external players for video predates Flash by many years, however every time anyone implemented it, there were millions of users who discovered that their Windows Media Player, the only players they had, supported the set of codecs that no one wanted to use for streaming. It was easier to force users to install Flash plugin, a completely unrelated application that happens to include a better video player than to distribute a codec in any other way.
Now Microsoft, instead of fixing its mistake and including codecs with Media Player, pushes an even more retarded application trying to out-Adobe the Adobe -- except, of course, without support for any OS other than Windows.
Why would property be expensive in a healthy economy in the first place? It's not US, where all wealth comes from ability to print money and stuff them into pockets of consumers by all kind of idiotic means including overpriced cardboard houses. In China people actually make stuff.
And how is this any different from Americans? Other than, of course, Chinese not messing with other countries regardless on their point of view on the quality of governments there.
The name was supposed to be this sequence of characters: Александр Валерьевич Белиц , however Slashdot "validated" it into oblivion, so all I can do is to post them as codes.
To use your example, if there's a law saying you can't use non-alphabetical characters in a legal name, then test for those characters.
My full name is actually . AFAIK, it doesn't mean "drop table" in anything, however some characters that it contains were known to wreak havoc in all kinds of communication software, databases and text editors. They are STILL used for messing with domain names, URLs, bulletin board wordfilters and other things written with wrong assumptions.
What the fuck is wrong with Microsofties now? Office 2007 toolbar has the very same UI model that Microsoft trolls dissed tirelessly in OLPC Sugar interface -- except, of course, with more tab menu navigation and none of the consistency.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes, Georgia.
The microscopic mountainous country that, with some guidance of US, managed to alienate not one but three of its provinces (all three unrelated and not particularly friendly to each other) to the extent that they had to actively seek secession. Then, after years of a stalemate, Georgia government decides that the only way to fix the problem is to fire rockets at residential areas of one of those provinces' capital. All the while the same ethnicity in a similar province in Russia does not have a slightest problem with being a part of the larger country.
US propaganda tried to show you a different picture of what happened before the war there, didn't it?
NATO expands to countries that want to ensure that have nothing to fear from other NATO countries, and support if they get involved into a conflict with non-NATO countries.
None of those countries had a chance to enter into any armed conflict since the end of WWII, and certainly aren't going to have such a chance now (being mostly surrounded by EU members or having a border with something obviously peaceful like Russia or Ukraine). Georgia had conflicts, and that was the reason why it was not allowed into NATO. Speak about only getting something you don't need.
There is a reason that much of the expanding NATO is doing, invovled adding former members of the Warsaw Pact.
Yes, and the reason is, US wants to feed its military contractors and control foreign governments.
However, I do not argue that the US military-industrial complex has used NATO to expand. But That does not mean that NATO was not important, or does not still play an important role.
It doesn't.
However the fact that NATO never accomplished anything other than feeding said complex and involving foreign countries in various failures of US foreign policy, very much does mean it.
I am sure, nuclear-capable countries obtained a very good idea of destructive power of nukes without those "demonstrations". If anything, it identifies American politicians as a special kind of sick people because no one else, before or after those two bombs, even considered such a "test" or "demonstration" on living humans -- it was all empty islands, deserted areas, underground tests, etc.
Killing (and especially raping) unarmed civilians does not count as a battle skill.
Starting a fight you don't think you can win is not only risky but enormously stupid.
American logic.
The problem is, Americans want to make every fight a fight they can not possibly lose. What never happens.
Any professional soldier of any nation on this planet, as opposed to only the US, will tell you that their ideal scenario is when they can kill the enemy without any danger to themselves.
Ideal scenarios have a peculiar property of never happening in reality.
As the saying goes, if you find yourself in a fair fight you have failed to adequately plan.
What is this with Americans and the idea of "fair fight"? Can you read?
You poor pathetic product of revisionist history.
No, merely a foreigner. Some "history" only exists in American propaganda.
1) Citation? Some projections were made by people that had no knowledge of the nuke project.
Shown already.
2) America soldiers had first-hand experience that Japanese solders were fanatical killing machines, resorting to suicidal raids, and outright suicide or execution of their own soldiers and civilians. Read.
