Wow, a position paper, eh? That's your proof? Yes a number of people in Bush's cabinet and advisory positions are of that group. However, neither Cheney nor Bush themselves were part of the group pressing that. The fact is that after 9/11 the calculus for dealing with rogue nations changed dramatically.
So the site has "the plan for the next 50 years of global domina[t]ion". This still doesn't provide one single fact supporting your position.
Why isn't the war about freeing the Iraq population? Middle East stability has only been raised as a potential long term outcome of removing this disruptive regime. Democratization is also only posited as a potential long term outcome.
This war is being fought because of UN Resolutions 687 and 1441. Iraq invaded Kuwait, got beat down, surrendered, and has never lived up to the terms of their surrender. Fairly simple.
The point is that Iraq has used WMD's in past, they promised to destroy their WMD's and haven't, and maintain, despite all evidence, that they don't possess WMD's.
As far as the poll goes, if the majority of the polled public is ignorant about the nationalities of the hijackers (and yes Bin Laden is Saudi too) than that's their own uninformed fault. That doesn't change the facts.
The reason we are in Iraq right now is because 12 years of containment and appeasement have failed. Iraq only let inspectors into the country in an attempt to keep the 200,000+ troops arrayed around his country out. Once those inspectors entered the country he began the exact same game he played for the previous eight years of inspections. He provided an arms declaration that was neither full nor accurate, he reconstituted illegal weapons systems that had been destroyed in previous inspections and was basically getting ready to play the same game for another 12 years.
Well, this time around the US administration wasn't in the mood to play the game. They warned Iraq, warned Iraq again, warned Iraq a third time and now they're dealing out the "serious consequences."
It would be a gross violation of the rules of war and the Geneva convention.
First off, wanton targeting of civilian populations is a no-no. Second off, chemical weapons have also been outlawed. (That's use, not possession.)
I would say the fact that the lights are still on in Bagdad are a pretty good sign of the restraint being shown by US and UK forces in their bombing missions.
Now, the whole war is a terrible and tragic thing. I certainly am no big fan of war and the damage it causes. However, in this case, I believe that all avenues of diplomacy had been played out (and actively subverted in the case of France and Russia) and the only two possible solutions were to walk away and hope for the best or a full armed confrontation.
(Now, the interesting thing is that this war is suddenly so terrible when we've been flying planes and bombing Iraq for almost 12 years now. Clinton managed to launch a cruise missile or two into the country as well (once when Iraq tried to assassinate a former head of state, once when Iraq ordered the inspectors out of the country).)
OK, now how does the Gulf of Tonkin resolution relate to the current situation in Iraq? What lie were you/us told? All countries agree that Iraq has WMD's. Even Hans Blix has a list of serious questions about unaccounted for Anthrax and other items.
Were you maybe talking about the Iraq/Al Qaida link? At not time has the government tried to say that Iraq was in any way responsible for the 9/11 attacks. There is very strong evidence, however, that Iraq aids terrorist groups. Some of these groups have links to Al Qaida.
So now you make the following blanket statement: the purpose of this war is to build up the influence of the american empire in the middle east and asia and complain about being lied to by our government.
Well, guess what, merely making an assertion does not make it a fact. What specific facts get you to your statement? Again, you need to carefully journey from point to point and back them up with facts.
Otherwise your statements are as silly as all of the "No Blood for Oil" signs.
You can't simply say "remember this" or "look out about that" you have to show how these items fit into the context of the current issue.
It's a lot like the anti-war people ignorantly waving "No blook for oil" signs. Even the most basic factual analysis will show that it would ahve been much simpler to gain this oil by simply dropping the currently unenforced sanctions. Spending $100+ Billion doesn't gain us anything in that department.
So, I'm not saying you can't argue anything you merely have to show how the point that you are attempting to raise is relevant to the current argument rather than simple fear mongering.
The point was that dragging Viet Nam and WW II into the argument are red herrings.
There are simply no factual parallels between the two. If you wish to try and draw some with a little more meat than simply "Remember the Gulf of Tonken resolution" or "terrorists burned the Bund" then you're going to have to do much better than that.
The history that you wish to be studying starts in 1990 with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and continues through 12 rather unglorious years of capitulation and lack of backbone. (And yes, the original Pres. Bush started that cycle.)
Actually, that was a pretty darn good series. Some of the episodes about the 'Tanks were downright cool.
