But the government WASN'T funding Theo and Co. They were sending the money off to Mr. Smith at U Penn and he was redirecting the money in question. The fact is that DARPA money cannot directly fund work outside the US so this method was being used.
Who knows? Maybe U Penn was getting a little sloppy with their accounting and it get yanked because of that.
"However," she adds, "we'll consider dropping the suit if Mr. Barge agrees to a lifetime membership in Columbia House or the BMG Group's record club."
IIRC, the record companies don't pay royalties to the artists on the sales through these companies. That way they get to screw the consumer AND the artist at the same time.
So, now let me get this straight. We've got the Bechtel's and the Haliburton's of the world running the US government? You have any particular proof of this? You so far have offerred none.
You continue to "rebuff" points by offerring snide comments, half-truths, and poorly supported innuendoes. (Since you want to get personal about the whole thing.)
This all started with the accusation that the statue toppling "scene" in Bagdad was a staged event complete with "carefully controlled" camera angles and "fake Iraqis" being bussed in to attend and make the "crowd" seem larger.
My original point was that I watched that particular event live on CNN while I was staying in Switzerland. There was no carefully controlled camera angles. In fact they spent the bulk of the time on a rather wide angle shot of the plaza and you could see tanks moving around on the street circle blocking cars and the like.
The fact that the Iraqi regime had just decided to leave that very morning certainly would lend a lot of credence to a very small group of people being willing to risk a public display against Saddam Hussein. You may remember that a lot of people would disappear if they acted like that.
So, then we go off on the tangent about how corporate interests are ruling the US (you continue to use the derogatory word regime when referring to our government) yet provide NO backing to your statement. You point to Halliburton and Bechtel, but where's the meat to your accusation? The rebuilding contract? Hardly. Cheap oil? It's the last thing the industry wants. Iraq's infrastructure is so badly damaged that it'll probably be 10 years before they can make a significant amount of production. Not to mention that it will take years to resolve the whole ownership issue as Iraq was state run with their fields.
Is it too hard to believe that there was actually a justification for this war or does it have to be a Corporate Conspiracy?
About the quote from the poll. The point was rather important. For some reason the American public got a wrong impression. The article points to the news organizations for creating that impression. Here's more from the article: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said he thinks the TV networks' news coverage has helped sell the Saddam-al Qaeda connection. "Suddenly, it was Osama, Osama, Osama... Saddam, Saddam, Saddam... and the networks -- the broadcast media -- simply picked that up [and] transferred our feelings of alarm and anger from one villain to another." Some critics blame the cable news networks for helping make Iraq the new enemy. "They use essentially the kind of logos, martial music, and so on that we saw after Gulf War One had started," Krugman said. "So, from the point of view of the American public, Iraq is already the enemy; we're already at war."
So, I guess the US media is in on the "American Regime" conspiracy too? (That's two more paragraphs from the article, does that count as enough context now?)
You continue with the personal attacks, but hey I guess that's to be expected.
Again, we go back to the original issue that started this debate: FWI, read article [yahoo.com] about how the widely televised pull-down of the statue of Sadam was mostly staged and the people playing the role of the local Iraqis were really henchmen for Chalabi that had been flown in to put on a show.
You started off with a terribly weakly supported accusation. I pointed out that it was at best an opinion piece and that everything that the US was being accussed applied equally to the "principled" countries that weren't supporting the war. Simple as that. Instead you had to continue pursuing the Corporate Conspiracy angle why providing no evidence, just a couple of suppositions, and ignoring the other reasons for the conflict.
Wow, too bad you are having so much difficulty showing people the "light".
Well, let's look at a few interesting things instead. How about the US's decision to disregard European copyrights back during the formation of the country? Seems that in order to build a local publishing business they needed some creative works to publish. Most of that was coming out of Europe and the US publishing houses were free to republish these works without paying any royalties. So, we jump started our publishing business by "stealing" from others.
Now, we jump forward to today. We have a bunch of record companies complaining about how music downloading is "stealing" and causing loss of sales. Now, when you actually look at the numbers we find that during the height of Napster sales actually increased. Additionally, we look at testimonials from people like Janis Ian and we find that the publicity of these P2P sites and free downloads on their web sites have lead to, wait for it, increased sales.
So, this only benefits the obscure, you might argue. Wrong. Look at Eminem's previous album (before 8 Mile). It was the most "pirated" album on the P2P networks and bootleg CD's for an entire week before the album went on sale. Guess what, he still enjoyed record sales when it came out.
Meanwhile the same companies that have been crying foul in the face of this evidence are quietly signing deals with the FTC to try to make price fixing charges go away.
So, now which do you think would hurt sales more: 1) Increased publicity? 2) Artificially high prices?
I'm saying that the US government's evaluation of what is and is not important is skewed by corporate interests. What interests are skewing the evaluations? What evaluations are wrong? Be specific. General statements just don't cut it.
Primarily because it is a false dichotomy. Those were not the only two choices. We could have just stopped the sanctions a long time ago.
First, I believe I offerred more than two choices. Second, what would have happened if we simply stopped the sanctions? The sanctions were in place to punish an aggressive nation. You may recall that Iraq invaded Kuwait and caused massive amounts of damage to the country as they were being driven out. So, do we just say: 'don't do that again' and hope for the best? Also, dropping the sanctions wouldn't have removed the "issue" that Bin Laden was playing on. The only way to do that would have been to remove all US military presence in the area. So were we supposed to simply recall all of our troops and wait for Iraq to invade another country?
