"Hey man, I don't like know you, but my wheels have run out of gas. I'm gonna just crash at your place until I can get some gas for the bus. Yeah, I know, I should have called in advance, but you guys are such downers. I'm trying to drive across America, see the country. What, you're not going to give me the gas? It'll only cost you a couple thousand dollars. I'm good for it. Its not like you're going to freeze to death if a shipment is late. Can't you understand what a kuell thing I'm doing?
I'm driving across the country. Man, you people are just narrow-minded, tightwad bastards!"
Oh, and I think people who defend this idiot should be required to leave their addresses with their postings. I'm looking forward to a road trip.
How do illegal immigrants cost billions in taxpayer money? Certainly, it would cost far, far more money to police the border and actually locate and deport everyone who wasn't supposed to be here, in addition to turning the country into an orwelian nightmare to do it.
Perhaps, but you can enforce deportation laws without being 100% effective. It certainly costs the taxpayer money when they use our emergency rooms, and compel municipalities to pay for translator services because they think the trade-off results in a better situation for the city/town. The money that goes into education language support is money that isn't being spent educating legal residents.
Personally, I think the damage is much more subtle. You have a roving underclass of non-citizens that have no stake in regional or national interests of this country, and think the local populace should kowtow to them because of their numbers. I don't think hispanics are entitled to citizenship because its more structurally feasible for them to break the law, than say an Asian or African.
Illegal immigrants also contribute to the economy by doing jobs that Americans would frown upon, and by working more cheaply (say, three houses could be build with illegal labor, where one could be build with full-rate American labor).
Perhaps this is what the poster meant in terms of costing billions in taxpayers money. Those three houses that were built with illegal labor means there were citizens that don't have jobs because the illegal immigrants took those jobs. Why should citizens agree to poverty wages for their work because these illegal immigrants, who don't belong in this country, are willing to work for those wages?
Also, many illegals do in fact pay taxes, because their income is automatically withheld from their paychecks
Please explain how the IRS collects this withheld money, when these illegal immigrants don't have a social security number? Or should we feel better about them because they're giving more money to the employer breaking the law?
their kids even die for this country
Too bad. If one cop does something wrong in an arrest, we're supposed to let all the lawbreakers related to the perp to go free? The kid was probably a non-citizen who enlisted in the army. They get paid and get a shot at citizenship. The father was not a citizen. He does not have any privileges of citizenship. Would it have been my choice to take this action? No, but that doesn't change the fact that its an exceptional case, and I'm not about to agree to open borders because of it.
You can't make illegals pay for their stay in prison, and it doesn't necessarily help control crime to dump them back to where they came from. But being able to control immigration does allow a nation to be pickier about who comes in, and thus cut down on the opportunities for citizens to be robbed, raped, or murdered. Not to mention the potential terrorist, drug trafficker or plague carrier.
Oh, I get it, you're just stupid.
Oh I get it, you're either a liberal idiot or a wetback. (Just pointing out your level of intelligence and social grace.)
Oh yeah, that's what every guy wants. A laptop that only has enough battery power for 60 minutes (power consumption) and second-degree burns on his member.
The job of a lawyer is to determine the best legal strategy with the facts on hand. The LA prosecutors *knew* that there were "problems" with the evidence collected, and the problems with the lead investigator.
Folks, there should be no such thing as "surprise" in a court case. Both teams of lawyers get all the facts of the case, and what each team investigates. The legal term for this is called "Discovery". If the prosecution or defense brings up new evidence during trial, and hints that it was known before trial, its almost always ruled inadmissible. The same goes for witnesses. The only thing surprising is how a legal team may use the evidence to craft its legal arguments.
Still, the court case might not be a fair assessment of Clark & Co's competence. OJ's legal team wasn't called the "Dream Team" for nothing. They were the cream of the litigating crop. (At very least, the top 10%.) The question is whether the LA team was the equivalent of the Clippers.
The sad truth is that many prosecutors rack up high conviction rates because they have overwhelming resources to crush the usually indigent defendants. The prosecuting team has the police labs, the reputation, and the expert witnesses. Only the rich defendants can even TRY to put up a fight. So perhaps the LA team experience is analogous to going against the Class A minor league teams all their career, and then finally being matched up with the NY Yankees for one game.
The District Attourney (who's name I forgot) was a political bonehead who really wanted this showcase trial to come about, and probably didn't perceive the possibility of a mismatch. The trial lawyers themselves struck me as confident they were going to slam-dunk this case regardless of the talent or arguments that they were about to face. After all, they've always gone into court with questionable evidence, flawed crime lab results, and racist cops. It never prevented them from getting convictions before. Yeah, there were probably pissed off those defense attourneys were making millions of dollars, but *they* "were as good as them..." (..and what comes before a fall?)
What bothered me was the seeming tactical stumbling goofs of the prosecutors. I can't think of one screwup by the defense team.
The bottom line to me seems that if you get cops that are CAUGHT lying on the stand, writing screenplays about how evidence can be planted on a crime scene, premiere criminologists pointing out that the forensic evidence is flawed, (plus unrelated FBI lab scandals being exposed by Whitehurst before the trial), and guess what? There appears to be grounds for reasonable doubt. If the prosecution understood that they are *required* to present a case beyond REASONABLE doubt, they should have seen this possibility of acquittal coming a mile away (and adjusted accordingly). You can't absolve the prosecuting team because of the people they have to depend on to collect evidence. I wouldn't feel good about any of those guys representing me in court.
What monopoly did the SOBs replace? There were a few, but the biggest were the railroads.
Merely an instance where technological innovation altered market realities. The definition of a monopoly doesn't mean its impossible to for a monopoly to lose its economic stranglehold. Its merely need to reach a point where it can manipulate the economy with its market position. Just because the railroad industry wasn't forsighted enough to buy out Standard Oil before it got big, doesn't mean the railroads weren't a monopoly. For any corporation to reach the state where it has that ability is bad for consumers/government. One merely needs to look at Chinese government through the 15th-19th century for an example.
