Welcome to the real world of educational evaluation. This is why standardized testing cannot replace subjective reading and review. If you want to get correct results, you have to put in the effort.
The same types of people making and using standardized tests will be conducting the subjective reviews. What if the problem is the people, not the method they use?
The deflection is that you are taking one argument "mistreatment of people is bad" and using it as a proxy for another argument "Golan Heights does not belong to Israel" and ignoring all the steps inbetween. They are not synonymous arguments.
Now look at this:
the actions of others is NOT a defence for the immorality of the actions of oneself.
You are the one trying to use the morality of the situation and yet this statement about the actions of others contradicts that. The actions of Israel are not a defense against the immorality of Syria, right? So your argument that Syria has some moral claim to Golan Heights is a contradiction. Instead we have to look at fact, not morality. Israel occupies it, many Israelis live there, it's a strategic asset, whatever. There are many non-moral reasons that point to "Golan Heights belongs to Israel."
So since you are not going to justify one breach of morality with another, what reason do you have for returning Golan Heights to Syria? Remember you can't use the morality (or lack thereof) of Israel, according to your own argument.
However, the rule in question would forbid the ISPs from doing this, since they are not allowed to discriminate at any time or for any reason, so they have to allow the DDoS traffic through.
I'd say the rule in question would not allow the ISP to unilaterally decide to cut off DDoS traffic to one user, but if the user directs them to stop the traffic then it's fine. Net neutrality is about who makes decisions on traffic, not whether decisions are allowed to be made.
Your idea that the decision to cut off a DDoS should be made by your ISP and not you is almost exactly like the ISP having the authority to say "We don't like you using all your bandwidth to stream Netflix movies so we're throttling you" or even more similarly "Too many people are streaming Netflix, it's interfering with our other customers, so we're blocking Netflix."
Simply putting the decision about what to block in the hands of the user alleviates both problems completely with no ill side-effects.
Allowing the ADSL user to switch IPs solves the issue for the user, but it doesn't solve the issue for the ISP - they still have to handle all that traffic, they cannot block it due to the rule, and that will affect their infrastructure for the duration.
How is dropping undeliverable traffic (to an unused IP address) violating the rule? I think you're interpreting it a little too harshly. Do you also think net neutrality means ISPs can't terminate your account due to ignoring your bills and not paying for service, because the bits must continue flowing in all cases?
I'd never heard of the Chinese Room before. It's really interesting!
Chinese Room starts with begging the question: it assumes that syntax is insufficient for semantics, then goes on to try to prove that very thing.
It seems to me that you're assuming a particular goal of the Chinese Room. To me, it's about the difference between simulation and what we commonly call understanding. Now when you talk about semantics, that makes me think of meaning, not understanding. A Chinese Room can be meaningful to the people interacting with it but the Chinese Room itself may not achieve understanding.
It also seems like there are two different ideas of what is gaining or supposed to gain understanding -- the person inside the room who is controlling everything, and the room as a whole. I don't know which was originally intended by Searle, but both questions are interesting.
To me the only question begged by the Chinese Room argument is that we have consciousness ourselves. That consciousness and understanding exist. But that's okay because that's a widely held notion.
It then proceeds to throw in an argument from incredulity ("how could a room possibly have a mind, when there's nothing there that does?").
But that is correct isn't it? Do you think a room could have a consciousness based on what goes on inside it? Do you think that the execution of *every* algorithm leads to consciousness of some kind?
Finally, as an icing to the cake, the exact same argument can be said of human brains, which, after all, are a kilogram or so of watery goo.
I thought Searle is arguing that there is actually some physical thing in the brain that is different from the ordinary material in the Chinese Room. The reason we have a mind and the room does not is that we are more than simple Turing machines.
The though experiment was, to put it bluntly, made up to reinforce Searle's feeling of being special. It's simply the good old "humans have souls which are magical" -thing in a new disguise, the "magic" in this case being replaced with "causative powers of human brains", the nature of which is left unspecified.
That's right, and the conclusion is that a computer using the technology we have today will never get to the point where it deserves something like human rights.
I think your vision is fine and could be handled just like new "smart meters" for electricity.
You want bulk, high latency bandwidth for a linux DVD image, it's $10/month prorated by your usage. The high quality voip bandwidth is $100/month prorated by your usage.
