In order to prove that statement, you have to prove that you actually know when your Iraqi adventures began. The US was using Iraq as a proxy against Iran decades before Kuwait.
I'm not sure that Saddams regime was evil. From what I understand, other than a few cases where a hard line was taken against an assassination or a rebellion(or, of course, his famous culling of the political body when he took power), it looks very much like Saddam modernized and liberalized the country, and kept it more free than most countries in the reigon.
Frankly, we're there now, and we're failing to control the same forces he had to deal with. His tactics may have been utterly brutal, but they appear to have worked for the most part, where we seem doomed to stay there forever to prop up the iraqi government against factions of the iraqi people.
Also, when talking about genocide, we have to remember that hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, were killed by the economic sanctions we put in place after Kuwait, according to some organizations.
In all, this whole situation is a whole lot murkier than most people are willing to admitand just saying "that regime was evil", especially in that reigon of the world, is an almost meaningless statement.
Kuwait were being real dicks. They totally had it coming, with the games they were playing with the oil market to hurt the limping Iraq after the 9 year war.
American Ideals and American reality are two different things. It's easy to say "Censorship in all forms is wrong", but as we see on this site on a regular basis, just because a nation has an ideal doesn't mean it will live up to them when push comes to shove.
Google in China can't display results about democracy. Google in America can't display results about Scientology. Same shit, different pile.
Re:When there are so many to choose from
on
Married In Oblivion
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· Score: 1
The fact that they don't actually check for the correct shaders on the video card, opening the door for the oldblivion mod is on my list of favourites.
I'd say you're in a dreamworld. The only difference between Bush and those who came before him is that the ones who came before him were competent enough to play god without irritating the peasants.
But if the web ads ARE ineffective, then isn't is a strange ideal to say that we should keep them there just for the sake of making the website money?
It seems to me that saying "Keep the ads because it'll help out the webmaster" is just another version of the broken window fallacy -- except that in this case, rather than it being false because we could use the screen real estate to do something else just as financially productive, it's false because the web ads really are useless, whether they're there or not.
If anything, we're saving the sponsors money by not wasting their bandwidth on ads that won't work. (That said, I don't adblock because it eats up too many CPU cycles for my tastes.)
Why post this story?! Patents are obviously good! Where would we be without the patent on "A method of trading goods and services for legal tender"? What company would possibly have the incentive to develop "a method to provide assistance to customers using standard telecommunications infastructure" without being promised a patent for their work?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't this a dumb thing to do? "Oh noes! Windows got 5% more market share in the 'not actually hosting a website' demographic!"
I can't help but wonder if, by choosing battles like this one, the OSS community as a whole is doomed to fail against microsoft; an enemy who often establishes victory first, then fights the appropriate battles.
Java is a product of Sun. Microsoft could not have done anything "on purpose", because it's not their product. Oh, they tried once. Then they got smacked around by the justice system a few times.
Let's test this theory, rather than prattling on. As an instrumentation specialist, I know that the physical world will not change because the path equation was 'proven' false.
From Dictionary.com
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor. Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes. Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation. Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education. Archaic. Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman. Obsolete. Morally unrestrained; licentious.
The problem with the American Heritage definition is that it's centered around the second definition. This definition basically says "people who call themselves liberals are liberal". This definition is foolish, and can be omitted from this discussion.
Now, let's check the opposite.
Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change. Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit. Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate. Of or relating to the political philosophy of conservatism. Belonging to a conservative party, group, or movement. Conservative Of or belonging to the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom or the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada. Conservative Of or adhering to Conservative Judaism. Tending to conserve; preservative: the conservative use of natural resources.
Well I'll be! Other than the circular "people who call themselves conservative are conservative", which we will again drop because it's a foolish definition, we see that my definition is just fine.
The problem is the politicans are in much better shape if they pretend they all lie under a certain banner than if they have to defend each of their ideals in a free-for-all. "Let's run up record budget defecits year after year" is a lot harder to pass under people's radar when it doesn't have "We need to protect ourselves from a clear and present danger to our us and our countrymen" to fall back on.
