Consider my theory: That the republicans are actually left-wing and liberal in the traditional sense of the words.
Consider their policies. Consider their budget. Consider the constant "everything is different post 9/11, and things can never be done the same way". The opposition to two hundred year traditions. The utter outrage at international agreements which, like or not, we agreed to.
Put together, it looks to me like someone is misrepresenting themselves. Hmm?
Because people believe what they are told when a person of authority tells them something. Consider the Republicans track record: Bucking tradition, supporting larger government, defying both international agreements and law like some teenager who was told he couldn't have the car for the weekend; These folks are left wing liberals. They're negative left wing liberals, mind you, with some truly horrible ideas about how the world should work, but they're left wing liberals by most definitions of "left wing vs. right wing", or even "conservative vs. liberal", except for the new one: "a conservative believes in right wing stuff and right wing people believe in conservative stuff, and liberals believe in left wing stuff, left wing being liberal stuff".
If I find some time, I'm going to finish an article about it which I've been working on.
I ACTUALLY wrote: The problem isn't that he's a nice guy or that we like dictators, the problem is that these are life and death decisions which affect thousands of people who are going to live or die based on this decision. There is a gravity here which you aren't taking into account. One thousand Americans, and by some estimates, ten thousand iraqis are DEAD now because we decided to go in, and they won't come back. Not if Iraqis are free, not if the some radical cleric comes in and wins the elections by a landslide and Iraq degenerates back to the same or worse conditions as under Saddam, not if the Iraqi justice system decides that Saddam was framed and set him free and he becomes the legitimate president. Those people will still be dead, and there is a real question about the price to be paid.
Ignoring that question makes you just as much of a monster as the man you so wish to set people free of. Consider that.
To which you responded... America is NOT responsible for the actions of Saddam. We may have supported him in the beginning, but the moment he started gassing the Kurds is the moment we realized how evil he was. But at that time, it was too late... hence the first gulf war. Of course, we couldn't finish the job the first time around thanks to the UN. So now we are back for round 2.
And get ready for the pressure to be put on Iran. They HATE Israel with a white hot passion of a thousand stars. Is it any doubt they want to develop a bomb to compliment their new missile? Peaceful nuclear research my ass! They are sitting on the world's largest supply of energy...oil of course.
Wow. If you look up irony in the dictionary, they'll have your picture. In your reply, not only do you not consider the question, but you tie it up and have it thrown off a cliff.
How about you try again, actually reading my message this time.
Grow up. Freedom isn't free. Unless you're willing to personally pay the price(and something tells me that the nonchalance you give to full scale war means that you haven't and wouldn't), quit telling other Americans that they must.
Is Saddam a bad guy? Sure. Nobody is disputing that, except in your own mind. He is an asshole, and it's a damned shame we installed him as dictator.
The problem isn't that he's a nice guy or that we like dictators, the problem is that these are life and death decisions which affect thousands of people who are going to live or die based on this decision. There is a gravity here which you aren't taking into account. One thousand Americans, and by some estimates, ten thousand iraqis are DEAD now because we decided to go in, and they won't come back. Not if Iraqis are free, not if the some radical cleric comes in and wins the elections by a landslide and Iraq degenerates back to the same or worse conditions as under Saddam, not if the Iraqi justice system decides that Saddam was framed and set him free and he becomes the legitimate president. Those people will still be dead, and there is a real question about the price to be paid.
Ignoring that question makes you just as much of a monster as the man you so wish to set people free of. Consider that.
To be fair, my understanding is that Fox News is the bagdad bob of US news sources.
It's not partesian to demand legitimate news sources. It's not partesian to hate war, and considering how the press was managed during the most controversial period of the war, I'd say it's not partesian to support people who want to present a different viewpoint, even if that point is made by a complete nut like Moore.
Frankly, I've come to the conclusion that the "conservatives" are misrepresenting themselves. Took at their policies and you'd likely notice the same trend I have, of left wing change and a budget to match.
As a european, you probably saw a lot more about problems in the 2k election than many Americans. Remember that the report by Greg Palast about shady practices in florida was aired by the bbc, not(to the best of my knowlege) any american news organizations.
The lack of a monoculture in Europe may mean that news organizations are less afraid to dig up dirt on governments over there. Just an unsubstantiated theory on my part, but seeing US news media as it is today, I wouldn't be very suprised...
I'd think the difference would be in the ADC circuitry built into the monitor. It's concievable that it could be less than par, and could be causing problems.
Obviously, I'm just an electronic engineering student, so I don't know for certain yet(waveforms don't pop up until term 4, if I recall correctly) that much about adcs and dacs, but if I had to make an educated guess as to why the connector would make a difference, that would be it.
Seriously, was I the only person who noticed that the Conservative Party was running on a platform of change, while the liberals were running on a platform of keeping things the same like they have for years and years now (while the NDP were, as always, running on a platform of "it doesn't matter whether we have money or not, we should give it away!" socialism)? The switcheroo on this continent is really funny to me. The Liberals and Democrats seem to want to keep things as they are, relatively speaking, while the conservatives and republicans promise huge reforms and extremely seedy budgets.:D
let me paraphrase your idiotic ramblings "You're a stupid cunt. Foreigners don't deserve freedom."
Perhaps closer to... "You're a stupid cunt. We've tried fucking with things before, and that's why 9/11 happened and Saddam controlled Iraq. Furthermore, Freedom isn't Free, and only a liberal nut would want US citizens to pay the price in blood for someone else."
If I'm reading between the lines, your saying Saddam shoud have been left in power along with his two sons. Yes?