Scene: A bunch of students watching a slide show. 1st Slide: There are 102 ways to kill a human being with you bare hands. 2nd Slide: Method 1
Scene fades out...
Also the speach by McQueen before he went out after Chiggy Von Richtoven was really cool too.
This is probably the way to do the war-type thing. The only problem is the need/want to have a core group of people for you to follow and develop which means that a small squad needs to survive an inordinate number of battles.
1. Dixie Chicks. They exercise their free speech. People exercise their free speech against them. Sounds pretty darn fair. To make matters worse Natalie Mains can't even stand behind what she said and is apologizing. You seem to have your countries reversed. It's in Iraq where you get killed when you exercise free speech. In the US you may get criticized, but hey, if you can't stand the heat...
2) Again, free speech being exercised. These are some of the same French companies who have negotiated $40 Billion+ in contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq once sanctions were lifted. Not to mention all the money Iraq owes France for military hardware.
Sounds to me like the French were already bought. In fact the US/UK/Spain coalition had most of the necessary votes. The other countries only backed out because France (apparently already bought by Iraq) had already promised a veto.
I do wish your arguments were strong enough to stand on their own. Why drag in the complete red herrings of Viet Nam and WWII? (Oh yeah, France, that principled peace-loving country was reponsible for starting Viet Nam and was a major appeaser of Germany leading to WWII, was that why you brought it in?)
The country should always support the troops. That's just good manners.
Let's look at the "terrible things" that have happened to people who voiced opposition:
Dixie Chicks: They made a stupid statement. Some people got upset and called for a boycott of their records. (Strange, that seems like exercising free speach as well.) Were they arrested? Deported? Sent off to be raped and then murdered?
As far as most of the actors go I think many people are upset that these people are using the status that they have from their acting to pretend that they are enlightened people who are qualified to speak about world affairs. Additionally, free speach does not mean that everyone has to simply shut up and listen to opinions that they don't support. It just means that you get your say and others get their say.
The point about self defense is that the calculus of self defense in the 20th century does not carry itself over into the 21st. Let's look at the events of 9/11. In this case you have less than two dozen people able to massive casualties and billions of dollars of damage on the US. How exactly do you prevent this from happening? You can't promise MAD as they don't belong to a country. They don't wear uniforms so you can't meet them honorably on the field of battle.
The point is that Iraq started the ball rolling when they decided that they wanted to add Kuwait to their land. They took a gamble and lost. They then promised to do a number of things in exchange for being allowed to surrender rather than being whiped off the map. This occurred in 1991. It is now 2003 and they haven't managed to live up to their promises. Instead, they have actively worked to get out from under those promises and have continued to build and acquire illegal weapons.
So, what do we do about this? 1) Ignore it. Take all our troops home and let the rest of the world deal with their own security for once? 2) Contain them. We've maintained a military presence in and around Iraq for 12 years now. Sanctions that were put in place to get Iraq to comply are merely used by Iraq as a tool to build more unrust and hatred of the groups that are enforcing them. 3) Demand compliance. Tell Iraq that they have to live up to their commitments or face "serious consequences".
Well, we've tried 2 and we really only had 1 or 3 to chose from. The last time we tried 1 we had two little World Wars.
MS is only profitable in desktop OS and Office suites. In those two categories they have obscene/enviable profit margins (depends on your viewpoint). These are used to drive all of their other initiatives which are almost all universally losing money. (Some at quite a high rate including MSN and X-Box.)
The best thing that the DoJ and EU trials can do is make more of MS's partners warry of doing business with them. Things like License 6 are already annoying businesses and BSA audits are certainly bringing it tons of good will for Linux and alternative-OS choices.
No, MS isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I just look forward to the day where Chompaq or Dell start selling non-Windows consumer PC's.
The problem now is that people are claiming property to the very IDEAS being used to create particular products. Amazon's One-Click Patent is a wonderful example of this.
Now, Amazon could very easily protect and license their overall software package that is used to support their one-click check out. They could sell as many shrink wrapped licenses as they want and use Copyright to protect their "IP" from misappropriation.
The problem is when they try to claim ownership to the very idea that they're implementing. Especially when it's not a terribly innovative one. Now it doesn't matter how you implement the idea, you have to go to Amazon for a license.
