The practicality of the creation of such a device is irrelevant to the charges at hand. The demonstration of means, even though such means may prove to be flawed, motive and opportunity to commit a terrorist act combined with the creation of martyrdom videos and possession of other terrorism manuals and associated materials is enough by itself to merit charges and, judging from the evidence collected thus far, conviction of conspiracy to commit mass murder.
It is right for us, the civilized members of society, to send a message that this sort of behavior will NOT be tolerated after 9/11 and 7/7. It should be made clear to these terrorists that we will lock them up in supermax for the remainder of their natural lives or hang them for treason when we catch them. The terrorists are the common enemies of all humanity and they should be treated as such.
This does not mean that we give up our freedoms, but rather that we deal with terrorists harshly when we catch them. It is legally no different than the special distinction that is made between ordinary crimes and hate crimes where the penalties are increased due to the ulterior motivations and heinous nature of the offenses.
Yes, I know that Bill et al have proclaimed that there is a shortage of IT workers in the US, and apparently there is a glut of degreed IT workers in India.
It is perhaps more precise to say that there is a shortage of IT workers in the US at the price that US employers are willing to pay and not necessarily a shortage in absolute terms.
The trouble with such claims is that those Indian IT workers (no matter how many degrees they have) do not have any kind of realistic understanding of the western world's business environment, and often I swear that they really have no idea about software either,
I have said before here on Slashdot that based upon my experience as a senior developer in the US managing a team of junior developers in India the quality level is highly variable from absolutely horrible to at par with the average American university graduate for the IIT engineers. However, I would say that the majority of Indian degree holders tend towards the low end of the scale with plenty of cargo cult programming, poor design, and lack of independent problem solving capability. I think that it is fair to say that many of the very best Indian engineers still leave India for jobs in the United States and Europe before eventually returning to India with the capital to start their own companies.
This story is really about how outsourcing work to foreign countries is coming back to bite the people that thought outsourcing was a good idea to start with.
Personally, I would really like to see these smart foreigners, especially those educated here and earning a PhD or masters degree here, stay here and become citizens while starting their businesses here in the United States instead of back home in India or wherever else they come from. These are the kind of immigrants that we want, but our current policies are welcoming the uneducated hedge-trimmer who is angling to bring his entire extended family to the United States and telling the newly minted PhD to go home. This is exactly the opposite of what we want, but that is another whole argument.
Probably yes, but at some point one crosses over from the gray area into the darkside of outright advertising fraud and it would difficult to justify charging clients for advertising impressions, popups in this case, while not showing anything tangible to the target audience.
Don't be ridiculous. If the goal really was altrustic as you say, the US wouldn't be going to war in Iraq.
If it was not altruistic then what else could it be? The war is a substantial ongoing financial liability so it clearly cannot be economic as much as the "we are there for the oil" liberals would have you believe. If we are there for the oil then why are we paying $60+ dollars per barrel for it on the open market? We are not scoring many points politically around the world either so it is not plausible to argue that the war was undertaken for political expediency either. Unless you honestly believe that the United States would go to war for nothing then the altruism explanation is the only one that makes sense.
there's a lot of other countries under a dictatorship or engaged in conflicts that are killing civilians, including Somalia, Darfu, and the Central African Republic.
There will always be people who want the assistance of the United States, but our resources are not unlimited and we must pick and choose our battles or else our efforts are spread thin and wasted.
I mean, really - if the goal was to help people in need, the billions of dollars spent so far in Iraq would have saved a lot of lives if spent on say, AIDS drugs for Africa, or fighting poverty.
We have already spent billions of dollars in Africa during the last 50 years and it has produced basically squat because it has not addressed the root of the problems in Africa, namely increadibly poor government and entirely inadequate enforcement of law.
instead of saving people, the war has KILLED hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
There may be over 100,000 Iraqi casualties thus far, although this number seems high even by the most liberal estimates. However, there is no way that the Iraq war is beginning to approach the casualty figures of WWII where hundreds of thousands most certainly were killed.
I think that you are confusing the Presidents convictions and his policies. The president thought that it was in the best interests of the United States that Saddam Hussein be removed from power and so he set out to make the case for removing him using what evidence he could gather to support his convictions. If you were looking to convince others that your ideas were correct would you not also attempt to gather evidence to support your case? We now know that some of that intelligence was incorrect, but you must remember that the job of the President, first and foremost, is to protect and defend the constitution and that sometimes means making important and time sensitive decisions based upon incomplete or partial information. Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein? Probably. Will history judge that the benefits were worth the costs? We may yet live long enough to find out. As for the suggestion of widespread public knowledge, this sounds suspiciously like the appeal to "conventional wisdom" that has been used in the past to marginalize reasonable objections to the common consensus. For my own part I am taking the long term view that we are better off fighting now then waiting for the next 9/11 to arrive out our shores.
We have to step back and ask ourselves another question, "Why go to war at all?"