Personally I don't see the problem with that level of neutrality. The key point is your ISP can't discriminate by substituting one type of traffic for another at the same price. If you say "I'm using the high quality bandwidth for hulu" then you'll get it and they can't do anything about it. Likewise if they want to stream HD movies to you, they have to pick one of the existing bandwidth packages to do it, it can't be a private, no-competition package that lets them undercut the competition.
That's really all that's required for net neutrality.
Easy solution. You can oversubscribe, but the amount of dedicated bandwidth per subscriber has to be enough to make the 911 call.
The devices using up your bandwidth are under your control. If you want to stream HD movies while making your 911 call, you're out of luck. But if you turn off everything, you are guaranteed to have enough available bandwidth to make the call.
Why does it need to be more guaranteed than that? Who cares if your neighbor is still streaming HD as long as you can make your call by turning off YOUR tv?
More importantly, what if a carrier network is carrying VoIP traffic? Your rule would make it illegal to give 911 calls priority over all other traffic
Why not make that a separate service than your general internet connection?
My understanding of net neutrality is to secure the idea of a general purpose connection. If I pay for an "up to" 20mbps line, then I expect to get up to 20mbps from youtube, hulu, netflix, or whoever has enough capacity to saturate it. Now the actual capacity of my line to my isp may be 30mbps. So why not say I have a 20mbps line, which no other traffic can interfere with, and also a 1mbps voip line, which no other traffic can interfere with.
And if you want to run your voip on your general purpose line instead of the special voip line, so what? It's your choice at that point.
Your rule is uncompromising - what happens when Anonymous decide to DDoS some poor 14 year old who criticised them on his self-hosted blog?
The ISP may be able to handle 10GB/sec, but his ADSL line won't
What happens currently in that situation? It's not like the ISP magically upgrades your home line to 10.5GB/sec OR gives you the tools you need to block the bad traffic (source quench) because those tools are open to abuse as well.
Really it should be handled through a combination of services. Some kind of mirroring service provided the by ISP, and a way to quickly change your IP address without resetting your modem and praying you get a new one. Limited to 1 change per minute it doesn't seem that open to abuse either.
The same thing happened with Pastor Terry Jones, the would-be Koran burner in Florida. High-level government officials said "this is a security risk" and "this will endanger our troops" (yeah even General Petraeus stuck his nose in it).
Then the fire department blocked their burn permit (ridiculous). Next thing you know their insurance company canceled their coverage and their bank called in their mortgage. All over fully protected free speech.
I agree there is a clear need to have some kind of neutrality law when it comes to large businesses pressuring individuals to act according to the government's wishes.
Excellent point. Once thing I noticed playing split screen Call of Duty was that it splits the screen horizontally, resulting in two really smooshed looking screens. It would have been much better to split it vertically, getting closer to a normal 4:3 resolution. When I plugged my xbox into a 4:3 computer monitor to play, it was much easier to adjust to than the 32:9 split screen ratio. Really don't know why they implemented it that way.
Hey, sorry I didn't notice your follow-up comment.
I just want to point out you're asking me to justify numbers, but your post's sole reasoning was "we spend more than the next 15 countries, so clearly that's too much and should be cut." No justification at all except posting numbers. But anyway.
When it comes to education overspending, yes there are many examples we could look at, but politically it would be impossible to implement the programs that are successful. The countries ahead of us that I've investigated have very heavy emphasis on testing and tracking students. You may get put into the gifted track program in 3rd grade, and the lower tracks have much fewer opportunities. That wouldn't work here and you know it. Our education system is highly ineffective and is tied down by political feel-good measures like NCLB.
But our military spending is not equivalent at all. We have the most effective military in the world by far. We spend the most, and we're #1. So not at all like education. I justify our vast military spending by looking at the growth in American wealth since WWII. I'm sure you know that after WWII, as the "defenders of the free world" we benefited greatly from new economic treaties with our allies in Europe. Even stuff like international treaties to trade oil in US dollars have helped us.
I don't have hard facts to show that the benefit has outweighed the cost, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did, and it's certainly not as clear cut as saying something like 80% of our spending could be cut with no ill effects.
Of course, the world security situation is constantly changing and Europe isn't as wealthy as it once was and may not be the best partner to court with our military alliances. And maybe our military needs to change dramatically to counter new threats.
I don't think the solution is to cut funding, but rather that we need to explore new ways of fighting and slowly divert money to those programs. Drones are obviously a key component to future warfare with threats like terrorist-supporting states. I would love to see a national drone program or some kind of crowdsourcing for reconnaissance, spotting IEDs, going over old footage, and so on.