Now you go an flip-flop about who's running the show and talk about the American "Regime" instead of Corporate America (who's in charge?): that kind of statement combined with his current penchant for locking up Americans accused of being terrorists, without even a trial is incredibly chilling of criticism So far there have been a few cases of US citizens being detained as "material witnesses" not as accused terrorists. They are getting tons of publicity (like the Mike Hawash story) so while this is something to be concerned about I doubt we're days away from the secret police making people disappear (like they do in Iraq).
Let's see, I'm being accused of being selective in my reading and you point to the CNN/Time poll. Let's read that a little deeper: Another poll released in February asked, "Was Saddam Hussein personally involved in the September 11 attacks?" Although it is a claim the Bush administration has never made and for which there is no evidence, 72 percent said it was either very or somewhat likely. (emphasis added) So, how can the "NeoCon's" be guilty of this when they weren't running around making the charge? If you read further into the article you can see that a lot of the criticism is being directed at the very news people who created the poll and report the news.
And on to the "pre-emptive" baloney: But, the long term results for the US of that operation are highly suspect. We've now given the imprimatur of legitimacy to an international policy of pre-emptive strikes. This is such a load of horse hockey it's not even funny. Iraq was in violation of more than a dozen UN Resolutions and their cease-fire agreement. They were given 12 years to try to get their act straight including a final UNANIMOUS resolution stating that Iraq was in "material breach" of all resolutions and saying that they faced "serious consequences" if they remained in breach. Everyone agreed (including Dr. Blix) that Iraq's weapons declaration was incomplete and this was listed as one of the criteria they had to meet to avoid being in breach. The US went out of its way to gather internation support for the actions. The fact that they couldn't get it was more a result of the hypocritical actions of the other nations (which you simply try to ignore except when it comes to the lack of their approval) rather than any "Corporate NeoCon conspiracy" in the US.
So, do yourself a favor. Drop the NeoCons/Corporate Conspiracy bluster. Go to the facts and work from there. The facts are pretty straight forward.
1) 9/11 changed the whole calculus as far as national defense goes. It also showed that the threats to the US no longer came solely from nation states. 2) Some of the actions of the US government in reaction to this (the Patriot Act in particular) have been horrible over reactions. These acts were passed by all the members of the House
DareDevil may have made a good movie (haven't seen it yet), but SpiderMan made a good movie while being true to the character.
So, for the purists, the changes to Electra would be enough to upset them and dismiss the entire movie. If you're not a purist then you can get around all of the changes and look at it as pure entertainment and evaluate it that way.
Actually I thought the hulk was usually better about physics in that he usually wasn't lifting absurd things that would simply crumble.
The leaping would really be a function of how fast the muscles could contract and expand. Since he's obviously muscled to a point beyond extreme he probably could do these things. (Personally I liked in the comics when he was switching between brainless Hulk and Bruce Banner Hulk and came out of one of his rages while half-way through a leap. He paniced, created a huge crater, and came out smiling since he didn't die.)
My favorite part of the trailer has to be him hammer-throwing the tank. The barrell of a tank just MIGHT be strong enough to do that too.
And you say I'M not having a conversation based on what you're posting?!?
Anyways.
Let's see what you throw out as the reasons for your railing against the US. I am railing against the corrupting influence of capitalism in the US 1) The US government has a long history of preaching democracy to the world but acting to support fascism. Whether it is supporting the fascism of middle-eastern dictatorships because of oil, or supporting the fascism of the south american dictatorships because of the war on some drugs, or supporting the fascism of the dictatorships of the 'stans that surround Afghanistan because the military wanted bases from which to attack the taliban (for bin Laden, but also for the pipeline).
Granted the US government has taken a number of pragmatic stands and supported less than noble governments. At one point they even supported Saddam and Iraq because of the perceived greater threat from Iran. The point is that diplomacy is not a zero sum game where you simply make your principled stand and to hell with it. You have to balance your actions against your inactions and support people who you wouldn't want to invite into your home.
You want the biggest example of US hypocricy then just look at our dealings with China. We still continue to deal with them economically and only put up restrained protests against their terrible human rights record. The point is that we need China a lot more than we need them to clean up their act. Are you out in the streets protesting this and not buying anything with a "Made in China" label?
Fundamentally, we say one thing, but we do another and most of the time we do these things for the betterment of US business interests at the cost of empowerment of the people in those countries. True terrorism is about disempowerment - give these people democracy and all the other rights we claim to have in America and terrorism will practically disappear. Continue to repress these people for the benefit of American big business and you will just breed more people who feel that their only hope of ever changing the system is through violent means, that they have no voice other than the bomb in their backpack.
Now this is an interesting statement. So, we could either have continued to surround Iraq, impose crippling sanctions on the country, and further breed discontent in the Arab world by our presence (which was used by Bin Laden as his "justification" for the 9/11 atack by the way). Or, we could actually make a principled stand, try to remove a dictator that has flaunted UN Resolutions and then turn that country over to the people who have been repressed and disempowered by this man and his regime.
Guess what, we chose the latter one. It's not a good solution, it's definitely a messy one, but it's the only solution that actually offers a real chance at resolving the issue.
Now you haul out the cynic title and start throwing out platitudes: The current American regime has too much to gain by waging a never-ending war What does America have to gain from this war beyond potentially increased security? Be specific.