Unless the Iraqi people did something about it, or one of it's neighbours stepped in to kick him off his throne, yes. I have no qualms about dealing with our own problems before trying to run the rest of the world. In fact, trying to run the rest of the world is what put saddam on his throne in the first place. Why do you keep ignoring that fact?
Also, get your facts right. Bush is a conservative, NOT a liberal.
Under which definition of the word? He spends more than the liberals, in fact, he's downright irresponsible with the budget. His plans to protect America from terrorism come right from the pages of some Liberal interventionists wet-dream, and are completely new and untested, bucking tradition radically. His stance on the constitution is that it should be changed to fit his vision of utopia. He practices(though doesn't nessessarily profess) a belief in larger government, less control by the states, abolition of freedom of speech, and betrayal of international agreements.
He's also an ex drug addict and alcoholic. Jesus may forgive him for that, but I do not. I certainly don't have to overlook those things when deciding the leader of this nation.
If that's not a textbook definition of "liberal", I don't know what is.
Oh, and in case you haven't been reading the news, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi agrees with bush and is thankful we Americans jumped in to liberate them. Talk about egg on the face to those that opposed this war in the first place. I must admit, I'm grinning. Talk about Iraq giving Europe and the UN the finger. Ohhh the sweet irony!
You don't know the first thing about peoples arguements against the war, and it shows. Wanting family and freinds fighting abroad in an irrelevant war to come home isn't partesian. Not wanting to enter an unprecidented and illegal(through international agreements that we voluntarily sigend into -- look under Liberal and you'd see that being against the rules is a Liberal trait) war of invasion.
Anyway, this conversation is over. I'm not going to argue with you over simple semantics, and that's what this will devolve to if this conversation continues any longer. Continue believing whatever you want to believe. I gave you some reasons why Bush is a bad president, just like you asked for. Whether you want to accept them is your own business. Good day.
Saddam agreed to let weapon inspectors back in the country to look for WMD and to explain the missing batches of chemical weapons that was found earlier (according to the UN). But he did not, and he had YEARS to comply. But he did not. Thus the invation was needed to inforce the resolutions. In case you haven't notice, we will not stand for playing games with a dictator. In fact, I'm angry we didn't invade sooner before 911.
Let's ignore the fact that the parent called the UN thugs because they didn't let the US do what they wanted, because otherwise I'll have a big diatrabe on hypocrisy, and nobody wants that.
There was an extremely complex situation there, and it wasn't nearly so black and white. Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors because the US was allegedly using their inspectors as spies. Later on, there was a period where the inspectors from other nations were allowed in, but not from the US. Shortly after that, all the inspectors were pulled and bombs started dropping on Iraq. There was absolutely more going on, and it's not like Saddam hadn't been punished(aside from sanctions, Clinton spent his time in office taking pot shots at iraq as well).
we will not stand for playing games with a dictator.
Fuck yeah you will! 9/11 AND Iraq were both a pretty direct result of playing games with dictators! In fact, the government has played that game all around the world.
He was waiting for all the data to be put togeather from military intelligence. In the mean time, the Airforce sent out jets after the second plane hit. Mean while...soon after the Pentagon got hit.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who will take a crisis as a call to action, and those who clam up. As anyone can tell you, every channel on TV that day was dedicated to coverage of the disaster. There was certainly at the very least information availiable. Forgetting that, he could have had all flights grounded within minutes, he could have had fighter jets patrolling major centers, and in short, he could have done a fuckload of a lot more, especially before the pentagon was attacked. The point is, he is the commander in chief, and he should have done SOMETHING. Instead, he kept on reading 'my pet goat', then afterwards stuck around for photo opportunities.
Even if 10,000 soldiers died, it would be worth the cause to free Iraq and set forth an example of democracy to the rest of the middle east. Unless...you prefer tribal warfare and dictatorship to rule the part of the word as it has for thousands of years. I will give you the benefit of the doubt though. I'm being nice today.
In the middle of a war on terror, where the same resources could be put toward freeing the AMERICAN PEOPLE from TERROR, rather than some unprecidented and largely irrelevant(hypocritical "they broke a UN resolution" shit aside, the iraqis were probably in the worst position to attack the states compared to other, real rogue states) leftist liberation. Besides which, do you have any fucking idea what the history of the middle east is? Do you have any fucking idea who put saddam there in the first place? I'll give you a hint: It wasn't allah.
And remember, freedom ALWAYS has a price of LIFE to pay. The less you fight for it, the quicker it slips away. Hell, expect China to go through it's own civil war in our lifetime. And if we aren't carefull in America, we will end up with another civil war of our own. People should stop being emotional (like most liberals are) and start thinking logically.
Emotion aside, Bush is an ultra liberal who believes in increasing spending, increasing the power of government, taking freedoms away from citizens, and unprecidented actions and policies, all of which are antiethical to traditional conservative doctrine.Anyone who actually believes in the values of traditional conservatism, rather than the aggresive and negative far left policies of the republican party, should oppose him. Don't try this emotion bullshit with me, because you're the one who has been riled up into a "freedom is...good!" stupor. If the Iraqi people cared for freedom, they would have fought for it just like most of the free nations of the world,including this one, have.
Frankly, when I'm sharing a bathroom with 5 international people I don't know,any sort of frills or fabric just sort of creeps me out. I mean, being at home is one thing, but when the seven foot tall hairy dude from Siberia is done with the toilet, I'm just going to have to hold it for six weeks if the fuzzy pink seat cover has brown stains on it.
How about his absurd budget of "spend more, tax less"(only Transportation and the Treasury had their budgets lowered this year, and many areas of government saw huge increases)?
How about the genoeva convention breaking guatemato bay prisons?
How about the almost unprecidented act of actually sending the country to invade another country which wasn't even at war with anyone?