A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government.
No, that is a definition of a utility, such as a power company, or cable service. The price that the entity pays for having exclusive rights is that it is HEAVILY regulated by the local, state, and federal government. Are you suggesting that Microsoft is a not a monopoly, but a utility that should be subject to heavy government regulation?
The US Postal Service is a monopoly
Technically, no. The US Postal Service was considered an organ of government. Do you call the Federal Judicial system a monopoly? The federal government has offloaded that function to a non-governmental entity, in order to improve its efficiency.
Standard Oil was a company that did not get exclusive market rights from the federal government, but was able to use its market position to extort profits from its consumers. It was also able to crush competitors by either lowering its prices to prevent either of them from making a profit, or prevent them from gaining access to materials to produce their product. This is the generally accepted definition of a monopoly. It does not require a coercion from the government.
While I do respect your libertarian point of view, I question whether you genuinely understand what constitutes a monopoly.
Reagan outspent the Soviets, and in so doing caused the collapse of the Union. It was Reagan who said that the cold war was like two scorpions in a bottle, only one will live. When he came into office, the Soviets were still extremely paranoid. They exerted political pressure all over the place, and pushed for increased military power.
Gee, the US outspent North Korea 70 to 1 on the military budget, yet North Korea hasn't collapsed. Nor did Iraq; we had to invade the country to topple Saddam. It was the Soviet's stupidity in trying to match the US's military spending that caused its collapse. Crediting the Reagan administration for being some strategic genius that Carter wasn't is ridiculous.
Gorbachev failed because he had to cut USSR's military spending to only essentials (nukes, air force, some ground forces), and then move that GNP to stimulating its internal economy. He couldn't do that quickly enough. Basically, the USSR had to accept being second to third bitch in the world, and its leaders weren't willing to accept that. A failed putsch occurred, and that ended the USSR. If the USSR's leaders could have been a bit more practical, we'd be lauding Gorbachev or Clinton for transforming the USSR.
The spending of the 80's was a good thing anyway.
Not if you owned a farm or worked on an assembly line.
Not only could the USSR not keep up with the US, the US was building an economy that was a mess due to the Carter administration. Reagan levelled off inflation at the same time as putting money into the economy. He created jobs, and really did set the stage for economic growth in the 90's.
The economy during Carter was a mess because of the spending during Vietnam War (started by that democratic idiot LBJ). No bills were paid for it during LBJ or Nixon. In partial response, the gov't "printed" money to pay for it, and that meant inflation. (Also, there was an energy crisis back then, disrupting the economy.) Crediting Reagan for reducing inflation only goes to show your utter incompetence in economics. It was Paul Volcker, the Fed Chairman, who broke inflation's back, and he did it by raising interest rates and causing a deep recession during Carter's term. Reagan's administration's push for a tax cut at that moment of time gave the economy a badly needed stimulus, but again, its out of control military spending caused deficits which triggered the recession which threw Bush Sr. out of office.
Economic growth in the '90's is better attributed to Clinton and the Republican Congress bringing government spending in line. Though I genuinely believe the real reason was the paradigmatic economic changes caused by technological innovation, namely the introduction of the microcomputer industry (and capital investment innovations.) Unfortunately, if I'm correct in that analysis, the US will be in an economic dumper for a looong time, because there is nothing new that looks to be as earth shattering in productivity like the computer revolution.
Thanks to Chris Martin, 8-bit Atari power users can now enjoy 10 Mbit Ethernet, something that the Commodore 64 crowd have been able to do for over a year now... Time to pick up that age-old flamewar?
Format (+/-) doesn't matter unless you are concerned about read compatibility.
Supposedly +R results in more "reliable" encodings, which will mean +R discs will be more likely not to have read errors across +R readers and perhaps less chance of cheapo media coming up with a flawed burn. Haven't used either long enough to form an opinion. If I didn't get a dual (Pioneer A06), I'd probably would have went -R, because (currently) more DVD players read the -R without problems, and the -R media is cheaper. To me, the question is how badly do you need to save the $50 difference in single/dual drives.
Sorry to hear about your filesystems, but you shouldn't fault XFS for your inability to locate what you need.
(Its been available in the Slackware 9 package, and probably Slackware 8.1. as well.)
...i was given this ugly black thing (ThinkPad T21) with no touchpad and a stupid red nipple
What's wrong with you? I love nipples (though I prefer pink or brown)...
But seriously, can't stand touchpads and prefer the trackpoint mice. The touchpads take up an inconvenient amount of space, they don't seem to have precision control of the pointer, I tend to have inadvertent contact problems with my palms, and getting the pad to recognize finger contact can be iffy. Unfortunately, I can't afford IBM.
As a sidenote, I love graffiti based PDAs, and loathe that many new PDAs are going for the thumb keyboards. You can't touch type with a thumb keyboard, you have to keep looking at the keyboard to see what key you're pressing, and again, there goes the screenspace. Damn you technopansy consumers that companies keep aiming to please!
You're a fool if you think NYT wouldn't publish "We Invaded Iraq for Oil" if they had something resembling proof.
You're a fool to think that the absence of a headline "We Invaded Iraq for Oil" is "proof" we didn't invade Iraq over oil.
A vast majority of the big media is liberal, and takes shots at Bush and his policies given any opportunity.
Ahhh, a vast majority of American think big media is liberal, and thinks big media did not go after Clinton because Clinton was liberal. If only people believed what they saw, not what the media told them to think.
And your list of crap above is irrelevant to my comment. I didn't argue WHY we went there, I just argued that OIL wasn't the reason.
But you did not provide a reason why the US invaded Iraq, nor did you provide an argument to show why oil wasn't the reason for invading Iraq. So you agree that we did not invade Iraq over WMD, threat to the region, liberating Iraqi, or because of 9/11. Swell, what was it then?