Small number of fanatics and cruelty do not translate into effectiveness on the battlefield. Americans merely were pissing their pants when they met something they could not imagine themselves doing (sacrificing one's life to accomplish a goal).
3) Japan ultimately surrendered without conditions. There was a capitulation treaty that was unacceptable to both parties. And the ultimate proof is this: Nagasaki. Even after Hiroshima, Japan refused to surrender.
This is an irrelevant formality because in fact Japan was granted everything it asked for. At most it added to humiliation of Japan, what clearly was not worth nuking two cities.
4) If you mean by "successful" that it killed a lot of people, I guess you are right. However, the firebombing did little to end the war. Keep in mind that in one night, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more than 100,000 people - more than were killed directly in BOTH atomic bomb attacks. If that's not proof that the atom bomb was the instrument that ended the war, you are an ill-educated idiot.
It does not matter -- for all practical purpose firebombing did everything nukes could do except for the light show and contamination. If you claim that the amount of firebombing was unjustified or excessively cruel for whatever amount of fear it produced (what most likely it was), then nukes did not make things any better.
5) These "cowards" walked willingly into the European front and stood with the bravest in defeating an enemy that was truly immoral. Ever hear of concentration camps, imbecile? And the Pacific campaign was considered a desperate mission likely to fail. That is why the west coast of the USA was preparing for a Japanese invasion. To imply that any of these brave soldiers had a shred of cowardice proves you a pathetic troll or a brainwashed monkey.
No, merely not American. Without the implied respect that Americans have for their military, it's clear that it always was, is, and most likely always will be a bunch of cowards. Their wet dream is to be able to kill anyone, anywhere without a slightest risk for themselves. Someone, give them a Death Note already, they will spend the rest of the military budget inventing a way to squeeze more names in it.
"NO ONE ON OUR SIDE WILL BE KILLED! I GUARANTEE IT!" is not a strategy. It is the only way to convince a coward to fight.
Cold War in the form that it taken place was started to benefit US military-industrial complex that became useless after WWII ended.
USSR over its whole history was very conservative with anything related to its expansion or influence abroad -- in fact, it was Trotsky's idea that USSR should encourage and support revolutions abroad while Stalin insisted on developing the country without provoking conflicts even if neighbors are hostile. As we know, Stalin won, and this particular aspect of his policy ended up as a cornerstone of USSR foreign policy. Even supposedly aggressive wars and expansions before WWII (Finland War, Western Ukraine and Belarus, and oh, Baltic States) were clearly defensive in their goals, and assumed that it was possible to keep long-term peace with Germany. From USSR point of view, at the end of WWII, Western allies, after years of keeping themselves away from any fighting in Europe during the war, suddenly started to act as if USSR intends to conquer Europe, NATO was formed as clearly anti-USSR pact, so USSR responded in kind (Warsaw Pact, influence over Eastern Europe), and Cold War became what it was.
Half a century later, NATO _still_ mostly provides an expanded market for US military-industrial complex and doesn't do anything else of importance -- the idea of European countries being attacked is at best laughable now, and yet NATO expands.
Well, as the title indicates, this is a debate. There are points and counterpoints by multiple historians. Please show me evidence (not a debate) that the Japanese were indeed going to sign by a certain date and not pulling for delay tactics.
As long as US propaganda workers are busy creating excuses, everything is a "debate".
Very small percentage of Japanese were involved in this (or willing to be involved in this). Americans made themselves believe that there will be a suicide bomber at every corner.
To ensure that they actually signed it and acted in accordance to it. Hostilities were still occurring while they were still "preparing". You seem to think that war is some sort of gentlemen agreement- it's not.
Nothing says "We are going to let you keep your stupid Emperor" like dropping two nukes on cities with no direct military value.
I was simply responding to your statement, "US already had a very successful firebombing campaign targeted at civilian population." You seem to think it's unfair. It was a tool in the arsenal, and the atomic weapons were a different tool.
While I indeed see that campaign as unnecessarily cruel, my point is that whatever nuclear bombings could accomplish, firebombing accomplished already.
My point indicates that we entered the war after an act of aggression, and after losing a significant potion of our pacific fleet. This is quite the opposite of your statement.