You then go on to horribly mischaracterize the GPL. The GPL is not "no one is going to make any money off of software" the GPL is about creating a strong commons that everyone can build off of. Being able to get Apache and Tomcat for free doesn't mean that you can't make money building e-commerce sites for people. It just means that you have access to high quality tools for very reasonable rates. In addition you can even improve those tools and thus return them back for the other programmers to use in even better condition.
Finally, IBM makes its money on SERVICE, not hardware. Sure it doesn't fully embrace all of the principles of the GPL, but they don't embrace all of the principles of proprietary software either. They embrace the principles of "let's get the customer's job done."
The issue is what you can do when you find a gap and who benefits from plugging the gap.
In the opensource world you can either try to rally the masses or hire your own programmers to fill a gap. The new code then gets returned to the community for possible future use and refinement. (Or it may remain so unique that no one else can gain any use from it.)
In the commercial/proprietary world you usually wind up having to convince the software owner that this is a gap worth filling in. Then you have to wait through the release cycle or pay them extra to do the work for you. At the end of the day the other company owns the fix and you end up re-buying it each time you get another license/upgrade.
(If it's a customizable API then you're exactly where you were with the open source stuff we're you're paying programmers to do the work for you.)
At the end of the day you're probably going to have to pay for a programmer, it's just a question of what return you get on that investment.
BSA represents that the information in this notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed above.
Sounds like they can launch a perjury suit against the BSA. How the heck can they feel in the least bit legally justified to send out automated letters with this type of language in them?
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, a position paper, eh? That's your proof? Yes a number of people in Bush's cabinet and advisory positions are of that group. However, neither Cheney nor Bush themselves were part of the group pressing that. The fact is that after 9/11 the calculus for dealing with rogue nations changed dramatically.
So the site has "the plan for the next 50 years of global domina[t]ion". This still doesn't provide one single fact supporting your position.
Why isn't the war about freeing the Iraq population?
Middle East stability has only been raised as a potential long term outcome of removing this disruptive regime.
Democratization is also only posited as a potential long term outcome.
This war is being fought because of UN Resolutions 687 and 1441. Iraq invaded Kuwait, got beat down, surrendered, and has never lived up to the terms of their surrender. Fairly simple.
The point is that Iraq has used WMD's in past, they promised to destroy their WMD's and haven't, and maintain, despite all evidence, that they don't possess WMD's.
As far as the poll goes, if the majority of the polled public is ignorant about the nationalities of the hijackers (and yes Bin Laden is Saudi too) than that's their own uninformed fault. That doesn't change the facts.
The reason we are in Iraq right now is because 12 years of containment and appeasement have failed. Iraq only let inspectors into the country in an attempt to keep the 200,000+ troops arrayed around his country out. Once those inspectors entered the country he began the exact same game he played for the previous eight years of inspections. He provided an arms declaration that was neither full nor accurate, he reconstituted illegal weapons systems that had been destroyed in previous inspections and was basically getting ready to play the same game for another 12 years.
Well, this time around the US administration wasn't in the mood to play the game. They warned Iraq, warned Iraq again, warned Iraq a third time and now they're dealing out the "serious consequences."
Pretty simple. Nothing sinister at all.
It would be a gross violation of the rules of war and the Geneva convention.
First off, wanton targeting of civilian populations is a no-no. Second off, chemical weapons have also been outlawed. (That's use, not possession.)
I would say the fact that the lights are still on in Bagdad are a pretty good sign of the restraint being shown by US and UK forces in their bombing missions.
Now, the whole war is a terrible and tragic thing. I certainly am no big fan of war and the damage it causes. However, in this case, I believe that all avenues of diplomacy had been played out (and actively subverted in the case of France and Russia) and the only two possible solutions were to walk away and hope for the best or a full armed confrontation.
(Now, the interesting thing is that this war is suddenly so terrible when we've been flying planes and bombing Iraq for almost 12 years now. Clinton managed to launch a cruise missile or two into the country as well (once when Iraq tried to assassinate a former head of state, once when Iraq ordered the inspectors out of the country).)
OK, now how does the Gulf of Tonkin resolution relate to the current situation in Iraq? What lie were you/us told? All countries agree that Iraq has WMD's. Even Hans Blix has a list of serious questions about unaccounted for Anthrax and other items.
Were you maybe talking about the Iraq/Al Qaida link? At not time has the government tried to say that Iraq was in any way responsible for the 9/11 attacks. There is very strong evidence, however, that Iraq aids terrorist groups. Some of these groups have links to Al Qaida.