There comes a time when all diplomacy has failed and there is no other choice. The hand has been dealt and the bluffs, raises, and calls have all been made and it is time for one side or the other to lay their last card on the table or else concede defeat. The appeal of last resort to combat and the use of lethal force is the basis for our entire society and thus it remains, for those who elect the way of war, available to us today as the oldest and most final form of dispute resolution. Why go to war at all? Because the other guy refuses to relent and says, "I will see you in hell before I accede to your demands" and it is important enough for you to risk life and limb to get what you want. Admittedly, not many things are that important, but some things are worth fighting for and always remember that he who can destroy a thing controls a thing and that includes our fellow man.
I don't care if you're a liberal, conservative, libertarian, communist, fascist, moderate, or anything else. Regardless of your political beliefs, it has to be admitted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with justice, freedom, or "weapons of mass destruction". They were merely done to exert increased Western geopolitical influence in central Asia. A major part of this is to counter the ever-growing power of China, but also because of the extensive energy supplies available in the region.
I would characterize myself as a right of center Republican with Libertarian sympathies and I disagree. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, misguided and ill timed though they may be, were most certainly about justice and freedom and, to a lesser extent, WMD and the president has said as much. Should we not at least on this, his beliefs, take him at his word? You can disagree with his decisions and his convictions, but the President thought that war was the only option remaining with a reasonable possibility of actually achieving these goals. You can disagree with that too, but that it is what is great about democracy...we have the right to disagree and make our voices heard. It is because of this freedom that we seek to liberate others because the President believes, as I do, that the best probability for long term peace lies in democracy and freedom. When I say long term peace I mean the kind that President Kennedy spoke of following the Cuban Missile Crisis,
"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."
We do not fight to occupy and oppress or to steal natural resources or to subdue and destroy merely for own security. It is indeed unfortunate that certain people, namely Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and all who support the mission of terror have decided to force our hand in these matters, but we are not likely to achieve the sort of lasting peace that Kennedy spoke of when there are men like this loose in the world bent on the ultimate destruction of our way of life.
Now I know that you will argue that they fight us because they say that they want us out of the Middle East and I take them at their word that they do indeed want us out of the Middle East, but what do you suppose that they will do when we are gone? Will they be satisfied with the restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the oppression of their women, and the brutal imposition of Sharia law or will they turn their eyes next towards Europe and ultimately the United States? Is it fair to our children and grandchildren to allow this menace to grow and sustain itself in the Middle East in exchange for a
They make goods more cheaply because they have artificially low costs - no labor rights, can pollute to high-heaven without enforcement, and have a rigged exchange rate.
The pollution and poor labor conditions are not without cost...there is no free lunch. There are already stories coming out of China of children with very high lead poisoning, birth defects, and other types of mental and physical deficiencies that are associated with polluting the environment with highly toxic industrial chemicals. The problems are especially pronounced in the rural areas where lower education and crushing poverty exacerbate the problems. If they do not start enforcing the regulations now then they may come to learn the hard way why more developed nations, such as the United States, England, Germany, France, etc do not allow this type of activity in their domestic manufacturing industries. The developing world and China especially is trading high economic growth now for some pretty awful problems down the road.
The IIT schools appear to be, from all accounts, adequate and perhaps even at par in their course of instruction. I cannot speak to this point directly since I am an American and I attended an American university. However, it has been my experience both as a software developer and project manager working with Indians that the culture of obedience, conformity, and generally uninspired thinking is drilled into these students from the very beginning. These recent Indian graduates, and the IIT ones especially, are entirely too confident in their education, to the point of looking down on their more experienced American colleagues. These Indians are generally too proud to admit that they know next to nothing about designing and developing software fresh out of school while never failing to emphasize their IIT education whenever someone points out their errors. They insist on reinventing the wheel time and again because whatever they come up with the first time on their own is obviously superior (in their eyes anyway) to the well tested methods and designs of the many experienced engineers that have gone before them. If they took the time to research how others had done things before them then they wouldn't make so many mistakes, but as I have already said they are too proud to admit that their vaunted IIT education might have omitted something important. These Indians talk a good game, and they look great in the locker room, but all too often they are weak when they put their spikes on.
Well hell, y'all don't need no fancy "lazer" to find your way down to my Tailgater...shooot, you can smell my bar-b-q all the way from the fifty y'ard line and y'all don't need a "lazer" to know that these here ribs are the finest all Texas...Yeeeeehaaaw!
It is well known by economists that large firms will sometimes lobby for increased regulation of their industries in order to raise barriers of entry to new firms and impose costs on existing competitors who are less able to satisfy the regulatory hurdles. This behavior is also seen in professional associations who lobby for licensing to restrict the number of practitioners. In fact, among the more heavily regulated professional occupations is that of cosmetology and this is in spite of the fact that the public interest would be better served by LESS regulation. This is not to say that all regulation is frivolous, but rather that certain business is regulated against the public interest. I like the fact that commercial airline pilots are licensed and regulated by the government, but I do not need the government to protect me against the possibility of a bad haircut when that "protection" doubles the cost of a haircut.