Being forced into the war does not make US military any less cowardly. Not latching onto each and every opportunity, real or imaginary, necessary or pointless, to kill with impunity, would.
No, this is indication that the US stepped up to the plate and freely provided resources after the war to assist in helping the world recover. The US didn't have to- it would have been easier to go back to it's isolationist policy. Instead, it liberated much of Europe and part of Asia from occupation then gave significant resources to recovery.
Blah-blah-blah. US seized the opportunity to create worldwide dependency on its currency while all major countries/regions' economies were in ruins. US milked all advantages of that up to this moment (and now it has credit crisis because it got accustomed to issuing debt/currency like crazy).
War sucks, and it's always easy to say you could have done a better job. In your case, you are trying to demonize an entire society who has contributed greatly to the rest of the world in recent history.
Cry me a river.
You try to paint Americans as cowards and aggressors during perhaps the most difficult and sad sagas in living memory. Frankly it's a damn shame that your bias over more recent events attempts to project this bias over history.
Americans (or at least their beloved government officials) have tendency to act like cowards and aggressors whenever faced with anything difficult or sad.
You come across as quite a hateful person, which is unfortunate as you seem quite intelligent. There's not much that any nation at that time has to be proud of, on any side. To single out the Americans as the bad guys is really putting things in an out of reality perspective.
15 years ago when I have moved to US, I had a much better opinion of Americans -- I thought, they had an improvement over the last half a century comparable to improvement in other developed societies. Now, after seeing you for a decade and a half, I can at most recognize that some people are relatively sane given the circumstances, however the society as a whole is just as thoroughly rotten as it was in the times of WWI, Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, etc.
We didn't literally hand them paper money, you ignorant fool.
No one actually worked for free -- US issued more of its currency backed by foreign goods and labor. This allowed US to establish the use of dollar in international trade, what subsequently allowed to manipulate that trade (in particular oil/energy), and in the end switch to obtaining foreign goods "for free" by racking up trade deficit and paying with its own government's debt and other forms of debt. Current "mortgage crisis" is actually the first instance when this scheme started falling apart -- US ran out of its own consumers who could be used as a reliable conduit in a debt-to-goods scheme.
Materials and services were provided for free.
"Free" goods were only provided DURING the war. Most of them were of questionable quality, though it's completely irrelevant to post-WWII arrangements.
First talks were started almost month before the surrender. The talks between Japan, US and Russia spent a month bickering about calling the surrender "unconditional", and in fact Japan ended up keeping everything it tried to keep. It boggles my mind how splitting diplomatic hairs could be considered worth two cities being nuked.
Conviction is not the same as truth, and cowardice does not guarantee safety.
I've thought a lot about this situation, and on reflection I think the way it went down was probably (as horrible as this sounds) a best-case. Nuclear weapon technology was coming. The soviets were going to have it eventually, we got to it first and we dropped the only two we had.
So the true reason for bombing Japan was threatening USSR?
Congratulations, this is a plausible explanation. Too bad, I am Russian.
#1: Source please.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Militarily_unnecessary
and everything quoted in it.
#2: Kamakazi pilots were the original suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are ineffective in battle.
#3: It's war- you play to win. With that threat, it strongly encouraged the Japanese to quickly sign the treaty and stick to it.
Japanese already prepared to sign the treaty. What the fuck else could Americans want?
#4: So did Germany. If one side ups the ante, you don't have much of a choice but to ante up yourself or fold (surrender).
I don't see an argument here. When Germany did that, it was very effective at both killing people and conquering territory. So was US in Japan. How did two nukes change this situation?
For #5, I do believe we entered the war after the Japanese kicked the shit out of us at Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack.
How is it relevant?
You forgot #6:
The US Government financed the rebuilding of Europe (after kicking the shit out of the Nazis), and forgave all that debt.
Was printing green paper supposed to be a justification of nuclear bombing of Japan or given as a proof of great bravery?
1. Projected deaths were artificially inflated to justify the use of nukes.
2. Racist Americans assumed Japanese soldiers to be fanatical killing machines.
3. US and Japan already were prepared to sign a capitulation treaty that was an equivalent of one that ended up being signed after the bombing.