The remaining French declare war on those two organizations and send the French Foreign legion to the U.S. to retaliate. They infiltrate coffee shops throughout L.A. It becomes impossible for record-company execs to get a decent cup of coffee without a heaping helping of attitude.
The French Foreign Legion is manned by foreigners. If you want to inflict a lethal level of attitude, you must send French citizens.
Unable to understand why the waitstaff isn't nice to them anymore, the entire recording industry commits suicide en mass.
MPAA/RIAA personnel are cockroaches. And like cockroaches, its going to take more than hatred to get them to drop dead. Sad, but true.
The oil argument for why US went to Iraq (invaded, in your terms) is bunk.
"Argument by denial". Hardly persuasive. It might not be the reason why Congress authorized the action, why citizens supported it, or why servicemen are (somewhat) willingly going to Iraq. But its the most persuasive explanation, if you believe the dictum "Follow the money".
"We invaded Iraq because they were producing WMD." Nope, haven't found any. We couldn't even demonstrate its existed at the UN General Assembly over Iraq.
"We invaded Iraq because it posed a threat to the security of the region." Nope, Israel could squash Iraq like a bug, and whatever forces Iraq had, it was no match (in terms of offensive capability) to what was based by the US in the region (PRE-buildup). Iraq had not conducted one offensive operation outside of its borders since 1992.
"We invaded Iraq because of the terrorist attack to the WTC." Nope, no proof Iraq was involved. Also less known was that Hussein was no ally of Al-Queda; he generally arrested or killed any members that tried to organize in his country. Finally, it would have been a much better rationale for invading Saudi Arabia.
"We invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people." Then why aren't we invading North Korea, or Uganda, etc. ?
But what is happening in Iraq now? Bremer is organizing the auction of the oil wells that used to be under the control of the Iraqi government. Why not install an Iraqi government, and let them decide how to manage their oil resources? Also, Halliburton and other American companies are moving in to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. Why not put it out to competitive bidding and save taxpayers' money with the lowest bids?
And multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy? Please back that argument up. Considering the state of Iraqi oil development, it would take vast investments by American oil companies to even begin to project multi-hundred billion dollar paybacks.
Subsidy was perhaps an inappropriate word. No company puts money into anything unless there is a reasonable likelyhood of profit. American oil companies will put in millions of dollars into the oil fields they obtained from the US interim management group for Iraq, and that investment will eventually show billions of dollars in profit. Its the closest you can get to a sure thing. This is not any profit the Iraqi citizen will be sharing. The oil companies did not have to invest a billion dollars into a military force to procure the Iraqi oil fields. I'm guessing this is what the original poster meant by "subsidy".
You're deluded, and uneducated when it comes to this topic. You are passing around the liberal/anti-Bush arguments freely, and it only serves to make the rest of your arguments seem less significant.
No, it appears that you are. You have not shown any set of facts to support your argument that any of the original poster's assertions are incorrect. Furthermore, you make ad hominem characterizations to the posters arguments, and then try to dismiss them on those characterizations, not by attacking the factual basis of his arguments. It worked well for Goebbels and Fox News, but we aren't going to let you get away with it here. Your weak rhetorical manoevers and lack of facts only serves to show how stupid you are, and the weakness in your critical reasoning.
Look kid, the New York Times is never going to print a headline saying "The US invaded Iraq to possess its oilfields". The media is owned by rich people who's interest is to see Iraq invaded, and its oil and construction companies awarded fat contracts. You need to look at the administration's arguments for going to war, you have to realize that the facts contradict their arguments, and then you have to figure out who comes out ahead (after looking at all the facts).
Granted, though, Greenspan played a hand in creating the bubble in the first place. When you see high purchase levels of stock with P/E ratios of 200+, it's time to bump UP the interest rate.
Bullshit. You're only looking for a scapegoat to hang. The Federal Reserve's only responsibility is to regulate the money supply to best enable an environment where business can get money to grow while not having out of control inflation. How is Greenspan supposed to figure out "Oh, enough companies have inflated P/E ratio (and what P/E ratio is the definition for "inflated"?) so now I'll shutdown the economy with a rate hike"? This will not selectively hurt high P/E companies and not affect low P/E companies.
The bubble was caused by many confluent factors and individually most of them were good factors. There was a ton more money being put into the market by individual investors, which wasn't the case 20 years ago. The money had to go somewhere, and many individuals couldn't properly invest it. Then institutional investing companies abused their leverage to make their money and then left the individual sucker to hold the (shit)bag.
Its corruption that caused the stock crash. Management paid with stock options were encouraged to pull every trick in the book to boost the stock's paper value. (Not to ensure the valuation was honest, or invest money in ventures that wouldn't show a profit within 2 quarters.) They helped rig the system so that the only people who could manage Management (the Corporation's board) was stocked with their friends. Then investment banks and accounting companies colluded with those companies to make a profit by lying to investors and bailed out before the shit hit the fan. The tech bubble did not kill the economy. It was the major players in the economy like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc. which had the inflated P/Es that collapsed once they could not maintain the fraud.
Greenspan couldn't do jack about that. The SEC, on the other hand, was in a much better position to prevent that. And Harvey Pitt was doing his job. But big business bribed the politicians to strangle the SEC's ability to regulate, and now its too late.
The reason why the economy is in the toilet now is not high P/E ratios or lack of consumption. Its because all that money that could be put into stimulating the economy is being put into invading contries and building the conquered's infrastructure. And steel tariffs and farm subsidies. Thank you George W. Bush.