So now you make the following blanket statement:
the purpose of this war is to build up the influence of the american empire in the middle east and asia and complain about being lied to by our government.
Well, guess what, merely making an assertion does not make it a fact. What specific facts get you to your statement? Again, you need to carefully journey from point to point and back them up with facts.
Otherwise your statements are as silly as all of the "No Blood for Oil" signs.
You can't simply say "remember this" or "look out about that" you have to show how these items fit into the context of the current issue.
It's a lot like the anti-war people ignorantly waving "No blook for oil" signs. Even the most basic factual analysis will show that it would ahve been much simpler to gain this oil by simply dropping the currently unenforced sanctions. Spending $100+ Billion doesn't gain us anything in that department.
So, I'm not saying you can't argue anything you merely have to show how the point that you are attempting to raise is relevant to the current argument rather than simple fear mongering.
The point was that dragging Viet Nam and WW II into the argument are red herrings.
There are simply no factual parallels between the two. If you wish to try and draw some with a little more meat than simply "Remember the Gulf of Tonken resolution" or "terrorists burned the Bund" then you're going to have to do much better than that.
The history that you wish to be studying starts in 1990 with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and continues through 12 rather unglorious years of capitulation and lack of backbone. (And yes, the original Pres. Bush started that cycle.)
Earth: Above and Beyond.
Actually, that was a pretty darn good series. Some of the episodes about the 'Tanks were downright cool.
Scene: A bunch of students watching a slide show.
1st Slide: There are 102 ways to kill a human being with you bare hands.
2nd Slide: Method 1
Scene fades out...
Also the speach by McQueen before he went out after Chiggy Von Richtoven was really cool too.
This is probably the way to do the war-type thing. The only problem is the need/want to have a core group of people for you to follow and develop which means that a small squad needs to survive an inordinate number of battles.
1. Dixie Chicks. They exercise their free speech. People exercise their free speech against them. Sounds pretty darn fair. To make matters worse Natalie Mains can't even stand behind what she said and is apologizing. You seem to have your countries reversed. It's in Iraq where you get killed when you exercise free speech. In the US you may get criticized, but hey, if you can't stand the heat...
2) Again, free speech being exercised. These are some of the same French companies who have negotiated $40 Billion+ in contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq once sanctions were lifted. Not to mention all the money Iraq owes France for military hardware.
Sounds to me like the French were already bought. In fact the US/UK/Spain coalition had most of the necessary votes. The other countries only backed out because France (apparently already bought by Iraq) had already promised a veto.
I do wish your arguments were strong enough to stand on their own. Why drag in the complete red herrings of Viet Nam and WWII? (Oh yeah, France, that principled peace-loving country was reponsible for starting Viet Nam and was a major appeaser of Germany leading to WWII, was that why you brought it in?)
The country should always support the troops. That's just good manners.
Let's look at the "terrible things" that have happened to people who voiced opposition:
Dixie Chicks: They made a stupid statement. Some people got upset and called for a boycott of their records. (Strange, that seems like exercising free speach as well.) Were they arrested? Deported? Sent off to be raped and then murdered?
As far as most of the actors go I think many people are upset that these people are using the status that they have from their acting to pretend that they are enlightened people who are qualified to speak about world affairs. Additionally, free speach does not mean that everyone has to simply shut up and listen to opinions that they don't support. It just means that you get your say and others get their say.
The point about self defense is that the calculus of self defense in the 20th century does not carry itself over into the 21st. Let's look at the events of 9/11. In this case you have less than two dozen people able to massive casualties and billions of dollars of damage on the US. How exactly do you prevent this from happening? You can't promise MAD as they don't belong to a country. They don't wear uniforms so you can't meet them honorably on the field of battle.
The point is that Iraq started the ball rolling when they decided that they wanted to add Kuwait to their land. They took a gamble and lost. They then promised to do a number of things in exchange for being allowed to surrender rather than being whiped off the map. This occurred in 1991. It is now 2003 and they haven't managed to live up to their promises. Instead, they have actively worked to get out from under those promises and have continued to build and acquire illegal weapons.
So, what do we do about this?
1) Ignore it. Take all our troops home and let the rest of the world deal with their own security for once?
2) Contain them. We've maintained a military presence in and around Iraq for 12 years now. Sanctions that were put in place to get Iraq to comply are merely used by Iraq as a tool to build more unrust and hatred of the groups that are enforcing them.