Although I am a Firefox user, personally I don't see anything wrong with what Yahoo is doing here. They are using THEIR website to promote a product of THEIR choice which may also be configured to use Yahoo as the default search engine. They are not forcing anyone to download IE7 and unless you run out and buy a copy of Vista before the end of January it was not pre-installed on your computer. Granted, IE7 was listed by Microsoft as a critical update in their update services, but that was the doing of Microsoft, not Yahoo. Should one not be free to advertise and promote the products of their choosing on their own website?
If the system does the job that it was designed to do, namely manage access to hardware resources and provide services to programs, then the operating system, whether it be Linux, Unix, Windows, or something else entirely has done its job. In fact the only time that people should really be concerned or hear about it, unless of course they are interested in the technical details on their own merits, is when something goes wrong. The OS may not be glamorous and it may not be sexy, but who cares as long as it just works? The problem is less a technical one than it is a marketing driven society that judges a piece of technology on whether it looks "cool" or is "sexy". I for one would prefer the reliable old beige box thank you very much if that meant 20+ years of reliable operation running the programs of my choice in the way that I want.
Therefore we make it annoying for the people of North Korea to get by but it isn't possible to point to conditions of people dying due to our sanctions.
The North Korean army and the party elites will receive the majority of the food and medical supplies and the people will be no better off than they were before. It is also extremely difficult to ensure that smuggling will not provide the limited quantity of luxury goods required to keep the elites happy, especially when China says that they will inspect cargo, but look the other way when the price is right. You have to remember that the rulers of these communist regimes in China and especially North Korea grew up in a complete moral and ethical vacuum cut off from any concerns for their people insofar as it does not damage them politically. They operate under the golden rule over there but their version is, "He who has the gold makes the rules" and "If you can get away with it there is nothing wrong with it."
Their economy might stagnate and people might die as a result of that but it's not so easy to point the finger at the UN then
Their economy was already stagnated and the people dying even before the sanctions were imposed, although supposedly it is better now than it was in the late 1990s when millions died of starvation.
In my opinion, the blocking of these high commodities is precisely how sanctions should be done.
The sanctioning of luxury goods will not have much effect because it will not be possible to prevent smuggling of enough quantity to satisfy demand among the party elites and the top army brass. It may mean that Kim has only a couple new BMWs and a few cases of cognac instead of a fleet of Cadillac SUVs and all the liquor that he and his cronies can drink. The sanctions preceding the Iraq war didn't prevent Saddam from having his luxury SUVs, gold plated bathroom fixtures, and every other conceivable luxury that he could have possibly wanted.
If these have little or no effect (which they probably will) then you can always ramp it up to include other things.
There is a limit to how much sanctions can be ramped up because China will release supplies to ease the pressure and prevent a flood of refugees from surging across the border. China wants to give North Korea a slap on the wrist to remind their vassal state who butters their bread, but they will not support tough enough measures to collapse the North Korean regime entirely.
I think one of the harsher things you could do is just block all traffic two/from North Korea from the United States.
The only thing that would accomplish would be the enrichment of unscrupulous Chinese middlemen who would be more than willing to smuggle whatever North Korea wants for the right prices. Besides, with the exception of some foreign aid in the form of oil, medicine, and food the North Koreans were not receiving very much directly from the United States anyway and they have almost nothing that is worth anything in trade to a first world economy such as the United States.
I mean, they probably block most of it already so that might not matter but internet access would be another commodity that would certainly upset me if I didn't have access to it.
The North Korean elites probably have connections to Chinese proxies so unless you are going to block China and the rest of Asia altogether you would probably not be able to squeeze them out. As for Kim being upset, well you can always order up some random executions or send some of your political opponents off to the gulag...nothing like abuse of power to brighten your megalomaniac day.
Tell me what your superiority over Joe Shmo has to do with buying electronics.
The electronics buying scenario is merely an example of a larger problem that is becomming entrenched in our society and especially here in the United States. There are many other examples which can be substituted for this one without changing the essential point, but since the example in this case was electronics purchases I chose to use the one at hand rather than introducing a completely different instance and possibly obscuring the main point with inconsequential details
So if someone is unable to "reason logically on the fly" -- which one doesn't need to do anyway;
The ability to reason quickly and accurately on one's feet is generally acknowledged to be a valuable skill and while not strictly necessary in all instances it does sometimes confer an advantage over the "other guy" who is not able to do this as well. If you lose because a sharp opponent beats you to the punch then you may need to revaluate your conclusion that, "one doesn't need to do it anyway."
he can just look the shit up at home and make a decision as slow as he wants
Indeed, he could have...in this instance, but he probably did not do that either. If people make poor financial decisions when thousands of dollars are at stake because they are too lazy to do their homework then what makes you think that they will not do the same thing when a couple of hundred dollars are at stake? You might argue that, "well it wasn't worth his time," but that is precisely the type of thinking which separates the complacent middle class consumer from the more capable, entrepreneurial, and business minded investor.
he shoould automatically revert to the so-called "hacker program?" Not everyone likes to sit around and tinker with shit.