And a legal/economic culture that rewards moving jobs overseas and claiming productivity increases from firing staff. And here's the bottom line. There has not been one change legally or operationally that would prevent another Enron or Worldcom from occurring again. All the investment banks that were guilty of colluding all made their profit, after minimizing any legal liability by paying a miniscule fine to NY state. (The federal government did not even attempt to protect the individual investor.) There are many big companies, like IBM, Disney, and GE who some accountants would describe as having funky books. The SEC still does not have the money, personnel, or laws to go after companies committing fraud. Nothing has been corrected in the way that corporate boards are constituted or how companies report profits/expenses. And the only part of the capitalist system that can evaluate companies worth, the analysts, are still owned by the corrupt investment companies. It will only prove the American citizen is the dumbest voter on earth if GWB gets reelected. (And hell, I'm willing to take out some incumbent senators as well.)
With a rocket and a capsule, man got to the moon. With a "state of the art" space plane, man can barely get above the earth's atmosphere.
The shuttle was a horrific, bureaucratic failure that tried to design a vehicle to move payloads and people into space. It sucks at both of those, because technology then (and now) cannot accomplish both tasks economically.
NASA must be plowing 80% of their budget on a vehicle that cannot get anywhere. And now they want to plow that budget into a vehicle that can do the job slightly more competently, but not more reliably or economically.
Space exploration and colonization is not accomplished by getting to LEO. NASA wants to focus most of their budget on a vehicle that will only get to LEO. Am I the only person who sees the incredible stupidity of doing this???
Of course, NASA on the managerial level, is not comprised of people with a dream of space exploration or colonization. Its comprised of bright people who know if they want to keep their jobs, they have to make politicians happy who are bribed by defense contractors to throw make-work engineering projects their way. This is why NASA focuses most of its budget on the shuttle.
The key to a sucessful space program is setting achievable goals that actually result in increased ability to do space research or commercialization. Making a better boondoggle doesn't accomplish that. Set a goal. Put a man on Mars. Put a man on an asteroid. Put a prospecting base on the moon. Don't keep sinking money and effort on failure. Why piss away money on a space shuttle when it can be pissed away on a space elevator that would significantly increase the amount of payload that can be cheaply delivered to GEO? Even if it doesn't save billions of dollars in space launches, AT LEAST you would have a proof of concept.
The only chance of ensuring the US will continue to sink money on space exploration in the future is for all geeks bright enough to understand the shuttle's failure to threaten NASA's existence and force it to focus on useful endeavors.
Dutch Elm's having to run for their lives, California redwoods huddled in fear...
I'm pretty confident those Redwoods would squash those Wollemi pines like a bug. And the Ducky Elms would gang up and beat the crap out of those decrepit pines. Evolution has spoken...
@stake, eeye, and iss have all agreed w/ microsoft not to release details of even potential exploits until the microsoft has had 30 days to "evaluate" them, leaving admins and the public unnecessarily exposed to vulnerabilities. This is completely unacceptable, and contrary to the scientific peer-review process of real science.
What an idiotic thing to say. Most legitimate security researchers give any company an agreed upon period of time before making public an exploitable security hole. Many times, this period is longer than a month. This allows a company time to create and distribute a patch against the hole. No legitimate researcher wants the internet to melt down or information compromised in the desire to rush to make a statement.
In professional ("real") scientific circles, there might not be a built-in delay before disseminating information, but you certainly jeopardize your career if you state anything in your publication that might be quickly interpreted as incorrect. (Just ask Pons & Fleischmann.) Many scientists will delay publication of information to be dead certain of their facts, and there can be a year of delay before a scientific journal will publish the information. (This is part of the peer review process.)
Microsoft may engage in egregious policies concerning disclosure of security vulnerabilities (but none that I'm immediately aware of), but requesting a researcher to delay public announcement before evaluating and producing a security patch is not one of them.
Sounds like more of a lopsided rant than a subjective report.
What critical thinking person would conclude that a position paper written by seven industry experts is a lopsided rant? Did you even bother to read it?
Vibe wont run my KKK ads either. Shame on them for silencing free speech!
(Note: I'm not in the KKK just making a point)
...and the CCIA is not in the KKK either. And your point is...
...How dare people think they can publish a negative opinion against an industry leader?
...That CXO publishers are owned by Microsoft (sic), and thus shouldn't be compelled to publish a negative opinion against itself?
...that a publisher's refusal to accept money and publish an opinion is not commercial suppression of speech?
...If I put out a ridiculous counter-opinion, under the guise of faux reasoning, I will gain karma points?
Leave it to the Mercury News to report with more sordid details.
What caught my eye...
The CCIA trade group also ran into trouble Thursday when it sought to send a paid announcement about its critical Microsoft report to 140,000 subscribers of popular trade magazines for chief security officers and chief information officers.
The publisher for CIO and CSO magazines, CXO Media Inc., offers such announcements ``to target a specific market segment of our audience by designing a list of prospects for direct mail and e-mail purposes.''
But in this case, the subject was too touchy.
``We find it is too sensitive of material to send out. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to deny your request,'' according to an e-mail from the publisher obtained by The Associated Press.
``We need to try to provide some balance on these issues, and this seemed a little one-sided,'' CXO spokeswoman Karen Fogerty said.
Sheesh! The mags won't even report this story if you pay them!
Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer for Counterpane Systems Inc., worked with Geer on the report. He said security experts contacted to help work on the report critical of Microsoft indicated their support but couldn't participate publicly. ``There is a huge chilling effect based on Microsoft's monopoly position,'' Schneier said. ``It's unfortunate that AtStake put its private agenda ahead of intellectual integrity.''
Lets hope Bruce still has his job by the end of the week.
Actually, the last UN resolution on Iraq opened a loophole whereas the UN could instigate military action on Iraq if it did not abide by the conditions of the resolution. The questions are whether the US/Britain (being security council members) could initiate that action independent of a DIRECT UN mandate, and whether there was enough evidence of resolution violations to warrant action. The conditions you cite are standing rules when there are no other mandates in place.