This one's even better: now that Sadam, who more than 50% of the US population have been convinced was responsible for 9/11, is now all gone Please cite your survey for this information. After all, all of the news organizations and everyone screamed quite loud and long criticizing Bush's allegations about the Iraq/al Qaeda link. And you can stop with the fear mongering in the next sentence. (Strangely, you complain about the administration using fear to gain more power and yet you throw it around yourself right afterwords.)
The war in Iraq was a terrible thing. It's a shame that it had to be fought, but what was the other alternative? Inspections had already had over 10 years to try to work. How much longer were they supposed to be given? Should we have simply removed the sanctions and hoped for the best? Or, should we have just co
Frankly I don't really think having a full receipt will increase or decrease fraud. Granted a vote buyer could actually get confirmation rather than merely having to take your word for it, but buying individual votes is next to useless in anything larger than a local election. It would only POSSIBLY be useful if you knew that a particular vote would somehow be the deciding one and be very narrow.
I think the receipt would be a good thing overall. First off, you could have this official receipt to repudiate contested results rather than having to rely on the election people and the two parties to scrutinize and certify everything. Second, this is probably one of the few ways to really ensure that the vote you cast electronically is the vote that was recorded and counted.
Suppose we created an open-source electronic voting system that you could check your vote against?
You go to the precinct and cast your vote. When the vote is completed you get a paper printout and a hash value/confirmation number.
Then you could go back home and download the checker code. Punch in your precinct number and download the candidate list. Punch in your confirmation number and verify that it matches what you voted for.
I'm sure there are still ways around this system and probably more security measures that would need to be implemented to make it work, but what the hey, why not give it a try?
Sure, testing is a wonderful way to put the system through its paces and determine if it behaves properly.
The first problem is that each company that builds these things claims trade secret protection to the whole system so there's no way to actually audit these to the public's satisfaction.
The second thing is while the system may be trusted, the individual machines might not be. We're not just talking about software, but an entire system. Suppose one machine in your precinct is deliberately compromised and only counts votes for candidate X. How do you prove this particular problem/issue? The system already passed verification and testing. The offending box can probably be very quickly and easily reset to behave well during the investigation.
No, the only way for electronic voting to really work is to create a printed receipt. (Of course then the counting can be compromised...and we go back around the vicious circle.)
In the end, there will always be a margin of error in the voting process. The only problem is if we're trying to make a decision within that margin.
Wow, such nice and easy to swallow propaganda. Thanks for removing any and all critical thinking from your analysis.
Let's look at it slightly more clearly.
1) Iraq has only one means of generating income. Oil. That's it. They are lucky in that they can probably be almost self-sufficient agriculturally but the only way the country will have income is from oil. 2) The Ministry of Oil contains the information about their oil sales. This includes both the sanctioned and the black-market deals. How about that little pipeline running into Syria selling black market oil? 3) The US is going to probably spend over $100 Billion between the war and the rebuilding of Iraq. 4) We could have gotten all the oil we wanted out of Iraq (and probably all the sweetheart contracts too) by simply declaring Iraq in compliance and dropping sanctions. (This is what France was trying to do all along and was the reason for the original strong opposition to the formation of UNMOVIC.)
There have certainly been a bunch of bone-headed statements from the White House, but you can certainly stop chalking it up to a "War for Oil" falacy.
BTW, the last thing US Oil Co's want is cheap oil. It'll ruin them. Though I suppose that does kind of present an akward fact for the conspiracy.
I didn't bother looking at the photographs. I happened to be in Switzerland at the time and was watching the live feed on CNN. (The only 2 hour time difference made it easier to follow events from Iraq.) I remember remarking to another viewer about how it seemed to be almost as many reporters as actual Iraqis in the square. This was more as an indictment of our need for reporters than the lack of support in Iraq.
I seem to recall that the (dis)Information Minister was just up and blustering the day before this happened. The fact was that the government in Bagdad collapsed/ran away a heck of a lot faster than anyone anticipated. The reporters probably had the best indication that something was wrong when their handlers and the Minister failed to show up that morning.
I find it amazing that you're railing against the influence of capitalism in the US while casually dismissing its influence in the other countries that were taking such a "principled" stand against the war.
The facts remain quite simple. 1) Iraq had been and remained in material breach of all of its committments from the end of the first Gulf War. This breach laster for more than 11 years. 2) The UN inspectors were only allowed into Iraq because of the threat of imminent invasion. 3) France and Russia were owed massive amounts of money by Iraq and had signed huge oil contracts with Iraq to be exercised if the sanctions were ever lifted. 4) France opposed the creation of UNMOVIC back in 1998. They didn't want to have anything to do with further inspections in Iraq. 5) UN Resolution 1441 gave Iraq a final opportunity to come into compliance with UN demands or face serious consequences. Among the requirements for compliance was a "full and complete disclosure of all WMD programs and weapons". Not even Hans Blix could consider Iraq's disclosure full or complete. 6) Inspections only work with the ACTIVE cooperation of the country being inspected. Passive cooperation/lack of active stalling doesn't cut it.
The US has definitely been heavy handed in their treatment of Iraq, but in the end Iraq completely failed to live up to its requirements.
From the article: Because DARPA does not directly fund projects outside the United States, it is Mr. Smith's computer science department that received the grant, although most of the money -- $2.3-million -- flows through to Mr. de Raadt's project.