The term "hacker" was used here in its more original meaning of, "one who freely and independently seeks knowledge through rational and logical reasoning to draw one's own conclusions." It does not necessarily mean someone who likes to "sit around and tinker with shit" as you put it. The original meaning has been smeared and obscured by media misuse and stereotyping of hackers as the social malcontents tinkering away in their parent's basement and generally up to no good, which is exactly the message that the government and the corporations want the consumer to come away with. It all comes back to control. If they can make people comfortable then they will not protest as their freedoms are taken away and the media does their thinking for them. These people become good consumers and that is what the government and the corporations want.
They are looking at the problem from the standpoint of, "If I fix this now and it breaks again in six months then it will cost me another £175 to fix it or I could just get a new one with Windows New and Better Edition that will last for at least a couple of years, plus I will get all of the new whiz bang features (and more frequent flier miles on my credit card to boot)". This is how the average consumer is trained to think from a very early age and you can blame our public education system, the great gift of England to the world, for being designed to produce good soldiers or citizen consumers who are docile, do what their told, and don't think too hard about it. This is in contrast to the generally more intelligent free thinkers, such as ourselves, who like to understand the subtleties and nuances of a decision or at least be able to reason logically on the fly, but we are the ones that the government is watching because who needs those trouble makers anyway?
Does this mean that fixing the laptop is always the best course of action? Of course not, but people tend to fall back on their ingrained programming when they are not sure about a snap decision and for most people that means the consumer program and not the hacker program that is more typical here on Slashdot.
It is well known amongst the more experienced software developers out there that all user input to ANY software system should be considered suspect and therefore must be checked for invalid inputs, boundary, and special cases. The solution has been around for decades, but it is really surprising how many developers out there have NOT heard of regular expressions or do not know how to properly use them. There are some cases, usually when widely variant free-form input is required, that are difficult to use with regular expresssions, but for the most part they have proven to be remarkably effective in my own experience and I use them regularly (pun intended) in my website and application development. If you have not gotten in on the regular expression game then consider picking up the O'Reilly Mastering Regular Expressions book or visiting Regular-Expressions.info before building your next project. The project you save might be your own!
The only way that happens is when the governments of industrialized and developing nations decide this is a priority.
Exactly. The reason that Kyoto failed was because it exempted the major developing nations of India and China from having to do squat while America and to a lesser extent Europe were supposed to bend over and take a large economic kick in the ass. The theory was that America and Europe had had their time to pollute and experience economic growth so they (the developing nations) should now have their chance, but that is like offering America and Europe the stick with no carrot and that will never work. You can argue all you want about how our grandfathers did what when but they are all dead now and you can be sure that people will not accept harsh measures unless they feel that everyone is equally involved in the here and now regardless of past development. If we cannot agree on that then we may very well continue until we have wiped ourselves out because, as John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead anyway," and there are not enough people out there who are altruistic enough to limit present consumption unequally so that their grandchildren can inherit the earth. If the pain of reform is not shared equally among the nations of the world then there will be no reform...it is as simple as that.
I'm no fan of lawsuits, and this decision is certainly a win for bloggers and most honest web publishers, but it sounds like the consequences of this decision were not well thought out
The proper role of the court is to interpret the existing laws and apply them to their decisions in specific instances. If the current laws are not covering a particular point or require amendment then that is a job for Congress or your state legislature and NOT the courts. The justices acted appropriately in this case.
They can say whatever they want in the EULA, but what they can actually enforce in court is another matter entirely. It is not possible to use contract law to abrogate other laws which have higher precedence and grant rights in the legal systems of the United States many other countries. Also, it is the responsibility of the company to enforce their license terms in civil court, so unless you are engaging in large scale criminal infringement you can violate the EULA all you want and nothing is likely to happen. Microsoft knows this and that is why they have begun to implement technical measures to enforce their contracts outside of the court systems.
Talk about a waste of the taxpayers' money...If they want to piss in the streets then let them pay the fines or make them work off the debt by...you guessed it...cleaning up the streets.
I did not say that Walt Disney had the original idea for the story, merely that the term was applied to errors in the early ftp protocols because they reminded people of the scene with the same name in the aforementioned film.
If I had mod points then I would mod you up for sure. For my own part I can thank my wealthier and smarter than average parents for recognizing early on that the public K-12 schools in our state, California, were lousy and having the foresight to send their children to private school. It is still possible, in theory, for an especially bright and motivated student to succeed in spite of the ineptness of our public K-12 system and there are also a few standout teachers here and there, but by and large the system is broken. All I can say to those working class parents is vote for private school vouchers and damn the Teachers' Unions and school administrators for putting their own petty financial interests ahead of the success of our children.
The government will also be monitoring the bedrooms of these couples to ensure that the mandated sexual encounter per week is not avoided.
Peter Gibbons: This isn't Ryad. You know they're not gonna saw your hands off here, alright? The worst they would ever do is they would put you for a couple of months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! Shit, we should be so lucky! Do you know, they have conjugal visits there?
Samir: Really?
Peter Gibbons: Yes.
Michael Bolton: Shit. I'm a free man and I haven't had a conjugal visit in six months.