I agree that it probably was an illegal war. I'm merely pointing out that the US gov't lawyers thought the US was acting within UN mandates. I'm not a big supporter of using legalisms to make it impossible to conduct war. And the UN is an organizational joke. There have been outstanding mandates for years on Israel, and they've never followed through on them. Granted, you can blame the US for that, but that doesn't stop the rest of the world from conducting legal actions to enforce the spirit of the mandates.
Slashdot Mirror
/. readers are hippie, deadbeat idiots.
Oh, and I think people who defend this idiot should be required to leave their addresses with their postings. I'm looking forward to a road trip.
How do illegal immigrants cost billions in taxpayer money? Certainly, it would cost far, far more money to police the border and actually locate and deport everyone who wasn't supposed to be here, in addition to turning the country into an orwelian nightmare to do it.
Perhaps, but you can enforce deportation laws without being 100% effective. It certainly costs the taxpayer money when they use our emergency rooms, and compel municipalities to pay for translator services because they think the trade-off results in a better situation for the city/town. The money that goes into education language support is money that isn't being spent educating legal residents.
Personally, I think the damage is much more subtle. You have a roving underclass of non-citizens that have no stake in regional or national interests of this country, and think the local populace should kowtow to them because of their numbers. I don't think hispanics are entitled to citizenship because its more structurally feasible for them to break the law, than say an Asian or African.
Illegal immigrants also contribute to the economy by doing jobs that Americans would frown upon, and by working more cheaply (say, three houses could be build with illegal labor, where one could be build with full-rate American labor).
Perhaps this is what the poster meant in terms of costing billions in taxpayers money. Those three houses that were built with illegal labor means there were citizens that don't have jobs because the illegal immigrants took those jobs. Why should citizens agree to poverty wages for their work because these illegal immigrants, who don't belong in this country, are willing to work for those wages?
Also, many illegals do in fact pay taxes, because their income is automatically withheld from their paychecks
Please explain how the IRS collects this withheld money, when these illegal immigrants don't have a social security number? Or should we feel better about them because they're giving more money to the employer breaking the law?
their kids even die for this country
Too bad. If one cop does something wrong in an arrest, we're supposed to let all the lawbreakers related to the perp to go free? The kid was probably a non-citizen who enlisted in the army. They get paid and get a shot at citizenship. The father was not a citizen. He does not have any privileges of citizenship. Would it have been my choice to take this action? No, but that doesn't change the fact that its an exceptional case, and I'm not about to agree to open borders because of it.
You can't make illegals pay for their stay in prison, and it doesn't necessarily help control crime to dump them back to where they came from. But being able to control immigration does allow a nation to be pickier about who comes in, and thus cut down on the opportunities for citizens to be robbed, raped, or murdered. Not to mention the potential terrorist, drug trafficker or plague carrier.
Oh, I get it, you're just stupid.
Oh I get it, you're either a liberal idiot or a wetback. (Just pointing out your level of intelligence and social grace.)
Oh yeah, that's what every guy wants. A laptop that only has enough battery power for 60 minutes (power consumption) and second-degree burns on his member.
The job of a lawyer is to determine the best legal strategy with the facts on hand. The LA prosecutors *knew* that there were "problems" with the evidence collected, and the problems with the lead investigator.
Folks, there should be no such thing as "surprise" in a court case. Both teams of lawyers get all the facts of the case, and what each team investigates. The legal term for this is called "Discovery". If the prosecution or defense brings up new evidence during trial, and hints that it was known before trial, its almost always ruled inadmissible. The same goes for witnesses. The only thing surprising is how a legal team may use the evidence to craft its legal arguments.
Still, the court case might not be a fair assessment of Clark & Co's competence. OJ's legal team wasn't called the "Dream Team" for nothing. They were the cream of the litigating crop. (At very least, the top 10%.) The question is whether the LA team was the equivalent of the Clippers.
The sad truth is that many prosecutors rack up high conviction rates because they have overwhelming resources to crush the usually indigent defendants. The prosecuting team has the police labs, the reputation, and the expert witnesses. Only the rich defendants can even TRY to put up a fight. So perhaps the LA team experience is analogous to going against the Class A minor league teams all their career, and then finally being matched up with the NY Yankees for one game.
The District Attourney (who's name I forgot) was a political bonehead who really wanted this showcase trial to come about, and probably didn't perceive the possibility of a mismatch. The trial lawyers themselves struck me as confident they were going to slam-dunk this case regardless of the talent or arguments that they were about to face. After all, they've always gone into court with questionable evidence, flawed crime lab results, and racist cops. It never prevented them from getting convictions before. Yeah, there were probably pissed off those defense attourneys were making millions of dollars, but *they* "were as good as them..." (..and what comes before a fall?)
What bothered me was the seeming tactical stumbling goofs of the prosecutors. I can't think of one screwup by the defense team.
The bottom line to me seems that if you get cops that are CAUGHT lying on the stand, writing screenplays about how evidence can be planted on a crime scene, premiere criminologists pointing out that the forensic evidence is flawed, (plus unrelated FBI lab scandals being exposed by Whitehurst before the trial), and guess what? There appears to be grounds for reasonable doubt. If the prosecution understood that they are *required* to present a case beyond REASONABLE doubt, they should have seen this possibility of acquittal coming a mile away (and adjusted accordingly). You can't absolve the prosecuting team because of the people they have to depend on to collect evidence. I wouldn't feel good about any of those guys representing me in court.
What monopoly did the SOBs replace? There were a few, but the biggest were the railroads.
Merely an instance where technological innovation altered market realities. The definition of a monopoly doesn't mean its impossible to for a monopoly to lose its economic stranglehold. Its merely need to reach a point where it can manipulate the economy with its market position. Just because the railroad industry wasn't forsighted enough to buy out Standard Oil before it got big, doesn't mean the railroads weren't a monopoly. For any corporation to reach the state where it has that ability is bad for consumers/government. One merely needs to look at Chinese government through the 15th-19th century for an example.
A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government.