How about ending a 10 year ban on low-yield nuclear weapons research, an act which could encourage other countries to step up similar research?
And breaking international treaties concerning the weaponization of space for a nearly useless orbital anti ICBM orogram?
How about doing nothing at all on September 11th, 2001 for nearly half an hour after news that the second plane had struck the world trade center, then hopping in Air Force One and doing more nothing?
The fact that he's openly contemptuous of the two hundred year old seperation between church and state is troubling.
though I guess it's nothing compared to a thousand US soldiers who had to die in the aforementioned irrelevant war of invasion and the ensuing occupation.
The changes to the constitution which he wanted certainly seem scary considering what traditionally made it into there, but I suppose it IS a two hundred year old document. Gay people didn't exist back then.
The PATRIOT act isn't that bad either. After all, as long as you don't piss anyone off, you have no reason to be afraid of it...right?
Maybe it's just because four years is such a long time that you have forgotten why nearly everyone who knows what's happened during his reign wants to get someone in there who will stop trying to turn this country into a radical left wing experiment in economics, foreign policy, the military, law, and international politics).
Frankly, I have to wonder, with the recent resurgance of pro-republican support, whether anyone actually has any idea what the fuck the government has been doing for the past 4 years, and how liberal most of it is!
It's a damn shame when people have to vote for a democrat to try to change things back to the way they were.
For people who actually USE their computers, I'd say debian sid is better. install-time compilation is cute, sure. Installing and downloading a program in a fraction of the time it would take me in windows is more practical though.
The arguement against e-voting is irrelevant, Diebold should have lost the contract after the first two or three security flaws. Overcomplication of the machines by using embedded windows is stupid. If they took security seriously, they would never have tried to use it in the first place.
Linux isn't the answer either. Personally, I'd drop x86 for a cheaper embedded processor, I'd demand engineers with experience in creating hardened systems from scratch, and I'd spend the extra money to make DAMN sure I didn't drop the ball on this projects, which has the potential to be INCREDIBLY profitable for a company willing to do the job right.
I'm curious about your sig, are you republican because you're right wing, or because of their radical left wing policies?
I ask because I've noticed that the two phrases have been polarized by politicians, but the two parties seem to be running on opposite platforms from that they claim to follow. The democrats desire to end the unprecidented war in Iraq is in essence a very right wing stance(ask the soviets -- just supporting the military doesn't make you right wing!), whereas the Republicans desire to do get things like the Patriot Act, maintaining Guatemano Bay's illegal prisoners, and bringing about religion based laws, while not "liberal" in the sense of happy fuzzy bunnies hopping around in some fantasy world, are extremely left wing in that traditionally, the US has been governed by policies very different than these.
Current deficit numbers also show Liberal spending habits -- A conservative budget wouldn't bring huge tax cuts while the debt was growing at a record rate.
Oddly enough, when the Republicans did try to balance the budget, they did so in what could be considered a very Liberal way -- they slashed funding to the troops in the middle of a war. Granted, they still obtained a 27% increase overall, but only Transportation and the Treasury had their funding cut to pre-2003 levels, where the majority had about an 8% increase, while some non-military areas, such as labour, had 50-60% increases.source.
So I have to ask; why do you support the republicans? Is it because of their stated right wing conservative agenda, or their real record of radically left wing decisions around what can only be described as a Liberal budget?
"Mozilla offers a free piece of addon software. I think it's a little unfair to hold them to the same standard of financial responsibility..."
Price is irellevent. If Mozilla's product is creating a risk to one's computer, money changing hands isn't going to be a factor in it[...] Even though that isn't what really set this off(I read it and took issue with it, but decided that I recognised your name as a fairly reasonable person and that it wasn't worth bringing up), I'll go with this because I think it's what you're talking about.
What that message says to me is that the volunteers at Mozilla should be held to the same standard as the professionals at Microsoft, just because they both make software. whether it's a high standard or a low standard(and you obviously prefer a low standard for both, while I, being a disciple of an engineering discipline in which mistakes can destroy cities, prefer a high standard, and hold software engineering to that same standard). I think that Microsoft, having hired professionals to professionally code, should be held responsible for maintaining the same quality, and the individual programmers who wrote the bugs should be held responsible for their mistakes. I don't think Mozilla should be held that standard, because regardless of their stated purpose, they are still a conglomeration of volunteers, most of whom aren't professionals, and almost none of whom are coding for mozilla in a professional capacity(some of the outside organizations working on the code could probably be held responsible for their code, but I'm not sure they would be).
Do you even know what a hypocrite even is? It's not a person who has a double standard, it's a person who claims to believe something he does not!
Here's what dictionary.com says:
hypocrite
\Hyp"o*crite\, n. [F., fr. L. hypocrita, Gr. ? one who plays a part on the stage, a dissembler, feigner. See Hypocrisy.] One who plays a part; especially, one who, for the purpose of winning approbation of favor, puts on a fair outside seeming; one who feigns to be other and better than he is; a false pretender to virtue or piety; one who simulates virtue or piety.
The hypocrite's hope shall perish. --Job viii. 13.
I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart. --Shak.
I might have to do something else to get you to agree with me, but by living my life by the tenets of my belief that freeware, and Free software is to be held to a different, lower legal standard than commercial software developed by professionals(and similiarly that work done by non professionals in other trades shouldn't be held to the same standard until people start asking for money), I prove that I am not a hypocrite. Frankly, I'm not sure why, unless you and the other person in this thread are hobbyists pretending to be professionals yourselves, why this concept is so hard to accept as rational.
As a self-proclaimed 'professional', I find it unlikely you'd want to risk your job on the creativity of a hacker.