Considering that most people are too clueless to know what "leftist" even means, I'm afraid that you don't get off that easily. Prove you have a clue before saying anything. "The 25 year old theory of global warming is a big conspiracy theory" sounds pretty leftist to me. On the other hand, so does "we should teach religion in classrooms instead of science for the first time in at least a generation!".
Really, almost every time the "conservatives" get people angry, it's because they've decided to fundamentally change something that's worked perfectly fine for a generation. You know what they call that where I come from? Leftist. Rightist would be people getting up in arms because they refuse to change things.
Today, I was using a pair of zeigler-nichols tuned PID controllers in a feed-forward control scheme to regulate the level in a tank. I was using a pair of orifice plates to measure, along with the neccessary differential pressure transmitters and signal linearizers. It cost way more than I should have spent for a level controller, but the precision was worth it -- that is, it would have been worth it, but the accuracy of my differential pressure transmitters was +/- 1%, my final control element was suffering from SEVERE hysteresis, and even with the linearizers in place, my loop gain was extremely non-linear, forcing the process into oscillation!! To make matters worse, my favourite website wasn't up, and some asshole on the tech support line tried to give me some BS about "lienooks" and "apache" indians or something...
Today, I configured Apache 2 on my linux box. I'm running debian because I can host my own apt-get repository within my intranet. My server machine is a quad opteron with six gigs of ram and a terrabyte SATA RAID-5 array. I'm excited to get it working in the new office, but the networking guy gave me some BS about "vlans" or "broadcast domains" or something...
Today, I designed an internetworking infastructure. I was going to use a homogenous switched environment after the router at my point of presence, but the size of the network, paired with security concerns from staff, convinced me to use VLANS and routers to establish broadcast domains. I used ACLs to ensure that the staff network was isolated from the user networks. Their internet access is also protected behind a transparent proxy. The CAT6 is installed, but the RJ45s won't be installed until tuesday, so for now I have to do most of my work from the wiring closets around the building. Frankly, I'm a bit upset because the water isn't working correctly. I contacted the city, and the asshole gave me some BS about "non-linear loop gains" or something...
As anyone who understands one of these things can see, area-specific terminology is created and standardized to *FACILITATE* communication, not hinder it. The fact that you aren't familiar with the terminology means that you don't have the means to converse intelligently with people of whatever trade or science is in question, not that they have created an artifical barrier for entry.
It's wrong because there are a thousand gods out there and it's virtually impossible that the one you choose is the "right" one, as well as the fact that by choosing a god simply because you don't want to suffer wrath, you aren't really entitled to make it into heaven/valhalla/whatever anyway?
That's a messed up reason not to be good to ol' earth. Considering the fact that city drinking water treatment plants have to work harder because people pour toxins down the drain, I'm just fine with going the conservative route(I'm sorry, the route of least risk, for those of you who think far leftist wackjob positions constitute being conservative) and just using different or fewer chemicals.
"Scientific mumbojumbo" is simply the natural result of dedicating your life to specializing in a particular field. If you don't like it, that's fine -- I'm sure there's some streetcorner you can beg on somewhere so you never have to learn any terminology. Hell -- even working at McDonalds involves some unique vocabulary, so don't even try.
I'm getting sick and tired of far-left whackjobs who think that labelling themselves "conservative" will change the fact that their views are out of line with generally held consensus for a generation.
Slashdot Mirror
In order to prove that statement, you have to prove that you actually know when your Iraqi adventures began. The US was using Iraq as a proxy against Iran decades before Kuwait.
I'm not sure that Saddams regime was evil. From what I understand, other than a few cases where a hard line was taken against an assassination or a rebellion(or, of course, his famous culling of the political body when he took power), it looks very much like Saddam modernized and liberalized the country, and kept it more free than most countries in the reigon.