4. US already had a very successful firebombing campaign targeted at civilian population.
And last but not least:
5. US military is widely celebrated as a bunch of extraordinary cowards who go to war only after being convinced that they will kill their enemies without endangering themselves. Said bunch of cowards always acts surprised and terrified when their invincible warriors end up dead or captured, and proclaims that it only happens because their enemies are immoral war criminals.
For games the subscription model works because individual games are cheap, and users want to new games to become available to them, so even if they just buy games, they end up spending some amount of their money per month, paying it to the same game publishers. Subscription model does not make them pay more or exert significantly more control over users, however it provides convenience. And users usually still can get their own copies of the games that last forever.
With services subscription fees work because services usually provide something that can't be achieved by most users by merely installing and maintaining something locally. Say, Livejournal provides community aggregation and interaction that can not be easily implemented by individual users running their own blog sites. Still all "major" blogs are all hosted on their own sites because they do not need Livejournal features but benefit from the author having full control over all aspects of the site.
With OS and major applications the products are expensive (unless they are free), they don't change significantly, and OS/application vendors usually provide patches for free to all users who bought the product from them, so subscription provides no advantages and plenty of disadvantages. Support may take form of subscription, and in the case of free/open application it may be the only thing user will be willing to pay for, however it does not change the way user accesses and uses the product, only the way he obtains support for it.
Neither Linux 2.4, nor Ubuntu 8.04 were known as major failures. Later versions improved on something that already was decent (with various amount of changes -- obviously there are more differences between Linux 2.4 and 2.6 than between incremental distro versions).
Vista, on the other hand, is widely recognized as a failure, full of both design and implementation mistakes. Incremental changes can't solve this.
You mean, Walmart does not undercut the prices of locally produced goods, destroying the producers along with retailers?
Or you mean that any company that only serves local community is a retailer and/or worthless?
Are you willing to pay higher taxes to offer streaming in several formats?
Yes.
If yes, please go lobby the administration.
Lobbying is literally millions times more expensive than total increase in taxes to implement this. Hell, a plane ticket from most of US to Washington is more expensive than total cost of configuring the whole thing.
If no, then would you rather they not offer any kind of user-friendly way to stream video? I would say "make it like youtube" is a critical requirement for the website.
You are ignorant and likely also stupid.
They can stream it in Ogg Theora (that would be completely open format, completely open codec and completely open software) or any incarnation of MPEG (they all have free software implementations and therefore supported). The only reason for Flash being used as a player is the fact that Microsoft Media Player never was distributed with a decent set of codecs. The use of plugins and external players for video predates Flash by many years, however every time anyone implemented it, there were millions of users who discovered that their Windows Media Player, the only players they had, supported the set of codecs that no one wanted to use for streaming. It was easier to force users to install Flash plugin, a completely unrelated application that happens to include a better video player than to distribute a codec in any other way.
Now Microsoft, instead of fixing its mistake and including codecs with Media Player, pushes an even more retarded application trying to out-Adobe the Adobe -- except, of course, without support for any OS other than Windows.
Why would property be expensive in a healthy economy in the first place? It's not US, where all wealth comes from ability to print money and stuff them into pockets of consumers by all kind of idiotic means including overpriced cardboard houses. In China people actually make stuff.
And how is this any different from Americans? Other than, of course, Chinese not messing with other countries regardless on their point of view on the quality of governments there.
Just like Santa Claus?
WAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
The name was supposed to be this sequence of characters: Александр Валерьевич Белиц , however Slashdot "validated" it into oblivion, so all I can do is to post them as codes.
To use your example, if there's a law saying you can't use non-alphabetical characters in a legal name, then test for those characters.
My full name is actually . AFAIK, it doesn't mean "drop table" in anything, however some characters that it contains were known to wreak havoc in all kinds of communication software, databases and text editors. They are STILL used for messing with domain names, URLs, bulletin board wordfilters and other things written with wrong assumptions.
O RLY?
What the fuck is wrong with Microsofties now? Office 2007 toolbar has the very same UI model that Microsoft trolls dissed tirelessly in OLPC Sugar interface -- except, of course, with more tab menu navigation and none of the consistency.
Like what, tax credit for gambling losses?