Slashdot Mirror
The practicality of the creation of such a device is irrelevant to the charges at hand. The demonstration of means, even though such means may prove to be flawed, motive and opportunity to commit a terrorist act combined with the creation of martyrdom videos and possession of other terrorism manuals and associated materials is enough by itself to merit charges and, judging from the evidence collected thus far, conviction of conspiracy to commit mass murder.
It is right for us, the civilized members of society, to send a message that this sort of behavior will NOT be tolerated after 9/11 and 7/7. It should be made clear to these terrorists that we will lock them up in supermax for the remainder of their natural lives or hang them for treason when we catch them. The terrorists are the common enemies of all humanity and they should be treated as such.
This does not mean that we give up our freedoms, but rather that we deal with terrorists harshly when we catch them. It is legally no different than the special distinction that is made between ordinary crimes and hate crimes where the penalties are increased due to the ulterior motivations and heinous nature of the offenses.
Yes, I know that Bill et al have proclaimed that there is a shortage of IT workers in the US, and apparently there is a glut of degreed IT workers in India.
It is perhaps more precise to say that there is a shortage of IT workers in the US at the price that US employers are willing to pay and not necessarily a shortage in absolute terms.
The trouble with such claims is that those Indian IT workers (no matter how many degrees they have) do not have any kind of realistic understanding of the western world's business environment, and often I swear that they really have no idea about software either,
I have said before here on Slashdot that based upon my experience as a senior developer in the US managing a team of junior developers in India the quality level is highly variable from absolutely horrible to at par with the average American university graduate for the IIT engineers. However, I would say that the majority of Indian degree holders tend towards the low end of the scale with plenty of cargo cult programming, poor design, and lack of independent problem solving capability. I think that it is fair to say that many of the very best Indian engineers still leave India for jobs in the United States and Europe before eventually returning to India with the capital to start their own companies.
This story is really about how outsourcing work to foreign countries is coming back to bite the people that thought outsourcing was a good idea to start with.
Personally, I would really like to see these smart foreigners, especially those educated here and earning a PhD or masters degree here, stay here and become citizens while starting their businesses here in the United States instead of back home in India or wherever else they come from. These are the kind of immigrants that we want, but our current policies are welcoming the uneducated hedge-trimmer who is angling to bring his entire extended family to the United States and telling the newly minted PhD to go home. This is exactly the opposite of what we want, but that is another whole argument.
Probably yes, but at some point one crosses over from the gray area into the darkside of outright advertising fraud and it would difficult to justify charging clients for advertising impressions, popups in this case, while not showing anything tangible to the target audience.
Don't be ridiculous. If the goal really was altrustic as you say, the US wouldn't be going to war in Iraq.
If it was not altruistic then what else could it be? The war is a substantial ongoing financial liability so it clearly cannot be economic as much as the "we are there for the oil" liberals would have you believe. If we are there for the oil then why are we paying $60+ dollars per barrel for it on the open market? We are not scoring many points politically around the world either so it is not plausible to argue that the war was undertaken for political expediency either. Unless you honestly believe that the United States would go to war for nothing then the altruism explanation is the only one that makes sense.
there's a lot of other countries under a dictatorship or engaged in conflicts that are killing civilians, including Somalia, Darfu, and the Central African Republic.
There will always be people who want the assistance of the United States, but our resources are not unlimited and we must pick and choose our battles or else our efforts are spread thin and wasted.
I mean, really - if the goal was to help people in need, the billions of dollars spent so far in Iraq would have saved a lot of lives if spent on say, AIDS drugs for Africa, or fighting poverty.
We have already spent billions of dollars in Africa during the last 50 years and it has produced basically squat because it has not addressed the root of the problems in Africa, namely increadibly poor government and entirely inadequate enforcement of law.
instead of saving people, the war has KILLED hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
There may be over 100,000 Iraqi casualties thus far, although this number seems high even by the most liberal estimates. However, there is no way that the Iraq war is beginning to approach the casualty figures of WWII where hundreds of thousands most certainly were killed.
I think that you are confusing the Presidents convictions and his policies. The president thought that it was in the best interests of the United States that Saddam Hussein be removed from power and so he set out to make the case for removing him using what evidence he could gather to support his convictions. If you were looking to convince others that your ideas were correct would you not also attempt to gather evidence to support your case? We now know that some of that intelligence was incorrect, but you must remember that the job of the President, first and foremost, is to protect and defend the constitution and that sometimes means making important and time sensitive decisions based upon incomplete or partial information. Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein? Probably. Will history judge that the benefits were worth the costs? We may yet live long enough to find out. As for the suggestion of widespread public knowledge, this sounds suspiciously like the appeal to "conventional wisdom" that has been used in the past to marginalize reasonable objections to the common consensus. For my own part I am taking the long term view that we are better off fighting now then waiting for the next 9/11 to arrive out our shores.
We have to step back and ask ourselves another question, "Why go to war at all?"