We went through all this with blacks already. it's exactly the same fucking thing: having blacks in the military didn't make it illegal to make fun of anyone, and neither will this, despite all the hand wringing and "OMG I DUN WANNA BE PC" grunting.
If that's true, great, like I said that's exactly what I support. However, I doubt it will end up as tolerant of non-PC-ness as you're suggesting.
Then you have to abide by professional rules of conduct, like not calling your underlings "bitches", "Niggers", or "fags". at least, once they get out of boot camp.
You have to admit, vocabulary like "that's gay" is far more common among straight men than "you nigger" is among non-black men. Kids grow up calling things gay, they don't grow up calling each other niggers. It's a different part of our culture and treating it the same as racial issues doesn't make sense.
If they are hazing someone in a bunk, then they are a testosterone drunk frat boy with a gun and they need a lesson in discipline. You can wave it away all you like, but it's still bullshit and there is no reason to consider it acceptable behavior.
I don't support hazing and all that, gay or straight. I'm talking about speech issues and specifically what people might say on their down time amongst themselves.
Over time our military is becoming more and more rigid with respect to restrictions on soldiers' behavior. That's undeniable. Whether this is just another minor step on the ladder or a major one with plenty of unforeseen consequences remains to be seen.
I can't put a word in quotes in I didn't even use that word, can I?
Okay true enough but I'm sure you know what I meant.
So your problem is that I talked about one country, and you think that I can only talk about one country if I talk about every other country in the world as well, otherwise it's "not fair"...
What I have a problem with is your statement that all you really care about is mistreatment of people, when your previous statements do not support that. They show that you are more interested in blaming Israel in particular than blaming all the parties responsible, or looking for a solution for Golan Heights residents which today includes many Israelis. Golan Heights, whether you like it or not, is in many ways part of Israel now, and has been for longer than it was part of Syria.
The reason I have a problem with your style of argument is that I see it as the biggest stumbling block to the Middle East peace process. Nobody puts forward real arguments or speaks frankly and openly. Everybody hides behind fake humanitarian games. The Israelis don't want to secure water rights etc, they want "freedom and democracy." The Palestinians don't want economic strength and an army to fight Israel, they want "freedom from persecution." Huh, weird, everybody supports freedom, yet they still can't agree I wonder why that is? It's all BS and your style of argument, pretending to only have noble goals like preventing mistreatment of people, while your words are purely anti-one-side, plays right into that.
But maybe that is really how you feel and I've misinterpreted and twisted your remarks. To me, your words sound very partisan and one-sided. If all you want is peace, I apologize.
The situation becomes clear cut once you look at the bodies and see dead civilians - it's as simple as that. If later investigation had shown that people in the van were insurgents, I don't think anyone would have questioned the judgement of the soldiers who fired on it.
In cases where the dead civilians are well known and documented such as this one, yes, but I wouldn't say that's true in general. How can you tell a dead civilian from a dead insurgent after the fact?
Regardless, I think the situation as it exists in the moment of judgment is more important than hindsight.
This is not fundamentally different from how lethal self defence is handled in civilian courts.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, and I wonder what courts would say about the standard of doubt in a self defense case during a time of war in an active battle. I'm no legal expert and I don't know cases off hand, but it seems like a person's judgment in assessing "Is my life in danger? Is that person going to kill me?" must depend on circumstance as well as the precise person in question.
As for it being a wrong kind of war - well yeah, that tends to happen when you invade other countries. But again US has full control over it - it can withdraw at any time - so it is not really a good excuse.
Well it's not the USA that would be convicted of war crimes, it's the particular soldiers in question, and they obviously do not have full control over the invasion, withdrawal, or pretty much anything.
two gay men kissing each other does nothing whatsoever to target anyone in any way. Any discomfort felt is not for any reason you can rationally tie to their actions. They aren't threatening anyone.
But two straight guys who are talking amongst themselves and saying "Oh man that is so gay" in reference to some event are also doing nothing whatsoever to target anyone. And yet someone who overhears them can claim they feel sexually harassed and that their sensibilities have been violated.
If a gay man tries to kiss YOU, it's abusive and violent. It's not really that complicated.
Notice that when the borderline for when gay activity becomes abusive is when they physically assault you, apparently. But the borderline for when anti-gay activity becomes abusive is just when you say things that gays take offense to. Then it's "systematic emotional abuse" as you called it.