No, that is a definition of a utility, such as a power company, or cable service. The price that the entity pays for having exclusive rights is that it is HEAVILY regulated by the local, state, and federal government. Are you suggesting that Microsoft is a not a monopoly, but a utility that should be subject to heavy government regulation?
The US Postal Service is a monopoly
Technically, no. The US Postal Service was considered an organ of government. Do you call the Federal Judicial system a monopoly? The federal government has offloaded that function to a non-governmental entity, in order to improve its efficiency.
Standard Oil was a company that did not get exclusive market rights from the federal government, but was able to use its market position to extort profits from its consumers. It was also able to crush competitors by either lowering its prices to prevent either of them from making a profit, or prevent them from gaining access to materials to produce their product. This is the generally accepted definition of a monopoly. It does not require a coercion from the government.
While I do respect your libertarian point of view, I question whether you genuinely understand what constitutes a monopoly.
Reagan outspent the Soviets, and in so doing caused the collapse of the Union. It was Reagan who said that the cold war was like two scorpions in a bottle, only one will live. When he came into office, the Soviets were still extremely paranoid. They exerted political pressure all over the place, and pushed for increased military power.
Gee, the US outspent North Korea 70 to 1 on the military budget, yet North Korea hasn't collapsed. Nor did Iraq; we had to invade the country to topple Saddam. It was the Soviet's stupidity in trying to match the US's military spending that caused its collapse. Crediting the Reagan administration for being some strategic genius that Carter wasn't is ridiculous.
Gorbachev failed because he had to cut USSR's military spending to only essentials (nukes, air force, some ground forces), and then move that GNP to stimulating its internal economy. He couldn't do that quickly enough. Basically, the USSR had to accept being second to third bitch in the world, and its leaders weren't willing to accept that. A failed putsch occurred, and that ended the USSR. If the USSR's leaders could have been a bit more practical, we'd be lauding Gorbachev or Clinton for transforming the USSR.
The spending of the 80's was a good thing anyway.
Not if you owned a farm or worked on an assembly line.
Not only could the USSR not keep up with the US, the US was building an economy that was a mess due to the Carter administration. Reagan levelled off inflation at the same time as putting money into the economy. He created jobs, and really did set the stage for economic growth in the 90's.
The economy during Carter was a mess because of the spending during Vietnam War (started by that democratic idiot LBJ). No bills were paid for it during LBJ or Nixon. In partial response, the gov't "printed" money to pay for it, and that meant inflation. (Also, there was an energy crisis back then, disrupting the economy.) Crediting Reagan for reducing inflation only goes to show your utter incompetence in economics. It was Paul Volcker, the Fed Chairman, who broke inflation's back, and he did it by raising interest rates and causing a deep recession during Carter's term. Reagan's administration's push for a tax cut at that moment of time gave the economy a badly needed stimulus, but again, its out of control military spending caused deficits which triggered the recession which threw Bush Sr. out of office.
Economic growth in the '90's is better attributed to Clinton and the Republican Congress bringing government spending in line. Though I genuinely believe the real reason was the paradigmatic economic changes caused by technological innovation, namely the introduction of the microcomputer industry (and capital investment innovations.) Unfortunately, if I'm correct in that analysis, the US will be in an economic dumper for a looong time, because there is nothing new that looks to be as earth shattering in productivity like the computer revolution.
Thanks to Chris Martin, 8-bit Atari power users can now enjoy 10 Mbit Ethernet, something that the Commodore 64 crowd have been able to do for over a year now... Time to pick up that age-old flamewar?
No, time for you people to get lives.
Format (+/-) doesn't matter unless you are concerned about read compatibility.
Supposedly +R results in more "reliable" encodings, which will mean +R discs will be more likely not to have read errors across +R readers and perhaps less chance of cheapo media coming up with a flawed burn. Haven't used either long enough to form an opinion. If I didn't get a dual (Pioneer A06), I'd probably would have went -R, because (currently) more DVD players read the -R without problems, and the -R media is cheaper. To me, the question is how badly do you need to save the $50 difference in single/dual drives.
Sorry to hear about your filesystems, but you shouldn't fault XFS for your inability to locate what you need. (Its been available in the Slackware 9 package, and probably Slackware 8.1. as well.)
What's wrong with you? I love nipples (though I prefer pink or brown)...
But seriously, can't stand touchpads and prefer the trackpoint mice. The touchpads take up an inconvenient amount of space, they don't seem to have precision control of the pointer, I tend to have inadvertent contact problems with my palms, and getting the pad to recognize finger contact can be iffy. Unfortunately, I can't afford IBM.
As a sidenote, I love graffiti based PDAs, and loathe that many new PDAs are going for the thumb keyboards. You can't touch type with a thumb keyboard, you have to keep looking at the keyboard to see what key you're pressing, and again, there goes the screenspace. Damn you technopansy consumers that companies keep aiming to please!
Are the inconveniences worth it?
And given that programmers are overwhelmingly male, I don't think much more than 10% of the population will agree with you.
additionally, when you go shopping with the ladies, you can be all helpful and carry things. Normally nets me a free lunch.
You go shopping with women, and you let them pay for your lunch. You advice is diminished by the fact that you bat for the other team.
You're a fool if you think NYT wouldn't publish "We Invaded Iraq for Oil" if they had something resembling proof.
You're a fool to think that the absence of a headline "We Invaded Iraq for Oil" is "proof" we didn't invade Iraq over oil.
A vast majority of the big media is liberal, and takes shots at Bush and his policies given any opportunity.
Ahhh, a vast majority of American think big media is liberal, and thinks big media did not go after Clinton because Clinton was liberal. If only people believed what they saw, not what the media told them to think.
And your list of crap above is irrelevant to my comment. I didn't argue WHY we went there, I just argued that OIL wasn't the reason.
But you did not provide a reason why the US invaded Iraq, nor did you provide an argument to show why oil wasn't the reason for invading Iraq. So you agree that we did not invade Iraq over WMD, threat to the region, liberating Iraqi, or because of 9/11. Swell, what was it then?