There comes a time when all diplomacy has failed and there is no other choice. The hand has been dealt and the bluffs, raises, and calls have all been made and it is time for one side or the other to lay their last card on the table or else concede defeat. The appeal of last resort to combat and the use of lethal force is the basis for our entire society and thus it remains, for those who elect the way of war, available to us today as the oldest and most final form of dispute resolution. Why go to war at all? Because the other guy refuses to relent and says, "I will see you in hell before I accede to your demands" and it is important enough for you to risk life and limb to get what you want. Admittedly, not many things are that important, but some things are worth fighting for and always remember that he who can destroy a thing controls a thing and that includes our fellow man.
I don't care if you're a liberal, conservative, libertarian, communist, fascist, moderate, or anything else. Regardless of your political beliefs, it has to be admitted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with justice, freedom, or "weapons of mass destruction". They were merely done to exert increased Western geopolitical influence in central Asia. A major part of this is to counter the ever-growing power of China, but also because of the extensive energy supplies available in the region.
I would characterize myself as a right of center Republican with Libertarian sympathies and I disagree. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, misguided and ill timed though they may be, were most certainly about justice and freedom and, to a lesser extent, WMD and the president has said as much. Should we not at least on this, his beliefs, take him at his word? You can disagree with his decisions and his convictions, but the President thought that war was the only option remaining with a reasonable possibility of actually achieving these goals. You can disagree with that too, but that it is what is great about democracy...we have the right to disagree and make our voices heard. It is because of this freedom that we seek to liberate others because the President believes, as I do, that the best probability for long term peace lies in democracy and freedom. When I say long term peace I mean the kind that President Kennedy spoke of following the Cuban Missile Crisis,
"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."
We do not fight to occupy and oppress or to steal natural resources or to subdue and destroy merely for own security. It is indeed unfortunate that certain people, namely Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and all who support the mission of terror have decided to force our hand in these matters, but we are not likely to achieve the sort of lasting peace that Kennedy spoke of when there are men like this loose in the world bent on the ultimate destruction of our way of life.
Now I know that you will argue that they fight us because they say that they want us out of the Middle East and I take them at their word that they do indeed want us out of the Middle East, but what do you suppose that they will do when we are gone? Will they be satisfied with the restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the oppression of their women, and the brutal imposition of Sharia law or will they turn their eyes next towards Europe and ultimately the United States? Is it fair to our children and grandchildren to allow this menace to grow and sustain itself in the Middle East in exchange for a
They make goods more cheaply because they have artificially low costs - no labor rights, can pollute to high-heaven without enforcement, and have a rigged exchange rate.
The pollution and poor labor conditions are not without cost...there is no free lunch. There are already stories coming out of China of children with very high lead poisoning, birth defects, and other types of mental and physical deficiencies that are associated with polluting the environment with highly toxic industrial chemicals. The problems are especially pronounced in the rural areas where lower education and crushing poverty exacerbate the problems. If they do not start enforcing the regulations now then they may come to learn the hard way why more developed nations, such as the United States, England, Germany, France, etc do not allow this type of activity in their domestic manufacturing industries. The developing world and China especially is trading high economic growth now for some pretty awful problems down the road.
The IIT schools appear to be, from all accounts, adequate and perhaps even at par in their course of instruction. I cannot speak to this point directly since I am an American and I attended an American university. However, it has been my experience both as a software developer and project manager working with Indians that the culture of obedience, conformity, and generally uninspired thinking is drilled into these students from the very beginning. These recent Indian graduates, and the IIT ones especially, are entirely too confident in their education, to the point of looking down on their more experienced American colleagues. These Indians are generally too proud to admit that they know next to nothing about designing and developing software fresh out of school while never failing to emphasize their IIT education whenever someone points out their errors. They insist on reinventing the wheel time and again because whatever they come up with the first time on their own is obviously superior (in their eyes anyway) to the well tested methods and designs of the many experienced engineers that have gone before them. If they took the time to research how others had done things before them then they wouldn't make so many mistakes, but as I have already said they are too proud to admit that their vaunted IIT education might have omitted something important. These Indians talk a good game, and they look great in the locker room, but all too often they are weak when they put their spikes on.
Well hell, y'all don't need no fancy "lazer" to find your way down to my Tailgater...shooot, you can smell my bar-b-q all the way from the fifty y'ard line and y'all don't need a "lazer" to know that these here ribs are the finest all Texas...Yeeeeehaaaw!
It is well known by economists that large firms will sometimes lobby for increased regulation of their industries in order to raise barriers of entry to new firms and impose costs on existing competitors who are less able to satisfy the regulatory hurdles. This behavior is also seen in professional associations who lobby for licensing to restrict the number of practitioners. In fact, among the more heavily regulated professional occupations is that of cosmetology and this is in spite of the fact that the public interest would be better served by LESS regulation. This is not to say that all regulation is frivolous, but rather that certain business is regulated against the public interest. I like the fact that commercial airline pilots are licensed and regulated by the government, but I do not need the government to protect me against the possibility of a bad haircut when that "protection" doubles the cost of a haircut.