Punishment in the military does not automagically mean prison. There are many levels of punishment below that. it's different than working at a company, but it's not that different in that respect and most of its differences would tell me I would want my military to be MORE professional, not less.
Okay it's not necessarily prison but it's still different from a regular job.
As for professionalism, we simply disagree. People whose jobs take over their lives and place them in stressful hectic situations where life and death are on the line should be given *more* leeway in how they vent frustration and anger at circumstances beyond their control, not less.
Oh no, I must have read part of it and missed a couple of words
I was just pointing it out, it's a common joke on slashdot. People don't even read the summaries these days..
My concern is of the mistreatment of people, wherever that may be.
Okay, but the way you put "Israel" in scare quotes and agreed with the other poster was placing the emphasis on who is involved, not just how people are being mistreated.
In reality, it is unfair to blame Israel more than Syria. Neither country drew up the original border to begin with, and Syria played just as large a role in militarizing Golan Heights in the 40s and 50s as Israel. So if you are actually concerned about mistreatment of people and not politics, why would you say "Israel" in scare quotes and say you feel dirty but not "Syria" as well? How is Syria better in this situation?
I don't need everything spelled out for me, but I am genuinely confused about your apparent sincerity in helping people mixed with your partisan criticism of Israel and support of Syria.
Also free speech carves out a big exception for things designed to incite people to kill. You can be arrested for it. Speech designed to incite people to sex has relatively small restrictions in comparison, so it's not as backwards as people initially think.
1. It says "Golan Heights" in the summary, you don't even need to read the article. 2. The *story* actually is from Israel. TFA says the story was reported by "Israeli newspaper Maariv." 3. How can you be concerned about occupied territory in a place where borders were completely and artificially redrawn by foreign powers after WW1? Why not return control to Turkey, not Syria? Or maybe Italy?
Moving from Modern Warfare 2 to Black Ops I noticed a significant change in team dynamics too. But over time it's rebuilding. I think it's because it was a new game and nobody knew what was going on or how to play effectively. One thing I immediately noticed was the lack of vocabulary in describing maps. In a MW2 map like "Terminal" you had short descriptive names that everybody had learned to recognize. That knowledge is still growing in Black Ops.
I've found that the regular Team Deathmatch has the least team gameplay, but the other game types are getting better. Hardcore Team Deathmatch is already better and people will talk a bit about where they died, how many enemies are coming, and where people are hiding. The more specialized games like Hardcore Search and Destroy have even more, with people looking out for each other and dividing into smaller teams to guard or attack targets. It makes sense -- when you get one life per round and have to wait several minutes each time you die, you do more to stay alive. Team work gives you a huge advantage.
It requires re-thinking when you're involved in a war where the enemy does not wear uniforms or badges, does not have any official government or centralized leadership that you can negotiate with, and has the support of at least part of the local population.
But even accepting your style of thinking about it, what does the rigid definition say about the standard of certainty? What if you're pretty sure someone has a gun but they're not exposing it yet? How about if it's exposed but they're not aiming it or shooting? How about if they drop their guns whenever they see you, but pick them up and shoot at you as you drive away?
I think there's more nuance, even in the existing rigid rules, than you are giving credit. To pretend the situation is so clear cut that it warrants being called a war crime seems ridiculous.
As for what Assange did, I'll leave that to the court to decide.
Why would you do that, when it's clear that the Assange case is politically motivated?
When is the last time an international manhunt was started for a rape suspect?
Are all the other rapes in Sweden (which has the highest number of rapes per capita in Western Europe thanks largely to its immigrant Muslim population) prosecuted with such vigor and determination?
This is the problem with our wars. We are mixing war and humanitarian efforts. Just the fact that a soldier shooting at someone he thinks is an enemy combatant could be *considered* a "war crime" shows how completely retarded our ideas of war crimes have become.
They used to be things that were unequivocally bad, like slaughtering an entire village including women and children, going on mass rape campaigns.. now it's like, oh you *could* have avoided that casualty by dramatically increasing risk to yourself and your friends, WAR CRIME!!
The computer applications class is not called "computer science" -- it's called "computer applications." It's just listed under the "computer science" section of the class list.
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to the real world of educational evaluation. This is why standardized testing cannot replace subjective reading and review. If you want to get correct results, you have to put in the effort.
The same types of people making and using standardized tests will be conducting the subjective reviews. What if the problem is the people, not the method they use?