So, in this case, Mr. de Raadt was, at best, a subcontractor for the project and not the direct recipient or spokesperson for any of the money. In fact, the problem may be whether or not it was allowed to spend DARPA money in this fashion.
I suppose it sounds great to think that it's a whole "the current US government is evil beyond words" conspiracy that is yanking this project. In fact, it could be simply a contract procedures screw-up on the part of Mr. Smith.
At the very least, I guess we should try to find out a little more details about the whole thing before flying off on the whole conspiracy angle.
Such phrases as "propaganda tape" and various unsupported allegations does not discredit things at all.
Look at it this way: If we wanted Iraq's oil and oil contracts we could have gotten them so much easier than waging war. How? Simple, back room deals for lifting the UN sanctions. Of course there was the minor point that the "principled" countries of France and Russia were already trying this route and had billions of dollars in contracts lined up with Iraq if the sanctions were removed. (Not to mention all the money that Iraq owes Russia for military equipment.)
If you want to run around shouting about how money taints the whole picture then you need to look at how money was already tainting the picture.
(Oh yeah, don't forget that illegal pipeline running black market oil out of Iraq into Syria. Didn't you ever wonder where Iraq got the money to rebuild banned weapons systems and buy/build a new rocket [the Al-Samoud II] if they were under tight economic sanctions and only allowed to sell oil for food?)
I suppose those are just awkward little facts that should be ignored to make the conspiracy picture look better.
How about people do something different, innovative even instead of trying to make Linux do what XP (or fill in your favorite blank) already does?
Heh, TiVo was out long before XP's Media Center PC was even an idea. (Heck, before XP itself.)
Guess what TiVo was running on? That's right. Linux!
The point is that the first commercial company showed that it can be done on Linux and done well. The problem is that the companies that make PVR's are struggling and their terms and licenses are getting progressively worse.
So, I guess the idea is that the product no longer meets the consumers' needs so it's time to make a new product.
There's this little thing called the "Doctrine of First Sale". It is a legal construct that states that after a physical item is sold there is very little that the original owner/creator can assert over the item. This was first tested when book printers tried to "license" books and limit their use. Complete flame-out on their part in the court system.
So, let's take a look at the "contract law" dodge. Software companies have been fighting for years to place EULA's under contract law. The problem is that these are not mutually agreed upon contracts where all the terms are agreed upon up front and signed and witnessed. Instead it's a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo that you don't even get to see until AFTER the purchase.
Now, the fallacy of trying to extend these "contracts" onto hardware is completely laughable. First off, the EULA's main power comes from copyright. There's no copyright on hardware. It has taken a new legislative effort in the DMCA and the attempts to pass the UCITA to even introduce the idea of licenses for hardware. Well, those attempts have managed limited success for the license crowd but they're certainly still on less than firm footing.
I find it amazing that you think it's perfectly legal for someone to sell you something and then say "oh by the way, you can't use it except for this" AFTER the sale.
Wow, you completed missed the point. The original post was talking about how something like Palladium could be used to HIDE data from a user. We're not talking about limiting their USE of data but rather completely HIDING it from them. As the second person pointed out, the best way to keep a secret is NOT TO TELL IT. Who cares how strong a vault you put around a piece of data. If it's there, someone's going to get at it. Conversely, if it's not there, no one's going to get at it.
Rather simple actually.
Why should breaking encryption be considered illegal? I ask this in all sincerity and would like a detailed answer from you about it. (Also, why is it "grey" when the encryption is weak and the other being a Federal crime?) If anything CSS is a criminal technology as it directly infringes on enumerated rights. It clearly violates the doctrine of first sale and uses a flimsy excuse of "encryption" to enforce a region encoding scheme that has nothing to do with data security.
Umm, wouldn't that be the responsibility of the people who are crying for peace right now? In fact, the "justification" provided for the 9/11 attacks was the fact that US troops were on Muslim soil (referencing the troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). At the time Pres. Bush had a pretty hands-off approach to the whole Iraq situation and inspectors had already been expelled.
Now, you had France and many anti-war people chanting "give the inspections a chance". Well, for the inspections to work it would have required the continued presence of 200,000 troops and even more and more inspectors (France was even hinting at UN forces backing up those inspectors) in Iraq to "get the job done." Well, since this seems to be what inflamed the extremists so much wouldn't that process have just as much if not more of a chance of leading to further terrorist attacks?
Frankly the whole terrorist attack scare is just that. Terrorists will strike the US if and when they can irregardless of what we're doing in the Middle East. If not Iraq, then it'll be the "Jewish conspiracy/Israeli treatment of Palestinians" as the "justification".
You still keep falling back on the fear mongering. You have yet to draw any fact-based conclusions. Just "50 years of imperialism" and other useless emotion-based jingoism.
Please, just start with one or two simple facts. From there try to draw a conclusion. No innuendoes, no slanders, no inferences. Facts.
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But the government WASN'T funding Theo and Co. They were sending the money off to Mr. Smith at U Penn and he was redirecting the money in question. The fact is that DARPA money cannot directly fund work outside the US so this method was being used.
Who knows? Maybe U Penn was getting a little sloppy with their accounting and it get yanked because of that.
"However," she adds, "we'll consider dropping the suit if Mr. Barge agrees to a lifetime membership in Columbia House or the BMG Group's record club."