Although I am a Firefox user, personally I don't see anything wrong with what Yahoo is doing here. They are using THEIR website to promote a product of THEIR choice which may also be configured to use Yahoo as the default search engine. They are not forcing anyone to download IE7 and unless you run out and buy a copy of Vista before the end of January it was not pre-installed on your computer. Granted, IE7 was listed by Microsoft as a critical update in their update services, but that was the doing of Microsoft, not Yahoo. Should one not be free to advertise and promote the products of their choosing on their own website?
If the system does the job that it was designed to do, namely manage access to hardware resources and provide services to programs, then the operating system, whether it be Linux, Unix, Windows, or something else entirely has done its job. In fact the only time that people should really be concerned or hear about it, unless of course they are interested in the technical details on their own merits, is when something goes wrong. The OS may not be glamorous and it may not be sexy, but who cares as long as it just works? The problem is less a technical one than it is a marketing driven society that judges a piece of technology on whether it looks "cool" or is "sexy". I for one would prefer the reliable old beige box thank you very much if that meant 20+ years of reliable operation running the programs of my choice in the way that I want.
Therefore we make it annoying for the people of North Korea to get by but it isn't possible to point to conditions of people dying due to our sanctions.
The North Korean army and the party elites will receive the majority of the food and medical supplies and the people will be no better off than they were before. It is also extremely difficult to ensure that smuggling will not provide the limited quantity of luxury goods required to keep the elites happy, especially when China says that they will inspect cargo, but look the other way when the price is right. You have to remember that the rulers of these communist regimes in China and especially North Korea grew up in a complete moral and ethical vacuum cut off from any concerns for their people insofar as it does not damage them politically. They operate under the golden rule over there but their version is, "He who has the gold makes the rules" and "If you can get away with it there is nothing wrong with it."
Their economy might stagnate and people might die as a result of that but it's not so easy to point the finger at the UN then
Their economy was already stagnated and the people dying even before the sanctions were imposed, although supposedly it is better now than it was in the late 1990s when millions died of starvation.
In my opinion, the blocking of these high commodities is precisely how sanctions should be done.
The sanctioning of luxury goods will not have much effect because it will not be possible to prevent smuggling of enough quantity to satisfy demand among the party elites and the top army brass. It may mean that Kim has only a couple new BMWs and a few cases of cognac instead of a fleet of Cadillac SUVs and all the liquor that he and his cronies can drink. The sanctions preceding the Iraq war didn't prevent Saddam from having his luxury SUVs, gold plated bathroom fixtures, and every other conceivable luxury that he could have possibly wanted.
If these have little or no effect (which they probably will) then you can always ramp it up to include other things.
There is a limit to how much sanctions can be ramped up because China will release supplies to ease the pressure and prevent a flood of refugees from surging across the border. China wants to give North Korea a slap on the wrist to remind their vassal state who butters their bread, but they will not support tough enough measures to collapse the North Korean regime entirely.
I think one of the harsher things you could do is just block all traffic two/from North Korea from the United States.
The only thing that would accomplish would be the enrichment of unscrupulous Chinese middlemen who would be more than willing to smuggle whatever North Korea wants for the right prices. Besides, with the exception of some foreign aid in the form of oil, medicine, and food the North Koreans were not receiving very much directly from the United States anyway and they have almost nothing that is worth anything in trade to a first world economy such as the United States.
I mean, they probably block most of it already so that might not matter but internet access would be another commodity that would certainly upset me if I didn't have access to it.
The North Korean elites probably have connections to Chinese proxies so unless you are going to block China and the rest of Asia altogether you would probably not be able to squeeze them out. As for Kim being upset, well you can always order up some random executions or send some of your political opponents off to the gulag...nothing like abuse of power to brighten your megalomaniac day.
Tell me what your superiority over Joe Shmo has to do with buying electronics.
The electronics buying scenario is merely an example of a larger problem that is becomming entrenched in our society and especially here in the United States. There are many other examples which can be substituted for this one without changing the essential point, but since the example in this case was electronics purchases I chose to use the one at hand rather than introducing a completely different instance and possibly obscuring the main point with inconsequential details
So if someone is unable to "reason logically on the fly" -- which one doesn't need to do anyway;
The ability to reason quickly and accurately on one's feet is generally acknowledged to be a valuable skill and while not strictly necessary in all instances it does sometimes confer an advantage over the "other guy" who is not able to do this as well. If you lose because a sharp opponent beats you to the punch then you may need to revaluate your conclusion that, "one doesn't need to do it anyway."
he can just look the shit up at home and make a decision as slow as he wants
Indeed, he could have...in this instance, but he probably did not do that either. If people make poor financial decisions when thousands of dollars are at stake because they are too lazy to do their homework then what makes you think that they will not do the same thing when a couple of hundred dollars are at stake? You might argue that, "well it wasn't worth his time," but that is precisely the type of thinking which separates the complacent middle class consumer from the more capable, entrepreneurial, and business minded investor.
he shoould automatically revert to the so-called "hacker program?" Not everyone likes to sit around and tinker with shit.