The deflection is that you are taking one argument "mistreatment of people is bad" and using it as a proxy for another argument "Golan Heights does not belong to Israel" and ignoring all the steps inbetween. They are not synonymous arguments.
Now look at this:
the actions of others is NOT a defence for the immorality of the actions of oneself.
You are the one trying to use the morality of the situation and yet this statement about the actions of others contradicts that. The actions of Israel are not a defense against the immorality of Syria, right? So your argument that Syria has some moral claim to Golan Heights is a contradiction. Instead we have to look at fact, not morality. Israel occupies it, many Israelis live there, it's a strategic asset, whatever. There are many non-moral reasons that point to "Golan Heights belongs to Israel."
So since you are not going to justify one breach of morality with another, what reason do you have for returning Golan Heights to Syria? Remember you can't use the morality (or lack thereof) of Israel, according to your own argument.
However, the rule in question would forbid the ISPs from doing this, since they are not allowed to discriminate at any time or for any reason, so they have to allow the DDoS traffic through.
I'd say the rule in question would not allow the ISP to unilaterally decide to cut off DDoS traffic to one user, but if the user directs them to stop the traffic then it's fine. Net neutrality is about who makes decisions on traffic, not whether decisions are allowed to be made.
Your idea that the decision to cut off a DDoS should be made by your ISP and not you is almost exactly like the ISP having the authority to say "We don't like you using all your bandwidth to stream Netflix movies so we're throttling you" or even more similarly "Too many people are streaming Netflix, it's interfering with our other customers, so we're blocking Netflix."
Simply putting the decision about what to block in the hands of the user alleviates both problems completely with no ill side-effects.
Allowing the ADSL user to switch IPs solves the issue for the user, but it doesn't solve the issue for the ISP - they still have to handle all that traffic, they cannot block it due to the rule, and that will affect their infrastructure for the duration.
How is dropping undeliverable traffic (to an unused IP address) violating the rule? I think you're interpreting it a little too harshly. Do you also think net neutrality means ISPs can't terminate your account due to ignoring your bills and not paying for service, because the bits must continue flowing in all cases?
I'd never heard of the Chinese Room before. It's really interesting!
Chinese Room starts with begging the question: it assumes that syntax is insufficient for semantics, then goes on to try to prove that very thing.
It seems to me that you're assuming a particular goal of the Chinese Room. To me, it's about the difference between simulation and what we commonly call understanding. Now when you talk about semantics, that makes me think of meaning, not understanding. A Chinese Room can be meaningful to the people interacting with it but the Chinese Room itself may not achieve understanding.
It also seems like there are two different ideas of what is gaining or supposed to gain understanding -- the person inside the room who is controlling everything, and the room as a whole. I don't know which was originally intended by Searle, but both questions are interesting.
To me the only question begged by the Chinese Room argument is that we have consciousness ourselves. That consciousness and understanding exist. But that's okay because that's a widely held notion.
It then proceeds to throw in an argument from incredulity ("how could a room possibly have a mind, when there's nothing there that does?").
But that is correct isn't it? Do you think a room could have a consciousness based on what goes on inside it? Do you think that the execution of *every* algorithm leads to consciousness of some kind?
Finally, as an icing to the cake, the exact same argument can be said of human brains, which, after all, are a kilogram or so of watery goo.
I thought Searle is arguing that there is actually some physical thing in the brain that is different from the ordinary material in the Chinese Room. The reason we have a mind and the room does not is that we are more than simple Turing machines.
The though experiment was, to put it bluntly, made up to reinforce Searle's feeling of being special. It's simply the good old "humans have souls which are magical" -thing in a new disguise, the "magic" in this case being replaced with "causative powers of human brains", the nature of which is left unspecified.
That's right, and the conclusion is that a computer using the technology we have today will never get to the point where it deserves something like human rights.
Very true. The real solution is to kick out kids who don't want to be there, but that may create more problems than it's worth.
It's really striking when you see a documentary about incredibly impoverished schools in other countries and how much the kids want to be there.
I think your vision is fine and could be handled just like new "smart meters" for electricity.
You want bulk, high latency bandwidth for a linux DVD image, it's $10/month prorated by your usage. The high quality voip bandwidth is $100/month prorated by your usage.