IIRC, the record companies don't pay royalties to the artists on the sales through these companies. That way they get to screw the consumer AND the artist at the same time.
So, now let me get this straight. We've got the Bechtel's and the Haliburton's of the world running the US government? You have any particular proof of this? You so far have offerred none.
... Saddam, Saddam, Saddam ... and the networks -- the broadcast media -- simply picked that up [and] transferred our feelings of alarm and anger from one villain to another."
You continue to "rebuff" points by offerring snide comments, half-truths, and poorly supported innuendoes. (Since you want to get personal about the whole thing.)
This all started with the accusation that the statue toppling "scene" in Bagdad was a staged event complete with "carefully controlled" camera angles and "fake Iraqis" being bussed in to attend and make the "crowd" seem larger.
My original point was that I watched that particular event live on CNN while I was staying in Switzerland. There was no carefully controlled camera angles. In fact they spent the bulk of the time on a rather wide angle shot of the plaza and you could see tanks moving around on the street circle blocking cars and the like.
The fact that the Iraqi regime had just decided to leave that very morning certainly would lend a lot of credence to a very small group of people being willing to risk a public display against Saddam Hussein. You may remember that a lot of people would disappear if they acted like that.
So, then we go off on the tangent about how corporate interests are ruling the US (you continue to use the derogatory word regime when referring to our government) yet provide NO backing to your statement. You point to Halliburton and Bechtel, but where's the meat to your accusation? The rebuilding contract? Hardly. Cheap oil? It's the last thing the industry wants. Iraq's infrastructure is so badly damaged that it'll probably be 10 years before they can make a significant amount of production. Not to mention that it will take years to resolve the whole ownership issue as Iraq was state run with their fields.
Is it too hard to believe that there was actually a justification for this war or does it have to be a Corporate Conspiracy?
About the quote from the poll. The point was rather important. For some reason the American public got a wrong impression. The article points to the news organizations for creating that impression. Here's more from the article:
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said he thinks the TV networks' news coverage has helped sell the Saddam-al Qaeda connection. "Suddenly, it was Osama, Osama, Osama
Some critics blame the cable news networks for helping make Iraq the new enemy. "They use essentially the kind of logos, martial music, and so on that we saw after Gulf War One had started," Krugman said. "So, from the point of view of the American public, Iraq is already the enemy; we're already at war."
So, I guess the US media is in on the "American Regime" conspiracy too? (That's two more paragraphs from the article, does that count as enough context now?)
You continue with the personal attacks, but hey I guess that's to be expected.
Again, we go back to the original issue that started this debate:
FWI, read article [yahoo.com] about how the widely televised pull-down of the statue of Sadam was mostly staged and the people playing the role of the local Iraqis were really henchmen for Chalabi that had been flown in to put on a show.
You started off with a terribly weakly supported accusation. I pointed out that it was at best an opinion piece and that everything that the US was being accussed applied equally to the "principled" countries that weren't supporting the war. Simple as that. Instead you had to continue pursuing the Corporate Conspiracy angle why providing no evidence, just a couple of suppositions, and ignoring the other reasons for the conflict.
Wow, too bad you are having so much difficulty showing people the "light".
Well, let's look at a few interesting things instead. How about the US's decision to disregard European copyrights back during the formation of the country? Seems that in order to build a local publishing business they needed some creative works to publish. Most of that was coming out of Europe and the US publishing houses were free to republish these works without paying any royalties. So, we jump started our publishing business by "stealing" from others.
Now, we jump forward to today. We have a bunch of record companies complaining about how music downloading is "stealing" and causing loss of sales. Now, when you actually look at the numbers we find that during the height of Napster sales actually increased. Additionally, we look at testimonials from people like Janis Ian and we find that the publicity of these P2P sites and free downloads on their web sites have lead to, wait for it, increased sales.
So, this only benefits the obscure, you might argue. Wrong. Look at Eminem's previous album (before 8 Mile). It was the most "pirated" album on the P2P networks and bootleg CD's for an entire week before the album went on sale. Guess what, he still enjoyed record sales when it came out.
Meanwhile the same companies that have been crying foul in the face of this evidence are quietly signing deals with the FTC to try to make price fixing charges go away.
So, now which do you think would hurt sales more:
1) Increased publicity?
2) Artificially high prices?
Yet you don't point out what they were.
I'm saying that the US government's evaluation of what is and is not important is skewed by corporate interests.
What interests are skewing the evaluations? What evaluations are wrong? Be specific. General statements just don't cut it.
Primarily because it is a false dichotomy. Those were not the only two choices. We could have just stopped the sanctions a long time ago.
First, I believe I offerred more than two choices. Second, what would have happened if we simply stopped the sanctions? The sanctions were in place to punish an aggressive nation. You may recall that Iraq invaded Kuwait and caused massive amounts of damage to the country as they were being driven out. So, do we just say: 'don't do that again' and hope for the best? Also, dropping the sanctions wouldn't have removed the "issue" that Bin Laden was playing on. The only way to do that would have been to remove all US military presence in the area. So were we supposed to simply recall all of our troops and wait for Iraq to invade another country?
Now you go an flip-flop about who's running the show and talk about the American "Regime" instead of Corporate America (who's in charge?):
that kind of statement combined with his current penchant for locking up Americans accused of being terrorists, without even a trial is incredibly chilling of criticism
So far there have been a few cases of US citizens being detained as "material witnesses" not as accused terrorists. They are getting tons of publicity (like the Mike Hawash story) so while this is something to be concerned about I doubt we're days away from the secret police making people disappear (like they do in Iraq).