The remaining French declare war on those two organizations and send the French Foreign legion to the U.S. to retaliate. They infiltrate coffee shops throughout L.A. It becomes impossible for record-company execs to get a decent cup of coffee without a heaping helping of attitude.
The French Foreign Legion is manned by foreigners. If you want to inflict a lethal level of attitude, you must send French citizens.
Unable to understand why the waitstaff isn't nice to them anymore, the entire recording industry commits suicide en mass.
MPAA/RIAA personnel are cockroaches. And like cockroaches, its going to take more than hatred to get them to drop dead. Sad, but true.
The oil argument for why US went to Iraq (invaded, in your terms) is bunk.
"Argument by denial". Hardly persuasive. It might not be the reason why Congress authorized the action, why citizens supported it, or why servicemen are (somewhat) willingly going to Iraq. But its the most persuasive explanation, if you believe the dictum "Follow the money".
"We invaded Iraq because they were producing WMD."
Nope, haven't found any. We couldn't even demonstrate its existed at the UN General Assembly over Iraq.
"We invaded Iraq because it posed a threat to the security of the region."
Nope, Israel could squash Iraq like a bug, and whatever forces Iraq had, it was no match (in terms of offensive capability) to what was based by the US in the region (PRE-buildup). Iraq had not conducted one offensive operation outside of its borders since 1992.
"We invaded Iraq because of the terrorist attack to the WTC."
Nope, no proof Iraq was involved. Also less known was that Hussein was no ally of Al-Queda; he generally arrested or killed any members that tried to organize in his country. Finally, it would have been a much better rationale for invading Saudi Arabia.
"We invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people."
Then why aren't we invading North Korea, or Uganda, etc. ?
But what is happening in Iraq now?
Bremer is organizing the auction of the oil wells that used to be under the control of the Iraqi government. Why not install an Iraqi government, and let them decide how to manage their oil resources? Also, Halliburton and other American companies are moving in to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. Why not put it out to competitive bidding and save taxpayers' money with the lowest bids?
And multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy? Please back that argument up. Considering the state of Iraqi oil development, it would take vast investments by American oil companies to even begin to project multi-hundred billion dollar paybacks.
Subsidy was perhaps an inappropriate word. No company puts money into anything unless there is a reasonable likelyhood of profit. American oil companies will put in millions of dollars into the oil fields they obtained from the US interim management group for Iraq, and that investment will eventually show billions of dollars in profit. Its the closest you can get to a sure thing. This is not any profit the Iraqi citizen will be sharing. The oil companies did not have to invest a billion dollars into a military force to procure the Iraqi oil fields. I'm guessing this is what the original poster meant by "subsidy".
You're deluded, and uneducated when it comes to this topic. You are passing around the liberal/anti-Bush arguments freely, and it only serves to make the rest of your arguments seem less significant.
No, it appears that you are. You have not shown any set of facts to support your argument that any of the original poster's assertions are incorrect. Furthermore, you make ad hominem characterizations to the posters arguments, and then try to dismiss them on those characterizations, not by attacking the factual basis of his arguments. It worked well for Goebbels and Fox News, but we aren't going to let you get away with it here. Your weak rhetorical manoevers and lack of facts only serves to show how stupid you are, and the weakness in your critical reasoning.
Look kid, the New York Times is never going to print a headline saying "The US invaded Iraq to possess its oilfields". The media is owned by rich people who's interest is to see Iraq invaded, and its oil and construction companies awarded fat contracts. You need to look at the administration's arguments for going to war, you have to realize that the facts contradict their arguments, and then you have to figure out who comes out ahead (after looking at all the facts).
Granted, though, Greenspan played a hand in creating the bubble in the first place. When you see high purchase levels of stock with P/E ratios of 200+, it's time to bump UP the interest rate.
Bullshit. You're only looking for a scapegoat to hang. The Federal Reserve's only responsibility is to regulate the money supply to best enable an environment where business can get money to grow while not having out of control inflation. How is Greenspan supposed to figure out "Oh, enough companies have inflated P/E ratio (and what P/E ratio is the definition for "inflated"?) so now I'll shutdown the economy with a rate hike"? This will not selectively hurt high P/E companies and not affect low P/E companies.
The bubble was caused by many confluent factors and individually most of them were good factors. There was a ton more money being put into the market by individual investors, which wasn't the case 20 years ago. The money had to go somewhere, and many individuals couldn't properly invest it. Then institutional investing companies abused their leverage to make their money and then left the individual sucker to hold the (shit)bag.
Its corruption that caused the stock crash. Management paid with stock options were encouraged to pull every trick in the book to boost the stock's paper value. (Not to ensure the valuation was honest, or invest money in ventures that wouldn't show a profit within 2 quarters.) They helped rig the system so that the only people who could manage Management (the Corporation's board) was stocked with their friends. Then investment banks and accounting companies colluded with those companies to make a profit by lying to investors and bailed out before the shit hit the fan. The tech bubble did not kill the economy. It was the major players in the economy like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc. which had the inflated P/Es that collapsed once they could not maintain the fraud.
Greenspan couldn't do jack about that. The SEC, on the other hand, was in a much better position to prevent that. And Harvey Pitt was doing his job. But big business bribed the politicians to strangle the SEC's ability to regulate, and now its too late.
The reason why the economy is in the toilet now is not high P/E ratios or lack of consumption. Its because all that money that could be put into stimulating the economy is being put into invading contries and building the conquered's infrastructure. And steel tariffs and farm subsidies. Thank you George W. Bush.