Personally I don't see the problem with that level of neutrality. The key point is your ISP can't discriminate by substituting one type of traffic for another at the same price. If you say "I'm using the high quality bandwidth for hulu" then you'll get it and they can't do anything about it. Likewise if they want to stream HD movies to you, they have to pick one of the existing bandwidth packages to do it, it can't be a private, no-competition package that lets them undercut the competition.
That's really all that's required for net neutrality.
Easy solution. You can oversubscribe, but the amount of dedicated bandwidth per subscriber has to be enough to make the 911 call.
The devices using up your bandwidth are under your control. If you want to stream HD movies while making your 911 call, you're out of luck. But if you turn off everything, you are guaranteed to have enough available bandwidth to make the call.
Why does it need to be more guaranteed than that? Who cares if your neighbor is still streaming HD as long as you can make your call by turning off YOUR tv?
More importantly, what if a carrier network is carrying VoIP traffic? Your rule would make it illegal to give 911 calls priority over all other traffic
Why not make that a separate service than your general internet connection?
My understanding of net neutrality is to secure the idea of a general purpose connection. If I pay for an "up to" 20mbps line, then I expect to get up to 20mbps from youtube, hulu, netflix, or whoever has enough capacity to saturate it. Now the actual capacity of my line to my isp may be 30mbps. So why not say I have a 20mbps line, which no other traffic can interfere with, and also a 1mbps voip line, which no other traffic can interfere with.
And if you want to run your voip on your general purpose line instead of the special voip line, so what? It's your choice at that point.
Your rule is uncompromising - what happens when Anonymous decide to DDoS some poor 14 year old who criticised them on his self-hosted blog?
The ISP may be able to handle 10GB/sec, but his ADSL line won't
What happens currently in that situation? It's not like the ISP magically upgrades your home line to 10.5GB/sec OR gives you the tools you need to block the bad traffic (source quench) because those tools are open to abuse as well.
Really it should be handled through a combination of services. Some kind of mirroring service provided the by ISP, and a way to quickly change your IP address without resetting your modem and praying you get a new one. Limited to 1 change per minute it doesn't seem that open to abuse either.
The same thing happened with Pastor Terry Jones, the would-be Koran burner in Florida. High-level government officials said "this is a security risk" and "this will endanger our troops" (yeah even General Petraeus stuck his nose in it).
Then the fire department blocked their burn permit (ridiculous). Next thing you know their insurance company canceled their coverage and their bank called in their mortgage. All over fully protected free speech.
I agree there is a clear need to have some kind of neutrality law when it comes to large businesses pressuring individuals to act according to the government's wishes.
Excellent point. Once thing I noticed playing split screen Call of Duty was that it splits the screen horizontally, resulting in two really smooshed looking screens. It would have been much better to split it vertically, getting closer to a normal 4:3 resolution. When I plugged my xbox into a 4:3 computer monitor to play, it was much easier to adjust to than the 32:9 split screen ratio. Really don't know why they implemented it that way.
Hey, sorry I didn't notice your follow-up comment.
I just want to point out you're asking me to justify numbers, but your post's sole reasoning was "we spend more than the next 15 countries, so clearly that's too much and should be cut." No justification at all except posting numbers. But anyway.
When it comes to education overspending, yes there are many examples we could look at, but politically it would be impossible to implement the programs that are successful. The countries ahead of us that I've investigated have very heavy emphasis on testing and tracking students. You may get put into the gifted track program in 3rd grade, and the lower tracks have much fewer opportunities. That wouldn't work here and you know it. Our education system is highly ineffective and is tied down by political feel-good measures like NCLB.
But our military spending is not equivalent at all. We have the most effective military in the world by far. We spend the most, and we're #1. So not at all like education. I justify our vast military spending by looking at the growth in American wealth since WWII. I'm sure you know that after WWII, as the "defenders of the free world" we benefited greatly from new economic treaties with our allies in Europe. Even stuff like international treaties to trade oil in US dollars have helped us.
I don't have hard facts to show that the benefit has outweighed the cost, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did, and it's certainly not as clear cut as saying something like 80% of our spending could be cut with no ill effects.
Of course, the world security situation is constantly changing and Europe isn't as wealthy as it once was and may not be the best partner to court with our military alliances. And maybe our military needs to change dramatically to counter new threats.
I don't think the solution is to cut funding, but rather that we need to explore new ways of fighting and slowly divert money to those programs. Drones are obviously a key component to future warfare with threats like terrorist-supporting states. I would love to see a national drone program or some kind of crowdsourcing for reconnaissance, spotting IEDs, going over old footage, and so on.