Let's see, I'm being accused of being selective in my reading and you point to the CNN/Time poll. Let's read that a little deeper:
Another poll released in February asked, "Was Saddam Hussein personally involved in the September 11 attacks?" Although it is a claim the Bush administration has never made and for which there is no evidence, 72 percent said it was either very or somewhat likely. (emphasis added)
So, how can the "NeoCon's" be guilty of this when they weren't running around making the charge? If you read further into the article you can see that a lot of the criticism is being directed at the very news people who created the poll and report the news.
And on to the "pre-emptive" baloney:
But, the long term results for the US of that operation are highly suspect. We've now given the imprimatur of legitimacy to an international policy of pre-emptive strikes.
This is such a load of horse hockey it's not even funny. Iraq was in violation of more than a dozen UN Resolutions and their cease-fire agreement. They were given 12 years to try to get their act straight including a final UNANIMOUS resolution stating that Iraq was in "material breach" of all resolutions and saying that they faced "serious consequences" if they remained in breach. Everyone agreed (including Dr. Blix) that Iraq's weapons declaration was incomplete and this was listed as one of the criteria they had to meet to avoid being in breach. The US went out of its way to gather internation support for the actions. The fact that they couldn't get it was more a result of the hypocritical actions of the other nations (which you simply try to ignore except when it comes to the lack of their approval) rather than any "Corporate NeoCon conspiracy" in the US.
So, do yourself a favor. Drop the NeoCons/Corporate Conspiracy bluster. Go to the facts and work from there. The facts are pretty straight forward.
1) 9/11 changed the whole calculus as far as national defense goes. It also showed that the threats to the US no longer came solely from nation states.
2) Some of the actions of the US government in reaction to this (the Patriot Act in particular) have been horrible over reactions. These acts were passed by all the members of the House
DareDevil may have made a good movie (haven't seen it yet), but SpiderMan made a good movie while being true to the character.
So, for the purists, the changes to Electra would be enough to upset them and dismiss the entire movie. If you're not a purist then you can get around all of the changes and look at it as pure entertainment and evaluate it that way.
Actually I thought the hulk was usually better about physics in that he usually wasn't lifting absurd things that would simply crumble.
The leaping would really be a function of how fast the muscles could contract and expand. Since he's obviously muscled to a point beyond extreme he probably could do these things. (Personally I liked in the comics when he was switching between brainless Hulk and Bruce Banner Hulk and came out of one of his rages while half-way through a leap. He paniced, created a huge crater, and came out smiling since he didn't die.)
My favorite part of the trailer has to be him hammer-throwing the tank. The barrell of a tank just MIGHT be strong enough to do that too.
Why's a tornado like an Arkansas divorce?
Either way, someone's losing a mobile home.
And you say I'M not having a conversation based on what you're posting?!?
Anyways.
Let's see what you throw out as the reasons for your railing against the US.
I am railing against the corrupting influence of capitalism in the US
1) The US government has a long history of preaching democracy to the world but acting to support fascism. Whether it is supporting the fascism of middle-eastern dictatorships because of oil, or supporting the fascism of the south american dictatorships because of the war on some drugs, or supporting the fascism of the dictatorships of the 'stans that surround Afghanistan because the military wanted bases from which to attack the taliban (for bin Laden, but also for the pipeline).
Granted the US government has taken a number of pragmatic stands and supported less than noble governments. At one point they even supported Saddam and Iraq because of the perceived greater threat from Iran. The point is that diplomacy is not a zero sum game where you simply make your principled stand and to hell with it. You have to balance your actions against your inactions and support people who you wouldn't want to invite into your home.
You want the biggest example of US hypocricy then just look at our dealings with China. We still continue to deal with them economically and only put up restrained protests against their terrible human rights record. The point is that we need China a lot more than we need them to clean up their act. Are you out in the streets protesting this and not buying anything with a "Made in China" label?
Fundamentally, we say one thing, but we do another and most of the time we do these things for the betterment of US business interests at the cost of empowerment of the people in those countries. True terrorism is about disempowerment - give these people democracy and all the other rights we claim to have in America and terrorism will practically disappear. Continue to repress these people for the benefit of American big business and you will just breed more people who feel that their only hope of ever changing the system is through violent means, that they have no voice other than the bomb in their backpack.
Now this is an interesting statement. So, we could either have continued to surround Iraq, impose crippling sanctions on the country, and further breed discontent in the Arab world by our presence (which was used by Bin Laden as his "justification" for the 9/11 atack by the way). Or, we could actually make a principled stand, try to remove a dictator that has flaunted UN Resolutions and then turn that country over to the people who have been repressed and disempowered by this man and his regime.
Guess what, we chose the latter one. It's not a good solution, it's definitely a messy one, but it's the only solution that actually offers a real chance at resolving the issue.
Now you haul out the cynic title and start throwing out platitudes:
The current American regime has too much to gain by waging a never-ending war
What does America have to gain from this war beyond potentially increased security? Be specific.
This one's even better:
now that Sadam, who more than 50% of the US population have been convinced was responsible for 9/11, is now all gone
Please cite your survey for this information. After all, all of the news organizations and everyone screamed quite loud and long criticizing Bush's allegations about the Iraq/al Qaeda link. And you can stop with the fear mongering in the next sentence. (Strangely, you complain about the administration using fear to gain more power and yet you throw it around yourself right afterwords.)