And a legal/economic culture that rewards moving jobs overseas and claiming productivity increases from firing staff. And here's the bottom line. There has not been one change legally or operationally that would prevent another Enron or Worldcom from occurring again. All the investment banks that were guilty of colluding all made their profit, after minimizing any legal liability by paying a miniscule fine to NY state. (The federal government did not even attempt to protect the individual investor.) There are many big companies, like IBM, Disney, and GE who some accountants would describe as having funky books. The SEC still does not have the money, personnel, or laws to go after companies committing fraud. Nothing has been corrected in the way that corporate boards are constituted or how companies report profits/expenses. And the only part of the capitalist system that can evaluate companies worth, the analysts, are still owned by the corrupt investment companies. It will only prove the American citizen is the dumbest voter on earth if GWB gets reelected. (And hell, I'm willing to take out some incumbent senators as well.)
With a rocket and a capsule, man got to the moon. With a "state of the art" space plane, man can barely get above the earth's atmosphere.
The shuttle was a horrific, bureaucratic failure that tried to design a vehicle to move payloads and people into space. It sucks at both of those, because technology then (and now) cannot accomplish both tasks economically.
NASA must be plowing 80% of their budget on a vehicle that cannot get anywhere. And now they want to plow that budget into a vehicle that can do the job slightly more competently, but not more reliably or economically.
Space exploration and colonization is not accomplished by getting to LEO. NASA wants to focus most of their budget on a vehicle that will only get to LEO. Am I the only person who sees the incredible stupidity of doing this???
Of course, NASA on the managerial level, is not comprised of people with a dream of space exploration or colonization. Its comprised of bright people who know if they want to keep their jobs, they have to make politicians happy who are bribed by defense contractors to throw make-work engineering projects their way. This is why NASA focuses most of its budget on the shuttle.
The key to a sucessful space program is setting achievable goals that actually result in increased ability to do space research or commercialization. Making a better boondoggle doesn't accomplish that. Set a goal. Put a man on Mars. Put a man on an asteroid. Put a prospecting base on the moon. Don't keep sinking money and effort on failure. Why piss away money on a space shuttle when it can be pissed away on a space elevator that would significantly increase the amount of payload that can be cheaply delivered to GEO? Even if it doesn't save billions of dollars in space launches, AT LEAST you would have a proof of concept.
The only chance of ensuring the US will continue to sink money on space exploration in the future is for all geeks bright enough to understand the shuttle's failure to threaten NASA's existence and force it to focus on useful endeavors.
Dutch Elm's having to run for their lives, California redwoods huddled in fear...
I'm pretty confident those Redwoods would squash those Wollemi pines like a bug. And the Ducky Elms would gang up and beat the crap out of those decrepit pines. Evolution has spoken...
@stake, eeye, and iss have all agreed w/ microsoft not to release details of even potential exploits until the microsoft has had 30 days to "evaluate" them, leaving admins and the public unnecessarily exposed to vulnerabilities. This is completely unacceptable, and contrary to the scientific peer-review process of real science.
What an idiotic thing to say. Most legitimate security researchers give any company an agreed upon period of time before making public an exploitable security hole. Many times, this period is longer than a month. This allows a company time to create and distribute a patch against the hole. No legitimate researcher wants the internet to melt down or information compromised in the desire to rush to make a statement.
In professional ("real") scientific circles, there might not be a built-in delay before disseminating information, but you certainly jeopardize your career if you state anything in your publication that might be quickly interpreted as incorrect. (Just ask Pons & Fleischmann.) Many scientists will delay publication of information to be dead certain of their facts, and there can be a year of delay before a scientific journal will publish the information. (This is part of the peer review process.)
Microsoft may engage in egregious policies concerning disclosure of security vulnerabilities (but none that I'm immediately aware of), but requesting a researcher to delay public announcement before evaluating and producing a security patch is not one of them.
Sounds like more of a lopsided rant than a subjective report.
What critical thinking person would conclude that a position paper written by seven industry experts is a lopsided rant? Did you even bother to read it?
Vibe wont run my KKK ads either. Shame on them for silencing free speech!
(Note: I'm not in the KKK just making a point)
...and the CCIA is not in the KKK either. And your point is...
...How dare people think they can publish a negative opinion against an industry leader?
...That CXO publishers are owned by Microsoft (sic), and thus shouldn't be compelled to publish a negative opinion against itself?
...that a publisher's refusal to accept money and publish an opinion is not commercial suppression of speech?
...If I put out a ridiculous counter-opinion, under the guise of faux reasoning, I will gain karma points?
Leave it to the Mercury News to report with more sordid details.
What caught my eye...
The CCIA trade group also ran into trouble Thursday when it sought to send a paid announcement about its critical Microsoft report to 140,000 subscribers of popular trade magazines for chief security officers and chief information officers.
The publisher for CIO and CSO magazines, CXO Media Inc., offers such announcements ``to target a specific market segment of our audience by designing a list of prospects for direct mail and e-mail purposes.''
But in this case, the subject was too touchy.
``We find it is too sensitive of material to send out. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to deny your request,'' according to an e-mail from the publisher obtained by The Associated Press.
``We need to try to provide some balance on these issues, and this seemed a little one-sided,'' CXO spokeswoman Karen Fogerty said.
Sheesh! The mags won't even report this story if you pay them!
---
Fight the Power!
This has to be a troll.
What kind of idiot would be posting to Slashdot looking for Vulture Capitalists?
Actually, the last UN resolution on Iraq opened a loophole whereas the UN could instigate military action on Iraq if it did not abide by the conditions of the resolution. The questions are whether the US/Britain (being security council members) could initiate that action independent of a DIRECT UN mandate, and whether there was enough evidence of resolution violations to warrant action. The conditions you cite are standing rules when there are no other mandates in place.
I agree that it probably was an illegal war. I'm merely pointing out that the US gov't lawyers thought the US was acting within UN mandates. I'm not a big supporter of using legalisms to make it impossible to conduct war. And the UN is an organizational joke. There have been outstanding mandates for years on Israel, and they've never followed through on them. Granted, you can blame the US for that, but that doesn't stop the rest of the world from conducting legal actions to enforce the spirit of the mandates.