We went through all this with blacks already. it's exactly the same fucking thing: having blacks in the military didn't make it illegal to make fun of anyone, and neither will this, despite all the hand wringing and "OMG I DUN WANNA BE PC" grunting.
If that's true, great, like I said that's exactly what I support. However, I doubt it will end up as tolerant of non-PC-ness as you're suggesting.
Then you have to abide by professional rules of conduct, like not calling your underlings "bitches", "Niggers", or "fags". at least, once they get out of boot camp.
You have to admit, vocabulary like "that's gay" is far more common among straight men than "you nigger" is among non-black men. Kids grow up calling things gay, they don't grow up calling each other niggers. It's a different part of our culture and treating it the same as racial issues doesn't make sense.
If they are hazing someone in a bunk, then they are a testosterone drunk frat boy with a gun and they need a lesson in discipline. You can wave it away all you like, but it's still bullshit and there is no reason to consider it acceptable behavior.
I don't support hazing and all that, gay or straight. I'm talking about speech issues and specifically what people might say on their down time amongst themselves.
Over time our military is becoming more and more rigid with respect to restrictions on soldiers' behavior. That's undeniable. Whether this is just another minor step on the ladder or a major one with plenty of unforeseen consequences remains to be seen.
I can't put a word in quotes in I didn't even use that word, can I?
Okay true enough but I'm sure you know what I meant.
So your problem is that I talked about one country, and you think that I can only talk about one country if I talk about every other country in the world as well, otherwise it's "not fair"...
What I have a problem with is your statement that all you really care about is mistreatment of people, when your previous statements do not support that. They show that you are more interested in blaming Israel in particular than blaming all the parties responsible, or looking for a solution for Golan Heights residents which today includes many Israelis. Golan Heights, whether you like it or not, is in many ways part of Israel now, and has been for longer than it was part of Syria.
The reason I have a problem with your style of argument is that I see it as the biggest stumbling block to the Middle East peace process. Nobody puts forward real arguments or speaks frankly and openly. Everybody hides behind fake humanitarian games. The Israelis don't want to secure water rights etc, they want "freedom and democracy." The Palestinians don't want economic strength and an army to fight Israel, they want "freedom from persecution." Huh, weird, everybody supports freedom, yet they still can't agree I wonder why that is? It's all BS and your style of argument, pretending to only have noble goals like preventing mistreatment of people, while your words are purely anti-one-side, plays right into that.
But maybe that is really how you feel and I've misinterpreted and twisted your remarks. To me, your words sound very partisan and one-sided. If all you want is peace, I apologize.
The situation becomes clear cut once you look at the bodies and see dead civilians - it's as simple as that. If later investigation had shown that people in the van were insurgents, I don't think anyone would have questioned the judgement of the soldiers who fired on it.
In cases where the dead civilians are well known and documented such as this one, yes, but I wouldn't say that's true in general. How can you tell a dead civilian from a dead insurgent after the fact?
Regardless, I think the situation as it exists in the moment of judgment is more important than hindsight.
This is not fundamentally different from how lethal self defence is handled in civilian courts.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, and I wonder what courts would say about the standard of doubt in a self defense case during a time of war in an active battle. I'm no legal expert and I don't know cases off hand, but it seems like a person's judgment in assessing "Is my life in danger? Is that person going to kill me?" must depend on circumstance as well as the precise person in question.
As for it being a wrong kind of war - well yeah, that tends to happen when you invade other countries. But again US has full control over it - it can withdraw at any time - so it is not really a good excuse.
Well it's not the USA that would be convicted of war crimes, it's the particular soldiers in question, and they obviously do not have full control over the invasion, withdrawal, or pretty much anything.
two gay men kissing each other does nothing whatsoever to target anyone in any way. Any discomfort felt is not for any reason you can rationally tie to their actions. They aren't threatening anyone.
But two straight guys who are talking amongst themselves and saying "Oh man that is so gay" in reference to some event are also doing nothing whatsoever to target anyone. And yet someone who overhears them can claim they feel sexually harassed and that their sensibilities have been violated.
If a gay man tries to kiss YOU, it's abusive and violent. It's not really that complicated.
Notice that when the borderline for when gay activity becomes abusive is when they physically assault you, apparently. But the borderline for when anti-gay activity becomes abusive is just when you say things that gays take offense to. Then it's "systematic emotional abuse" as you called it.