That's right. If I'm not prepared to stand behind behind the solutions I recommend, I'm not prepared to make any recommendations. It's part of what being a professional is all about -- standing behind your work. Weekend warriors have no place on enterprise networks, just like they have no place in any other real trade, and if are making money doing it, then they have an obligation to be held to the same standards as other professionals.
And since you seem to be a nanny state loving crybaby "oh my! My computer is insecure! Help me uncle sam! I want you to regulate these gift horses I've obtained!", I don't think I'll continue trying to convince you. I have better things to do with my time than try to convince you that corporations and professionals should be, and are, held to a different standard in law than weekend warriors who donate their work to the public domain or Open Source.
If you're "not just sold" that I'm not a hypocrite, I won't be able to convince you otherwise short of bowing at your feet and extolling the virtues of holding hobbyists to the same standard as professionals.
As a professional who makes my work on the job my personal responsibility(In a very real, dollars and cents sort of way), I don't feel my leisure time programming should be held to the same standard. If that makes me a hyprocrite in your eyes, I honestly don't care.
If your carelessness leaves my computer open to the world to exploit, you bet your ass you're responsible. If MS can be busted for it, then you should too. Otherwise, yes, you are a hypocrite.
No, I'm not. I'm setting a perfectly reasonable double standard. Since I haven't made a penny on my project, since I haven't ASKED a penny for my project, since the only reason I even distribute it is because I think other people might enjoy using or modifying it, I am absolutely to be held to a different standard than a piece of commercial software. There are so many examples of this in real life, I can only assume you suffer from the "software is different" complex many do.
Software isn't different from any other engineering discipline: Professional software engineers take personal responsibility for the quality of their work, or they aren't software engineers and have no place designing software professionally.
If only commercial apps can be held liable for creative flaws executed by somebody with malicious intent, then it's a ding against FOSS. Who'd want to put their business on a platform that holds no liability?
It is a ding against FOSS. Unless you go through a company like RedHat or IBM who is willing to put their asses on the line putting themselves at risk, there is much more limited liability than commercial software, and it's good that way. People are allowed to do things to their cars which manufacturers aren't allowed to do(and more relevant, they can make sites on how to do these modifications, even without any safety testing), kids build soapbox racers which would never pass safety tests(and even more relevant, kids can make or visit websites with free designs for soapbox racers which aren't safe, and aren't safety tested, all without being sued), geeks build computers with critical electrical, cooling, and hardware problems which a company couldn't get away with in a million years without a nice fat lawsuit coming their way(and again, sites chronicling how do to dangerous things to hardware which would get a hardware manufacturer in trouble are all over the place), and life goes on. That's FREEDOM. You're free to do a lot of stupid things, and you're free to tell people, to show people, even to do for someone, these stupid things, until you try to sell the dangerous end result.
Anyhoo, I've drifted off my point. You guys gotta be fair when you want MS to be punished. Promoting the singling out of MS is working against Slashdot's reputation. Who's going to take any of you guys seriously when it's always MS Bad Linux Good?
Microsoft is only being singled out here because their product is SO bad for security in reality, and SO prominent. Simply put, if you stop using Internet Explorer, you will literally get less than one-percent of the viruses, spyware, homepage hijackings you had before(if any at all), mostly because they're all designed for IE(which makes firefox de facto more secure at this point in time, regardless of the justification -- excuses don't keep systems secure). The reason Firefox gets so much credit for even the same vulnerabilities is the same reason Exchange Server is given more credit for security than the infamous sendmail -- it has nothing to do with open vs. closed source, and everything to do with a good program vs. a bad program.
And BTW, if you'd like to try testing your theories on the equal status of commercial for-profit works and non-commercial projects donated to the public domain, please sue me for the bugs in the djrpg engine, which I worked on and released soley because I thought others might enjoy playing with it. We can see if a federal judge thinks non-commercial philanthropy is to be held to the same standard as commercal programs or not.
If it's a buffer overflow, it would have to be tailored to the specific revision of that specific piece of code. If the number of bytes after the buffer, or the size of the buffer, or the content of those bytes, changes, the exploit will more likely crash the program than do what it was intended to do.
The way it woudl work is like this:
-----------*kjsahkwq43jkbdjksah421 string--null --executable data
As you can see, the same bug likely couldn't affect both browsers, because the position of the executable code following the string wouldn't be the same, and the code which would need to be executed to do something meaningful while executing would likely be different as well.
The real danger of buffer overflows are in places like IIS4(iirc), where CodeRED and Nimda both managed to decimate servers using an automated buffer overflow. The nature of the monoculture platform would made this incredibly easy to accomplish.
Who said anything about polar capitalistic theories? This about consumers dictating the ulimate lifespan of a product. Kind of like how Ford/GM/Chrsytler/Honda/etc have ton of dealers yet we don't see ones for Yugo.
We're talking about law here, remember? Just because the market CAN destroy a product, doesn't mean customers aren't given greater protections than people who recieved something gratis from some programmer somewhere.
Again, what does this have to do with expecting better coding from people? Motiviation is moot. Cost is moot.
Your arguement is moot. We're talking about justification for lawsuits, not the morality of bad coding. That's the problem here -- you're mixing the two up, and forgetting what you paid for.
By your logic, it is akin to saying unpaid grad students teaching courses should be excused for bad teaching where as a professor/lecturor should not because they are paid.
And if you sue someone because you lost your tuition when the bad teacher causes you to lose your scholarship, will it be the grad student who you sue for it? I could see slamming the school with a lawsuit for putting an incompetent grad student up there when they should've been using an actual teacher, or the actual instructor for the class for allowing the grad student to continue and fail to teach the class well.
On the other hand, the grad student isn't being paid to be up there, he's just trying to get through school.