Frankly, we're there now, and we're failing to control the same forces he had to deal with. His tactics may have been utterly brutal, but they appear to have worked for the most part, where we seem doomed to stay there forever to prop up the iraqi government against factions of the iraqi people.
Also, when talking about genocide, we have to remember that hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, were killed by the economic sanctions we put in place after Kuwait, according to some organizations.
In all, this whole situation is a whole lot murkier than most people are willing to admitand just saying "that regime was evil", especially in that reigon of the world, is an almost meaningless statement.
Kuwait were being real dicks. They totally had it coming, with the games they were playing with the oil market to hurt the limping Iraq after the 9 year war.
Because only a leftist could possibly be against an unprecidented war of aggression against an already suppressed threat.
As opposed to this article, which is a COMPLETELY LEGITIMATE baseless partisan attack...
I think attacks on Video News Releases and illegal prisons in Cuba are honest political attacks, depending on who they're coming from.
American Ideals and American reality are two different things. It's easy to say "Censorship in all forms is wrong", but as we see on this site on a regular basis, just because a nation has an ideal doesn't mean it will live up to them when push comes to shove.
Google in China can't display results about democracy. Google in America can't display results about Scientology. Same shit, different pile.
The fact that they don't actually check for the correct shaders on the video card, opening the door for the oldblivion mod is on my list of favourites.
This is the most disturbing thing I've read all week.
I'd say you're in a dreamworld. The only difference between Bush and those who came before him is that the ones who came before him were competent enough to play god without irritating the peasants.
But if the web ads ARE ineffective, then isn't is a strange ideal to say that we should keep them there just for the sake of making the website money?
It seems to me that saying "Keep the ads because it'll help out the webmaster" is just another version of the broken window fallacy -- except that in this case, rather than it being false because we could use the screen real estate to do something else just as financially productive, it's false because the web ads really are useless, whether they're there or not.
If anything, we're saving the sponsors money by not wasting their bandwidth on ads that won't work. (That said, I don't adblock because it eats up too many CPU cycles for my tastes.)
Why post this story?! Patents are obviously good! Where would we be without the patent on "A method of trading goods and services for legal tender"? What company would possibly have the incentive to develop "a method to provide assistance to customers using standard telecommunications infastructure" without being promised a patent for their work?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't this a dumb thing to do? "Oh noes! Windows got 5% more market share in the 'not actually hosting a website' demographic!"
I can't help but wonder if, by choosing battles like this one, the OSS community as a whole is doomed to fail against microsoft; an enemy who often establishes victory first, then fights the appropriate battles.
Java is a product of Sun. Microsoft could not have done anything "on purpose", because it's not their product. Oh, they tried once. Then they got smacked around by the justice system a few times.
Do you have any idea of the amount of people that depend on the enterprise features of MS Office?
Do you? If so, what is that number, preferably as a percentage of total user base?
Rhetoric is for trash. Give me numbers.
Let's test this theory, rather than prattling on. As an instrumentation specialist, I know that the physical world will not change because the path equation was 'proven' false.
From Dictionary.com
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.
Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes.
Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation.
Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education.
Archaic. Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman.
Obsolete. Morally unrestrained; licentious.
The problem with the American Heritage definition is that it's centered around the second definition. This definition basically says "people who call themselves liberals are liberal". This definition is foolish, and can be omitted from this discussion.
Now, let's check the opposite.
Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit.
Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.
Of or relating to the political philosophy of conservatism.
Belonging to a conservative party, group, or movement.
Conservative Of or belonging to the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom or the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada.
Conservative Of or adhering to Conservative Judaism.
Tending to conserve; preservative: the conservative use of natural resources.
Well I'll be! Other than the circular "people who call themselves conservative are conservative", which we will again drop because it's a foolish definition, we see that my definition is just fine.
The problem is the politicans are in much better shape if they pretend they all lie under a certain banner than if they have to defend each of their ideals in a free-for-all. "Let's run up record budget defecits year after year" is a lot harder to pass under people's radar when it doesn't have "We need to protect ourselves from a clear and present danger to our us and our countrymen" to fall back on.