Punishment in the military does not automagically mean prison. There are many levels of punishment below that. it's different than working at a company, but it's not that different in that respect and most of its differences would tell me I would want my military to be MORE professional, not less.
Okay it's not necessarily prison but it's still different from a regular job.
As for professionalism, we simply disagree. People whose jobs take over their lives and place them in stressful hectic situations where life and death are on the line should be given *more* leeway in how they vent frustration and anger at circumstances beyond their control, not less.
Oh no, I must have read part of it and missed a couple of words
I was just pointing it out, it's a common joke on slashdot. People don't even read the summaries these days..
My concern is of the mistreatment of people, wherever that may be.
Okay, but the way you put "Israel" in scare quotes and agreed with the other poster was placing the emphasis on who is involved, not just how people are being mistreated.
In reality, it is unfair to blame Israel more than Syria. Neither country drew up the original border to begin with, and Syria played just as large a role in militarizing Golan Heights in the 40s and 50s as Israel. So if you are actually concerned about mistreatment of people and not politics, why would you say "Israel" in scare quotes and say you feel dirty but not "Syria" as well? How is Syria better in this situation?
I don't need everything spelled out for me, but I am genuinely confused about your apparent sincerity in helping people mixed with your partisan criticism of Israel and support of Syria.
Great point.
Also free speech carves out a big exception for things designed to incite people to kill. You can be arrested for it. Speech designed to incite people to sex has relatively small restrictions in comparison, so it's not as backwards as people initially think.
1. It says "Golan Heights" in the summary, you don't even need to read the article.
2. The *story* actually is from Israel. TFA says the story was reported by "Israeli newspaper Maariv."
3. How can you be concerned about occupied territory in a place where borders were completely and artificially redrawn by foreign powers after WW1? Why not return control to Turkey, not Syria? Or maybe Italy?
Moving from Modern Warfare 2 to Black Ops I noticed a significant change in team dynamics too. But over time it's rebuilding. I think it's because it was a new game and nobody knew what was going on or how to play effectively. One thing I immediately noticed was the lack of vocabulary in describing maps. In a MW2 map like "Terminal" you had short descriptive names that everybody had learned to recognize. That knowledge is still growing in Black Ops.
I've found that the regular Team Deathmatch has the least team gameplay, but the other game types are getting better. Hardcore Team Deathmatch is already better and people will talk a bit about where they died, how many enemies are coming, and where people are hiding. The more specialized games like Hardcore Search and Destroy have even more, with people looking out for each other and dividing into smaller teams to guard or attack targets. It makes sense -- when you get one life per round and have to wait several minutes each time you die, you do more to stay alive. Team work gives you a huge advantage.
It requires re-thinking when you're involved in a war where the enemy does not wear uniforms or badges, does not have any official government or centralized leadership that you can negotiate with, and has the support of at least part of the local population.
But even accepting your style of thinking about it, what does the rigid definition say about the standard of certainty? What if you're pretty sure someone has a gun but they're not exposing it yet? How about if it's exposed but they're not aiming it or shooting? How about if they drop their guns whenever they see you, but pick them up and shoot at you as you drive away?
I think there's more nuance, even in the existing rigid rules, than you are giving credit. To pretend the situation is so clear cut that it warrants being called a war crime seems ridiculous.
As for what Assange did, I'll leave that to the court to decide.
Why would you do that, when it's clear that the Assange case is politically motivated?
When is the last time an international manhunt was started for a rape suspect?
Are all the other rapes in Sweden (which has the highest number of rapes per capita in Western Europe thanks largely to its immigrant Muslim population) prosecuted with such vigor and determination?
This is the problem with our wars. We are mixing war and humanitarian efforts. Just the fact that a soldier shooting at someone he thinks is an enemy combatant could be *considered* a "war crime" shows how completely retarded our ideas of war crimes have become.
They used to be things that were unequivocally bad, like slaughtering an entire village including women and children, going on mass rape campaigns.. now it's like, oh you *could* have avoided that casualty by dramatically increasing risk to yourself and your friends, WAR CRIME!!
Still not the same as rape. The sex was consented to.
Calling this rape really denigrates victims of actual rape -- people who did not want to have sex with the other person AT ALL and were forced to.
The computer applications class is not called "computer science" -- it's called "computer applications." It's just listed under the "computer science" section of the class list.
source: the article
It's more like if you had the Biology 1 course listed in a section called "Pre-med track" or something, which would be fine.