Are you sure you've lived in the real world long enough? Money makes the difference in everything.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the Liberals had aligned with the bloc because the NDP didn't have enough seats to form a minority government...
Consider my theory: That the republicans are actually left-wing and liberal in the traditional sense of the words.
Consider their policies. Consider their budget. Consider the constant "everything is different post 9/11, and things can never be done the same way". The opposition to two hundred year traditions. The utter outrage at international agreements which, like or not, we agreed to.
Put together, it looks to me like someone is misrepresenting themselves. Hmm?
Because people believe what they are told when a person of authority tells them something. Consider the Republicans track record: Bucking tradition, supporting larger government, defying both international agreements and law like some teenager who was told he couldn't have the car for the weekend; These folks are left wing liberals. They're negative left wing liberals, mind you, with some truly horrible ideas about how the world should work, but they're left wing liberals by most definitions of "left wing vs. right wing", or even "conservative vs. liberal", except for the new one: "a conservative believes in right wing stuff and right wing people believe in conservative stuff, and liberals believe in left wing stuff, left wing being liberal stuff".
If I find some time, I'm going to finish an article about it which I've been working on.
I ACTUALLY wrote:
The problem isn't that he's a nice guy or that we like dictators, the problem is that these are life and death decisions which affect thousands of people who are going to live or die based on this decision. There is a gravity here which you aren't taking into account. One thousand Americans, and by some estimates, ten thousand iraqis are DEAD now because we decided to go in, and they won't come back. Not if Iraqis are free, not if the some radical cleric comes in and wins the elections by a landslide and Iraq degenerates back to the same or worse conditions as under Saddam, not if the Iraqi justice system decides that Saddam was framed and set him free and he becomes the legitimate president. Those people will still be dead, and there is a real question about the price to be paid.
Ignoring that question makes you just as much of a monster as the man you so wish to set people free of. Consider that.
To which you responded...
America is NOT responsible for the actions of Saddam. We may have supported him in the beginning, but the moment he started gassing the Kurds is the moment we realized how evil he was. But at that time, it was too late... hence the first gulf war. Of course, we couldn't finish the job the first time around thanks to the UN. So now we are back for round 2.
And get ready for the pressure to be put on Iran. They HATE Israel with a white hot passion of a thousand stars. Is it any doubt they want to develop a bomb to compliment their new missile? Peaceful nuclear research my ass! They are sitting on the world's largest supply of energy...oil of course.
Wow. If you look up irony in the dictionary, they'll have your picture. In your reply, not only do you not consider the question, but you tie it up and have it thrown off a cliff.
How about you try again, actually reading my message this time.
Grow up. Freedom isn't free. Unless you're willing to personally pay the price(and something tells me that the nonchalance you give to full scale war means that you haven't and wouldn't), quit telling other Americans that they must.
Is Saddam a bad guy? Sure. Nobody is disputing that, except in your own mind. He is an asshole, and it's a damned shame we installed him as dictator.
The problem isn't that he's a nice guy or that we like dictators, the problem is that these are life and death decisions which affect thousands of people who are going to live or die based on this decision. There is a gravity here which you aren't taking into account. One thousand Americans, and by some estimates, ten thousand iraqis are DEAD now because we decided to go in, and they won't come back. Not if Iraqis are free, not if the some radical cleric comes in and wins the elections by a landslide and Iraq degenerates back to the same or worse conditions as under Saddam, not if the Iraqi justice system decides that Saddam was framed and set him free and he becomes the legitimate president. Those people will still be dead, and there is a real question about the price to be paid.
Ignoring that question makes you just as much of a monster as the man you so wish to set people free of. Consider that.
To be fair, my understanding is that Fox News is the bagdad bob of US news sources.
It's not partesian to demand legitimate news sources. It's not partesian to hate war, and considering how the press was managed during the most controversial period of the war, I'd say it's not partesian to support people who want to present a different viewpoint, even if that point is made by a complete nut like Moore.
Frankly, I've come to the conclusion that the "conservatives" are misrepresenting themselves. Took at their policies and you'd likely notice the same trend I have, of left wing change and a budget to match.
As a european, you probably saw a lot more about problems in the 2k election than many Americans. Remember that the report by Greg Palast about shady practices in florida was aired by the bbc, not(to the best of my knowlege) any american news organizations.
The lack of a monoculture in Europe may mean that news organizations are less afraid to dig up dirt on governments over there. Just an unsubstantiated theory on my part, but seeing US news media as it is today, I wouldn't be very suprised...
What about people from Mexico, Panama, and Canada?
They're technically not europeans, residing in North America...
I was under the impression that it wasn't the tie, but the strings pulled afterwards to get the arbitrary winner, which caused a lot of the problems.
:)
I don't live in florida though, so I could be wrong after all.
I'd think the difference would be in the ADC circuitry built into the monitor. It's concievable that it could be less than par, and could be causing problems.
Obviously, I'm just an electronic engineering student, so I don't know for certain yet(waveforms don't pop up until term 4, if I recall correctly) that much about adcs and dacs, but if I had to make an educated guess as to why the connector would make a difference, that would be it.
Seriously, was I the only person who noticed that the Conservative Party was running on a platform of change, while the liberals were running on a platform of keeping things the same like they have for years and years now (while the NDP were, as always, running on a platform of "it doesn't matter whether we have money or not, we should give it away!" socialism)? The switcheroo on this continent is really funny to me. The Liberals and Democrats seem to want to keep things as they are, relatively speaking, while the conservatives and republicans promise huge reforms and extremely seedy budgets. :D
let me paraphrase your idiotic ramblings
"You're a stupid cunt. Foreigners don't deserve freedom."
Perhaps closer to...