Considering that most people are too clueless to know what "leftist" even means, I'm afraid that you don't get off that easily. Prove you have a clue before saying anything. "The 25 year old theory of global warming is a big conspiracy theory" sounds pretty leftist to me. On the other hand, so does "we should teach religion in classrooms instead of science for the first time in at least a generation!".
Really, almost every time the "conservatives" get people angry, it's because they've decided to fundamentally change something that's worked perfectly fine for a generation. You know what they call that where I come from? Leftist. Rightist would be people getting up in arms because they refuse to change things.
Actually, I knew that it didn't. It's utterly irrelevant, just like the reference to pascals wager.
Bullshit. 100%.
Let me show you why.
Today, I was using a pair of zeigler-nichols tuned PID controllers in a feed-forward control scheme to regulate the level in a tank. I was using a pair of orifice plates to measure, along with the neccessary differential pressure transmitters and signal linearizers. It cost way more than I should have spent for a level controller, but the precision was worth it -- that is, it would have been worth it, but the accuracy of my differential pressure transmitters was +/- 1%, my final control element was suffering from SEVERE hysteresis, and even with the linearizers in place, my loop gain was extremely non-linear, forcing the process into oscillation!! To make matters worse, my favourite website wasn't up, and some asshole on the tech support line tried to give me some BS about "lienooks" and "apache" indians or something...
Today, I configured Apache 2 on my linux box. I'm running debian because I can host my own apt-get repository within my intranet. My server machine is a quad opteron with six gigs of ram and a terrabyte SATA RAID-5 array. I'm excited to get it working in the new office, but the networking guy gave me some BS about "vlans" or "broadcast domains" or something...
Today, I designed an internetworking infastructure. I was going to use a homogenous switched environment after the router at my point of presence, but the size of the network, paired with security concerns from staff, convinced me to use VLANS and routers to establish broadcast domains. I used ACLs to ensure that the staff network was isolated from the user networks. Their internet access is also protected behind a transparent proxy. The CAT6 is installed, but the RJ45s won't be installed until tuesday, so for now I have to do most of my work from the wiring closets around the building. Frankly, I'm a bit upset because the water isn't working correctly. I contacted the city, and the asshole gave me some BS about "non-linear loop gains" or something...
As anyone who understands one of these things can see, area-specific terminology is created and standardized to *FACILITATE* communication, not hinder it. The fact that you aren't familiar with the terminology means that you don't have the means to converse intelligently with people of whatever trade or science is in question, not that they have created an artifical barrier for entry.
You were doing so well until you had to drop that pathetic over-used rhetorical bomb, the L word.
Congratulations. Considering your arguement, you're a hypocrite! What are you going to do now?
It's wrong because there are a thousand gods out there and it's virtually impossible that the one you choose is the "right" one, as well as the fact that by choosing a god simply because you don't want to suffer wrath, you aren't really entitled to make it into heaven/valhalla/whatever anyway?
That's a messed up reason not to be good to ol' earth. Considering the fact that city drinking water treatment plants have to work harder because people pour toxins down the drain, I'm just fine with going the conservative route(I'm sorry, the route of least risk, for those of you who think far leftist wackjob positions constitute being conservative) and just using different or fewer chemicals.
"Scientific mumbojumbo" is simply the natural result of dedicating your life to specializing in a particular field. If you don't like it, that's fine -- I'm sure there's some streetcorner you can beg on somewhere so you never have to learn any terminology. Hell -- even working at McDonalds involves some unique vocabulary, so don't even try.
I'm getting sick and tired of far-left whackjobs who think that labelling themselves "conservative" will change the fact that their views are out of line with generally held consensus for a generation.
Because republics have NEVER devolved into anarchy which destroyed a nation before. Especially not the worlds sole superpower!
Your obvious agenda is being Overly Critical Guy.
Don't worry! We still love you!