The war in Iraq was a terrible thing. It's a shame that it had to be fought, but what was the other alternative? Inspections had already had over 10 years to try to work. How much longer were they supposed to be given? Should we have simply removed the sanctions and hoped for the best? Or, should we have just co
Frankly I don't really think having a full receipt will increase or decrease fraud. Granted a vote buyer could actually get confirmation rather than merely having to take your word for it, but buying individual votes is next to useless in anything larger than a local election. It would only POSSIBLY be useful if you knew that a particular vote would somehow be the deciding one and be very narrow.
I think the receipt would be a good thing overall. First off, you could have this official receipt to repudiate contested results rather than having to rely on the election people and the two parties to scrutinize and certify everything. Second, this is probably one of the few ways to really ensure that the vote you cast electronically is the vote that was recorded and counted.
If we could just get Washington, Lincoln, and Jackson to pipe down maybe we could get a word in edgewise. :-}
Suppose we created an open-source electronic voting system that you could check your vote against?
You go to the precinct and cast your vote. When the vote is completed you get a paper printout and a hash value/confirmation number.
Then you could go back home and download the checker code. Punch in your precinct number and download the candidate list. Punch in your confirmation number and verify that it matches what you voted for.
I'm sure there are still ways around this system and probably more security measures that would need to be implemented to make it work, but what the hey, why not give it a try?
Sure, testing is a wonderful way to put the system through its paces and determine if it behaves properly.
The first problem is that each company that builds these things claims trade secret protection to the whole system so there's no way to actually audit these to the public's satisfaction.
The second thing is while the system may be trusted, the individual machines might not be. We're not just talking about software, but an entire system. Suppose one machine in your precinct is deliberately compromised and only counts votes for candidate X. How do you prove this particular problem/issue? The system already passed verification and testing. The offending box can probably be very quickly and easily reset to behave well during the investigation.
No, the only way for electronic voting to really work is to create a printed receipt. (Of course then the counting can be compromised...and we go back around the vicious circle.)
In the end, there will always be a margin of error in the voting process. The only problem is if we're trying to make a decision within that margin.
Wow, such nice and easy to swallow propaganda. Thanks for removing any and all critical thinking from your analysis.
Let's look at it slightly more clearly.
1) Iraq has only one means of generating income. Oil. That's it. They are lucky in that they can probably be almost self-sufficient agriculturally but the only way the country will have income is from oil.
2) The Ministry of Oil contains the information about their oil sales. This includes both the sanctioned and the black-market deals. How about that little pipeline running into Syria selling black market oil?
3) The US is going to probably spend over $100 Billion between the war and the rebuilding of Iraq.
4) We could have gotten all the oil we wanted out of Iraq (and probably all the sweetheart contracts too) by simply declaring Iraq in compliance and dropping sanctions. (This is what France was trying to do all along and was the reason for the original strong opposition to the formation of UNMOVIC.)
There have certainly been a bunch of bone-headed statements from the White House, but you can certainly stop chalking it up to a "War for Oil" falacy.
BTW, the last thing US Oil Co's want is cheap oil. It'll ruin them. Though I suppose that does kind of present an akward fact for the conspiracy.
I didn't bother looking at the photographs. I happened to be in Switzerland at the time and was watching the live feed on CNN. (The only 2 hour time difference made it easier to follow events from Iraq.) I remember remarking to another viewer about how it seemed to be almost as many reporters as actual Iraqis in the square. This was more as an indictment of our need for reporters than the lack of support in Iraq.
I seem to recall that the (dis)Information Minister was just up and blustering the day before this happened. The fact was that the government in Bagdad collapsed/ran away a heck of a lot faster than anyone anticipated. The reporters probably had the best indication that something was wrong when their handlers and the Minister failed to show up that morning.
I find it amazing that you're railing against the influence of capitalism in the US while casually dismissing its influence in the other countries that were taking such a "principled" stand against the war.
The facts remain quite simple.
1) Iraq had been and remained in material breach of all of its committments from the end of the first Gulf War. This breach laster for more than 11 years.
2) The UN inspectors were only allowed into Iraq because of the threat of imminent invasion.
3) France and Russia were owed massive amounts of money by Iraq and had signed huge oil contracts with Iraq to be exercised if the sanctions were ever lifted.
4) France opposed the creation of UNMOVIC back in 1998. They didn't want to have anything to do with further inspections in Iraq.
5) UN Resolution 1441 gave Iraq a final opportunity to come into compliance with UN demands or face serious consequences. Among the requirements for compliance was a "full and complete disclosure of all WMD programs and weapons". Not even Hans Blix could consider Iraq's disclosure full or complete.
6) Inspections only work with the ACTIVE cooperation of the country being inspected. Passive cooperation/lack of active stalling doesn't cut it.
The US has definitely been heavy handed in their treatment of Iraq, but in the end Iraq completely failed to live up to its requirements.
Turbines, Wheels, and CASE MODS!!!
Drive your PC to the next LAN Party!
I can see it now, "Well, I've got the Athlon XP2400, 2 GB of RAM, 250 GB of HD, GeForce 4ti 4200, and 350 Horse Power..."
From the article:
Because DARPA does not directly fund projects outside the United States, it is Mr. Smith's computer science department that received the grant, although most of the money -- $2.3-million -- flows through to Mr. de Raadt's project.