"You're a stupid cunt. We've tried fucking with things before, and that's why 9/11 happened and Saddam controlled Iraq. Furthermore, Freedom isn't Free, and only a liberal nut would want US citizens to pay the price in blood for someone else."
If I'm reading between the lines, your saying Saddam shoud have been left in power along with his two sons. Yes?
Unless the Iraqi people did something about it, or one of it's neighbours stepped in to kick him off his throne, yes. I have no qualms about dealing with our own problems before trying to run the rest of the world. In fact, trying to run the rest of the world is what put saddam on his throne in the first place. Why do you keep ignoring that fact?
Also, get your facts right. Bush is a conservative, NOT a liberal.
Under which definition of the word? He spends more than the liberals, in fact, he's downright irresponsible with the budget. His plans to protect America from terrorism come right from the pages of some Liberal interventionists wet-dream, and are completely new and untested, bucking tradition radically. His stance on the constitution is that it should be changed to fit his vision of utopia. He practices(though doesn't nessessarily profess) a belief in larger government, less control by the states, abolition of freedom of speech, and betrayal of international agreements.
He's also an ex drug addict and alcoholic. Jesus may forgive him for that, but I do not. I certainly don't have to overlook those things when deciding the leader of this nation.
If that's not a textbook definition of "liberal", I don't know what is.
Oh, and in case you haven't been reading the news, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi agrees with bush and is thankful we Americans jumped in to liberate them. Talk about egg on the face to those that opposed this war in the first place. I must admit, I'm grinning. Talk about Iraq giving Europe and the UN the finger. Ohhh the sweet irony!
You don't know the first thing about peoples arguements against the war, and it shows. Wanting family and freinds fighting abroad in an irrelevant war to come home isn't partesian. Not wanting to enter an unprecidented and illegal(through international agreements that we voluntarily sigend into -- look under Liberal and you'd see that being against the rules is a Liberal trait) war of invasion.
Anyway, this conversation is over. I'm not going to argue with you over simple semantics, and that's what this will devolve to if this conversation continues any longer. Continue believing whatever you want to believe. I gave you some reasons why Bush is a bad president, just like you asked for. Whether you want to accept them is your own business. Good day.
Saddam agreed to let weapon inspectors back in the country to look for WMD and to explain the missing batches of chemical weapons that was found earlier (according to the UN). But he did not, and he had YEARS to comply. But he did not. Thus the invation was needed to inforce the resolutions. In case you haven't notice, we will not stand for playing games with a dictator. In fact, I'm angry we didn't invade sooner before 911.
Let's ignore the fact that the parent called the UN thugs because they didn't let the US do what they wanted, because otherwise I'll have a big diatrabe on hypocrisy, and nobody wants that.
There was an extremely complex situation there, and it wasn't nearly so black and white. Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors because the US was allegedly using their inspectors as spies. Later on, there was a period where the inspectors from other nations were allowed in, but not from the US. Shortly after that, all the inspectors were pulled and bombs started dropping on Iraq. There was absolutely more going on, and it's not like Saddam hadn't been punished(aside from sanctions, Clinton spent his time in office taking pot shots at iraq as well).
we will not stand for playing games with a dictator.
Fuck yeah you will! 9/11 AND Iraq were both a pretty direct result of playing games with dictators! In fact, the government has played that game all around the world.
He was waiting for all the data to be put togeather from military intelligence. In the mean time, the Airforce sent out jets after the second plane hit. Mean while...soon after the Pentagon got hit.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who will take a crisis as a call to action, and those who clam up. As anyone can tell you, every channel on TV that day was dedicated to coverage of the disaster. There was certainly at the very least information availiable. Forgetting that, he could have had all flights grounded within minutes, he could have had fighter jets patrolling major centers, and in short, he could have done a fuckload of a lot more, especially before the pentagon was attacked. The point is, he is the commander in chief, and he should have done SOMETHING. Instead, he kept on reading 'my pet goat', then afterwards stuck around for photo opportunities.
Even if 10,000 soldiers died, it would be worth the cause to free Iraq and set forth an example of democracy to the rest of the middle east. Unless...you prefer tribal warfare and dictatorship to rule the part of the word as it has for thousands of years. I will give you the benefit of the doubt though. I'm being nice today.
In the middle of a war on terror, where the same resources could be put toward freeing the AMERICAN PEOPLE from TERROR, rather than some unprecidented and largely irrelevant(hypocritical "they broke a UN resolution" shit aside, the iraqis were probably in the worst position to attack the states compared to other, real rogue states) leftist liberation. Besides which, do you have any fucking idea what the history of the middle east is? Do you have any fucking idea who put saddam there in the first place? I'll give you a hint: It wasn't allah.
And remember, freedom ALWAYS has a price of LIFE to pay. The less you fight for it, the quicker it slips away. Hell, expect China to go through it's own civil war in our lifetime. And if we aren't carefull in America, we will end up with another civil war of our own. People should stop being emotional (like most liberals are) and start thinking logically.
Emotion aside, Bush is an ultra liberal who believes in increasing spending, increasing the power of government, taking freedoms away from citizens, and unprecidented actions and policies, all of which are antiethical to traditional conservative doctrine.Anyone who actually believes in the values of traditional conservatism, rather than the aggresive and negative far left policies of the republican party, should oppose him. Don't try this emotion bullshit with me, because you're the one who has been riled up into a "freedom is...good!" stupor. If the Iraqi people cared for freedom, they would have fought for it just like most of the free nations of the world,including this one, have.
Frankly, when I'm sharing a bathroom with 5 international people I don't know,any sort of frills or fabric just sort of creeps me out. I mean, being at home is one thing, but when the seven foot tall hairy dude from Siberia is done with the toilet, I'm just going to have to hold it for six weeks if the fuzzy pink seat cover has brown stains on it.