3) Demand compliance. Tell Iraq that they have to live up to their commitments or face "serious consequences".
Well, we've tried 2 and we really only had 1 or 3 to chose from. The last time we tried 1 we had two little World Wars.
Well, DUH!
:-D
Gasoline *IS* flame bait.
Personally, I'd prefer to buy ++TiVo instead of TiVo++.
:-D
After all, who wants to spend the money on a TiVo so that the NEXT person can get the incremented one?
Well, at least with beer you know what to sign the registration in...
MS is only profitable in desktop OS and Office suites. In those two categories they have obscene/enviable profit margins (depends on your viewpoint). These are used to drive all of their other initiatives which are almost all universally losing money. (Some at quite a high rate including MSN and X-Box.)
The best thing that the DoJ and EU trials can do is make more of MS's partners warry of doing business with them. Things like License 6 are already annoying businesses and BSA audits are certainly bringing it tons of good will for Linux and alternative-OS choices.
No, MS isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I just look forward to the day where Chompaq or Dell start selling non-Windows consumer PC's.
Would a really strong magnetic field screw them up? Go get one of those bulk video tape erasers and take a stroll through your local Benetton store...
The problem now is that people are claiming property to the very IDEAS being used to create particular products. Amazon's One-Click Patent is a wonderful example of this.
Now, Amazon could very easily protect and license their overall software package that is used to support their one-click check out. They could sell as many shrink wrapped licenses as they want and use Copyright to protect their "IP" from misappropriation.
The problem is when they try to claim ownership to the very idea that they're implementing. Especially when it's not a terribly innovative one. Now it doesn't matter how you implement the idea, you have to go to Amazon for a license.
You then go on to horribly mischaracterize the GPL. The GPL is not "no one is going to make any money off of software" the GPL is about creating a strong commons that everyone can build off of. Being able to get Apache and Tomcat for free doesn't mean that you can't make money building e-commerce sites for people. It just means that you have access to high quality tools for very reasonable rates. In addition you can even improve those tools and thus return them back for the other programmers to use in even better condition.
Finally, IBM makes its money on SERVICE, not hardware. Sure it doesn't fully embrace all of the principles of the GPL, but they don't embrace all of the principles of proprietary software either. They embrace the principles of "let's get the customer's job done."
First off, thanks that was quite amusing.
:-}
Second, you realize that following that chain of events out we're going to have MS vs the White Supremacists for the fate of open source.
The issue is what you can do when you find a gap and who benefits from plugging the gap.
In the opensource world you can either try to rally the masses or hire your own programmers to fill a gap. The new code then gets returned to the community for possible future use and refinement. (Or it may remain so unique that no one else can gain any use from it.)
In the commercial/proprietary world you usually wind up having to convince the software owner that this is a gap worth filling in. Then you have to wait through the release cycle or pay them extra to do the work for you. At the end of the day the other company owns the fix and you end up re-buying it each time you get another license/upgrade.
(If it's a customizable API then you're exactly where you were with the open source stuff we're you're paying programmers to do the work for you.)
At the end of the day you're probably going to have to pay for a programmer, it's just a question of what return you get on that investment.
...to see duplicate articles before everyone else. :-D
I guess that's why the future is "mysterious".
Darn you!
I was waiting for a chance to foster that image on some unsuspecting patent clerk as prior "art".
If you go for a year without "rebooting" (emptying) your trash bin I'll bet you could do a pretty good immitation of a Blue FACE of Death.
There was an old geek who swatted a fly.
:-}
He wriggled and jiggled and put a web server inside.
He posted the fly, a URL for our eye.
(wait for it...)
I don't know why, we slashdotted the fly.
Don't use nobody@mindyourownbusiness.com
:-D
Use the reply to address from this C&D letter. Make sure you check all of those "Yes! I want valuable...blahblahblah" boxes too.
Sounds like they can launch a perjury suit against the BSA. How the heck can they feel in the least bit legally justified to send out automated letters with this type of language in them?
Well, really good punning can be tough to sink your teeth into.
You guys are gonna bleed this pun out.
Another bad joke like that would be a real pain in the neck.
...that we're using a method for discussing an item (in this case the item is the patent) right now don't you? :-D
Wow, maybe we can actually submit SlashDot as prior art!
(And they said this wasn't art.)