So, in this case, Mr. de Raadt was, at best, a subcontractor for the project and not the direct recipient or spokesperson for any of the money. In fact, the problem may be whether or not it was allowed to spend DARPA money in this fashion.
I suppose it sounds great to think that it's a whole "the current US government is evil beyond words" conspiracy that is yanking this project. In fact, it could be simply a contract procedures screw-up on the part of Mr. Smith.
At the very least, I guess we should try to find out a little more details about the whole thing before flying off on the whole conspiracy angle.
On second thought, where's the fun in that?
...being unbiased.
Such phrases as "propaganda tape" and various unsupported allegations does not discredit things at all.
Look at it this way:
If we wanted Iraq's oil and oil contracts we could have gotten them so much easier than waging war. How? Simple, back room deals for lifting the UN sanctions. Of course there was the minor point that the "principled" countries of France and Russia were already trying this route and had billions of dollars in contracts lined up with Iraq if the sanctions were removed. (Not to mention all the money that Iraq owes Russia for military equipment.)
If you want to run around shouting about how money taints the whole picture then you need to look at how money was already tainting the picture.
(Oh yeah, don't forget that illegal pipeline running black market oil out of Iraq into Syria. Didn't you ever wonder where Iraq got the money to rebuild banned weapons systems and buy/build a new rocket [the Al-Samoud II] if they were under tight economic sanctions and only allowed to sell oil for food?)
I suppose those are just awkward little facts that should be ignored to make the conspiracy picture look better.
...we'd probably find the whole GMontag Slashdot ID to have been created for the same sinister purpose.
...ARGH!
Of course, now that means my ID was too....
How about people do something different, innovative even instead of trying to make Linux do what XP (or fill in your favorite blank) already does?
Heh, TiVo was out long before XP's Media Center PC was even an idea. (Heck, before XP itself.)
Guess what TiVo was running on? That's right. Linux!
The point is that the first commercial company showed that it can be done on Linux and done well. The problem is that the companies that make PVR's are struggling and their terms and licenses are getting progressively worse.
So, I guess the idea is that the product no longer meets the consumers' needs so it's time to make a new product.
Well said. Of course, you can't build muscle by just eating protein. So start lifting those 22" trinitron monster monitors!
:-D
Aha! Something we can finally blame the LCD monitor manufacturers for!
"Designed for Windows ex-PO'ds" :-D
There's this little thing called the "Doctrine of First Sale". It is a legal construct that states that after a physical item is sold there is very little that the original owner/creator can assert over the item. This was first tested when book printers tried to "license" books and limit their use. Complete flame-out on their part in the court system.
So, let's take a look at the "contract law" dodge. Software companies have been fighting for years to place EULA's under contract law. The problem is that these are not mutually agreed upon contracts where all the terms are agreed upon up front and signed and witnessed. Instead it's a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo that you don't even get to see until AFTER the purchase.
Now, the fallacy of trying to extend these "contracts" onto hardware is completely laughable. First off, the EULA's main power comes from copyright. There's no copyright on hardware. It has taken a new legislative effort in the DMCA and the attempts to pass the UCITA to even introduce the idea of licenses for hardware. Well, those attempts have managed limited success for the license crowd but they're certainly still on less than firm footing.
I find it amazing that you think it's perfectly legal for someone to sell you something and then say "oh by the way, you can't use it except for this" AFTER the sale.
Wow, you completed missed the point. The original post was talking about how something like Palladium could be used to HIDE data from a user. We're not talking about limiting their USE of data but rather completely HIDING it from them. As the second person pointed out, the best way to keep a secret is NOT TO TELL IT. Who cares how strong a vault you put around a piece of data. If it's there, someone's going to get at it. Conversely, if it's not there, no one's going to get at it.
Rather simple actually.
Why should breaking encryption be considered illegal? I ask this in all sincerity and would like a detailed answer from you about it. (Also, why is it "grey" when the encryption is weak and the other being a Federal crime?) If anything CSS is a criminal technology as it directly infringes on enumerated rights. It clearly violates the doctrine of first sale and uses a flimsy excuse of "encryption" to enforce a region encoding scheme that has nothing to do with data security.
Umm, wouldn't that be the responsibility of the people who are crying for peace right now? In fact, the "justification" provided for the 9/11 attacks was the fact that US troops were on Muslim soil (referencing the troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). At the time Pres. Bush had a pretty hands-off approach to the whole Iraq situation and inspectors had already been expelled.
Now, you had France and many anti-war people chanting "give the inspections a chance". Well, for the inspections to work it would have required the continued presence of 200,000 troops and even more and more inspectors (France was even hinting at UN forces backing up those inspectors) in Iraq to "get the job done." Well, since this seems to be what inflamed the extremists so much wouldn't that process have just as much if not more of a chance of leading to further terrorist attacks?
Frankly the whole terrorist attack scare is just that. Terrorists will strike the US if and when they can irregardless of what we're doing in the Middle East. If not Iraq, then it'll be the "Jewish conspiracy/Israeli treatment of Palestinians" as the "justification".
You still keep falling back on the fear mongering. You have yet to draw any fact-based conclusions. Just "50 years of imperialism" and other useless emotion-based jingoism.
Please, just start with one or two simple facts. From there try to draw a conclusion. No innuendoes, no slanders, no inferences. Facts.