How about his absurd budget of "spend more, tax less"(only Transportation and the Treasury had their budgets lowered this year, and many areas of government saw huge increases)?
How about the genoeva convention breaking guatemato bay prisons?
How about the almost unprecidented act of actually sending the country to invade another country which wasn't even at war with anyone?
How about ending a 10 year ban on low-yield nuclear weapons research, an act which could encourage other countries to step up similar research?
And breaking international treaties concerning the weaponization of space for a nearly useless orbital anti ICBM orogram?
How about doing nothing at all on September 11th, 2001 for nearly half an hour after news that the second plane had struck the world trade center, then hopping in Air Force One and doing more nothing?
The fact that he's openly contemptuous of the two hundred year old seperation between church and state is troubling.
though I guess it's nothing compared to a thousand US soldiers who had to die in the aforementioned irrelevant war of invasion and the ensuing occupation.
The changes to the constitution which he wanted certainly seem scary considering what traditionally made it into there, but I suppose it IS a two hundred year old document. Gay people didn't exist back then.
The PATRIOT act isn't that bad either. After all, as long as you don't piss anyone off, you have no reason to be afraid of it...right?
Maybe it's just because four years is such a long time that you have forgotten why nearly everyone who knows what's happened during his reign wants to get someone in there who will stop trying to turn this country into a radical left wing experiment in economics, foreign policy, the military, law, and international politics).
Frankly, I have to wonder, with the recent resurgance of pro-republican support, whether anyone actually has any idea what the fuck the government has been doing for the past 4 years, and how liberal most of it is!
It's a damn shame when people have to vote for a democrat to try to change things back to the way they were.
For people who actually USE their computers, I'd say debian sid is better. install-time compilation is cute, sure. Installing and downloading a program in a fraction of the time it would take me in windows is more practical though.
The arguement against e-voting is irrelevant, Diebold should have lost the contract after the first two or three security flaws. Overcomplication of the machines by using embedded windows is stupid. If they took security seriously, they would never have tried to use it in the first place.
Linux isn't the answer either. Personally, I'd drop x86 for a cheaper embedded processor, I'd demand engineers with experience in creating hardened systems from scratch, and I'd spend the extra money to make DAMN sure I didn't drop the ball on this projects, which has the potential to be INCREDIBLY profitable for a company willing to do the job right.
I'm curious about your sig, are you republican because you're right wing, or because of their radical left wing policies?
I ask because I've noticed that the two phrases have been polarized by politicians, but the two parties seem to be running on opposite platforms from that they claim to follow. The democrats desire to end the unprecidented war in Iraq is in essence a very right wing stance(ask the soviets -- just supporting the military doesn't make you right wing!), whereas the Republicans desire to do get things like the Patriot Act, maintaining Guatemano Bay's illegal prisoners, and bringing about religion based laws, while not "liberal" in the sense of happy fuzzy bunnies hopping around in some fantasy world, are extremely left wing in that traditionally, the US has been governed by policies very different than these.
Current deficit numbers also show Liberal spending habits -- A conservative budget wouldn't bring huge tax cuts while the debt was growing at a record rate.
Oddly enough, when the Republicans did try to balance the budget, they did so in what could be considered a very Liberal way -- they slashed funding to the troops in the middle of a war. Granted, they still obtained a 27% increase overall, but only Transportation and the Treasury had their funding cut to pre-2003 levels, where the majority had about an 8% increase, while some non-military areas, such as labour, had 50-60% increases.source.
So I have to ask; why do you support the republicans? Is it because of their stated right wing conservative agenda, or their real record of radically left wing decisions around what can only be described as a Liberal budget?
Price is irellevent. If Mozilla's product is creating a risk to one's computer, money changing hands isn't going to be a factor in it[...]
Even though that isn't what really set this off(I read it and took issue with it, but decided that I recognised your name as a fairly reasonable person and that it wasn't worth bringing up), I'll go with this because I think it's what you're talking about.
What that message says to me is that the volunteers at Mozilla should be held to the same standard as the professionals at Microsoft, just because they both make software. whether it's a high standard or a low standard(and you obviously prefer a low standard for both, while I, being a disciple of an engineering discipline in which mistakes can destroy cities, prefer a high standard, and hold software engineering to that same standard). I think that Microsoft, having hired professionals to professionally code, should be held responsible for maintaining the same quality, and the individual programmers who wrote the bugs should be held responsible for their mistakes. I don't think Mozilla should be held that standard, because regardless of their stated purpose, they are still a conglomeration of volunteers, most of whom aren't professionals, and almost none of whom are coding for mozilla in a professional capacity(some of the outside organizations working on the code could probably be held responsible for their code, but I'm not sure they would be).
Here's what dictionary.com says:
I might have to do something else to get you to agree with me, but by living my life by the tenets of my belief that freeware, and Free software is to be held to a different, lower legal standard than commercial software developed by professionals(and similiarly that work done by non professionals in other trades shouldn't be held to the same standard until people start asking for money), I prove that I am not a hypocrite. Frankly, I'm not sure why, unless you and the other person in this thread are hobbyists pretending to be professionals yourselves, why this concept is so hard to accept as rational.
As a self-proclaimed 'professional', I find it unlikely you'd want to risk your job on the creativity of a hacker.
That's right. If I'm not prepared to stand behind behind the solutions I recommend, I'm not prepared to make any recommendations. It's part of what being a professional is all about -- standing behind your work. Weekend warriors have no place on enterprise networks, just like they have no place in any other real trade, and if are making money doing it, then they have an obligation to be held to the same standards as other professionals.