The term "hacker" was used here in its more original meaning of, "one who freely and independently seeks knowledge through rational and logical reasoning to draw one's own conclusions." It does not necessarily mean someone who likes to "sit around and tinker with shit" as you put it. The original meaning has been smeared and obscured by media misuse and stereotyping of hackers as the social malcontents tinkering away in their parent's basement and generally up to no good, which is exactly the message that the government and the corporations want the consumer to come away with. It all comes back to control. If they can make people comfortable then they will not protest as their freedoms are taken away and the media does their thinking for them. These people become good consumers and that is what the government and the corporations want.
They are looking at the problem from the standpoint of, "If I fix this now and it breaks again in six months then it will cost me another £175 to fix it or I could just get a new one with Windows New and Better Edition that will last for at least a couple of years, plus I will get all of the new whiz bang features (and more frequent flier miles on my credit card to boot)". This is how the average consumer is trained to think from a very early age and you can blame our public education system, the great gift of England to the world, for being designed to produce good soldiers or citizen consumers who are docile, do what their told, and don't think too hard about it. This is in contrast to the generally more intelligent free thinkers, such as ourselves, who like to understand the subtleties and nuances of a decision or at least be able to reason logically on the fly, but we are the ones that the government is watching because who needs those trouble makers anyway?
Does this mean that fixing the laptop is always the best course of action? Of course not, but people tend to fall back on their ingrained programming when they are not sure about a snap decision and for most people that means the consumer program and not the hacker program that is more typical here on Slashdot.
It is well known amongst the more experienced software developers out there that all user input to ANY software system should be considered suspect and therefore must be checked for invalid inputs, boundary, and special cases. The solution has been around for decades, but it is really surprising how many developers out there have NOT heard of regular expressions or do not know how to properly use them. There are some cases, usually when widely variant free-form input is required, that are difficult to use with regular expresssions, but for the most part they have proven to be remarkably effective in my own experience and I use them regularly (pun intended) in my website and application development. If you have not gotten in on the regular expression game then consider picking up the O'Reilly Mastering Regular Expressions book or visiting Regular-Expressions.info before building your next project. The project you save might be your own!
This seems like an obvious case for a lawsuit, did you sue to recover damages?
The only way that happens is when the governments of industrialized and developing nations decide this is a priority.
Exactly. The reason that Kyoto failed was because it exempted the major developing nations of India and China from having to do squat while America and to a lesser extent Europe were supposed to bend over and take a large economic kick in the ass. The theory was that America and Europe had had their time to pollute and experience economic growth so they (the developing nations) should now have their chance, but that is like offering America and Europe the stick with no carrot and that will never work. You can argue all you want about how our grandfathers did what when but they are all dead now and you can be sure that people will not accept harsh measures unless they feel that everyone is equally involved in the here and now regardless of past development. If we cannot agree on that then we may very well continue until we have wiped ourselves out because, as John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead anyway," and there are not enough people out there who are altruistic enough to limit present consumption unequally so that their grandchildren can inherit the earth. If the pain of reform is not shared equally among the nations of the world then there will be no reform...it is as simple as that.
I'm no fan of lawsuits, and this decision is certainly a win for bloggers and most honest web publishers, but it sounds like the consequences of this decision were not well thought out
The proper role of the court is to interpret the existing laws and apply them to their decisions in specific instances. If the current laws are not covering a particular point or require amendment then that is a job for Congress or your state legislature and NOT the courts. The justices acted appropriately in this case.
They can say whatever they want in the EULA, but what they can actually enforce in court is another matter entirely. It is not possible to use contract law to abrogate other laws which have higher precedence and grant rights in the legal systems of the United States many other countries. Also, it is the responsibility of the company to enforce their license terms in civil court, so unless you are engaging in large scale criminal infringement you can violate the EULA all you want and nothing is likely to happen. Microsoft knows this and that is why they have begun to implement technical measures to enforce their contracts outside of the court systems.
where they mine the ubuntutanium ore for more boxen to complete the cycle...
Talk about a waste of the taxpayers' money...If they want to piss in the streets then let them pay the fines or make them work off the debt by...you guessed it...cleaning up the streets.
I did not say that Walt Disney had the original idea for the story, merely that the term was applied to errors in the early ftp protocols because they reminded people of the scene with the same name in the aforementioned film.
If I had mod points then I would mod you up for sure. For my own part I can thank my wealthier and smarter than average parents for recognizing early on that the public K-12 schools in our state, California, were lousy and having the foresight to send their children to private school. It is still possible, in theory, for an especially bright and motivated student to succeed in spite of the ineptness of our public K-12 system and there are also a few standout teachers here and there, but by and large the system is broken. All I can say to those working class parents is vote for private school vouchers and damn the Teachers' Unions and school administrators for putting their own petty financial interests ahead of the success of our children.
The government will also be monitoring the bedrooms of these couples to ensure that the mandated sexual encounter per week is not avoided.
Peter Gibbons: This isn't Ryad. You know they're not gonna saw your hands off here, alright? The worst they would ever do is they would put you for a couple of months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! Shit, we should be so lucky! Do you know, they have conjugal visits there?
Samir: Really?
Peter Gibbons: Yes.
Michael Bolton: Shit. I'm a free man and I haven't had a conjugal visit in six months.