And since you seem to be a nanny state loving crybaby "oh my! My computer is insecure! Help me uncle sam! I want you to regulate these gift horses I've obtained!", I don't think I'll continue trying to convince you. I have better things to do with my time than try to convince you that corporations and professionals should be, and are, held to a different standard in law than weekend warriors who donate their work to the public domain or Open Source.
If you're "not just sold" that I'm not a hypocrite, I won't be able to convince you otherwise short of bowing at your feet and extolling the virtues of holding hobbyists to the same standard as professionals.
As a professional who makes my work on the job my personal responsibility(In a very real, dollars and cents sort of way), I don't feel my leisure time programming should be held to the same standard. If that makes me a hyprocrite in your eyes, I honestly don't care.
Don't like it? Sue me.
If your carelessness leaves my computer open to the world to exploit, you bet your ass you're responsible. If MS can be busted for it, then you should too. Otherwise, yes, you are a hypocrite.
No, I'm not. I'm setting a perfectly reasonable double standard. Since I haven't made a penny on my project, since I haven't ASKED a penny for my project, since the only reason I even distribute it is because I think other people might enjoy using or modifying it, I am absolutely to be held to a different standard than a piece of commercial software. There are so many examples of this in real life, I can only assume you suffer from the "software is different" complex many do.
Software isn't different from any other engineering discipline: Professional software engineers take personal responsibility for the quality of their work, or they aren't software engineers and have no place designing software professionally.
If only commercial apps can be held liable for creative flaws executed by somebody with malicious intent, then it's a ding against FOSS. Who'd want to put their business on a platform that holds no liability?
It is a ding against FOSS. Unless you go through a company like RedHat or IBM who is willing to put their asses on the line putting themselves at risk, there is much more limited liability than commercial software, and it's good that way. People are allowed to do things to their cars which manufacturers aren't allowed to do(and more relevant, they can make sites on how to do these modifications, even without any safety testing), kids build soapbox racers which would never pass safety tests(and even more relevant, kids can make or visit websites with free designs for soapbox racers which aren't safe, and aren't safety tested, all without being sued), geeks build computers with critical electrical, cooling, and hardware problems which a company couldn't get away with in a million years without a nice fat lawsuit coming their way(and again, sites chronicling how do to dangerous things to hardware which would get a hardware manufacturer in trouble are all over the place), and life goes on. That's FREEDOM. You're free to do a lot of stupid things, and you're free to tell people, to show people, even to do for someone, these stupid things, until you try to sell the dangerous end result.
Anyhoo, I've drifted off my point. You guys gotta be fair when you want MS to be punished. Promoting the singling out of MS is working against Slashdot's reputation. Who's going to take any of you guys seriously when it's always MS Bad Linux Good?
Microsoft is only being singled out here because their product is SO bad for security in reality, and SO prominent. Simply put, if you stop using Internet Explorer, you will literally get less than one-percent of the viruses, spyware, homepage hijackings you had before(if any at all), mostly because they're all designed for IE(which makes firefox de facto more secure at this point in time, regardless of the justification -- excuses don't keep systems secure). The reason Firefox gets so much credit for even the same vulnerabilities is the same reason Exchange Server is given more credit for security than the infamous sendmail -- it has nothing to do with open vs. closed source, and everything to do with a good program vs. a bad program.
And BTW, if you'd like to try testing your theories on the equal status of commercial for-profit works and non-commercial projects donated to the public domain, please sue me for the bugs in the djrpg engine, which I worked on and released soley because I thought others might enjoy playing with it. We can see if a federal judge thinks non-commercial philanthropy is to be held to the same standard as commercal programs or not.
If it's a buffer overflow, it would have to be tailored to the specific revision of that specific piece of code. If the number of bytes after the buffer, or the size of the buffer, or the content of those bytes, changes, the exploit will more likely crash the program than do what it was intended to do.
l --executable data
- -heyeveryoneI'mspyware
The way it woudl work is like this:
-----------*kjsahkwq43jkbdjksah421
string--nul
what the overflow woudl do is this:
-----------*kjsahkwq43jkbdjksah421
-----------
string--Null removed--new executable code
As you can see, the same bug likely couldn't affect both browsers, because the position of the executable code following the string wouldn't be the same, and the code which would need to be executed to do something meaningful while executing would likely be different as well.
The real danger of buffer overflows are in places like IIS4(iirc), where CodeRED and Nimda both managed to decimate servers using an automated buffer overflow. The nature of the monoculture platform would made this incredibly easy to accomplish.
Who said anything about polar capitalistic theories? This about consumers dictating the ulimate lifespan of a product. Kind of like how Ford/GM/Chrsytler/Honda/etc have ton of dealers yet we don't see ones for Yugo.
We're talking about law here, remember? Just because the market CAN destroy a product, doesn't mean customers aren't given greater protections than people who recieved something gratis from some programmer somewhere.
Again, what does this have to do with expecting better coding from people? Motiviation is moot. Cost is moot.
Your arguement is moot. We're talking about justification for lawsuits, not the morality of bad coding. That's the problem here -- you're mixing the two up, and forgetting what you paid for.
By your logic, it is akin to saying unpaid grad students teaching courses should be excused for bad teaching where as a professor/lecturor should not because they are paid.
And if you sue someone because you lost your tuition when the bad teacher causes you to lose your scholarship, will it be the grad student who you sue for it? I could see slamming the school with a lawsuit for putting an incompetent grad student up there when they should've been using an actual teacher, or the actual instructor for the class for allowing the grad student to continue and fail to teach the class well.
On the other hand, the grad student isn't being paid to be up there, he's just trying to get through school.
Are you sure you've lived in the real world long enough? Money makes the difference in everything.