Did anyone besides me get a kick out of the screen shots which accompany these instructions ? The "loophole" menu, which lets you change the region and disable Macrovision, displays a message on the bottom of the screen. It says "You should not be here".
The proposed helmet solves only half of the problem-- unpaid viewing of copyrighted material. But what about the other half of the problem, illegal avoidance of mandatory viewing? How would this helmet prevent me from stealing advertising revenues from television networks by not viewing commercials ? Suppose I watch five minutes of "Friends" then make out with my girlfriend during the commercials? To satisfy the copyright mafia, I think the helmet would also have to be equiped with mechanical actuators and display miniaturized displays. It would pry my eyelids open and force me to watch advertising.
Yes, but that's assuming that most of the wood/paper generated from the trees doesn't biodegrade or burn.
And that is exactly what the philosophy expounded in this book dictates; Wood and paper should biodegrade and burn, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
there's only a certain amount of stuff we can sequester.
Prove it.
Trees are also responsible for pulling enormous amounts of water out of the soil and into the air
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Yet another externality. People who maintain forests whould be taxed for that contribution to greenhouse gas emmissions, so your line of reasoning dictates.
People must understand the complete cost of their actions, as this book tries to point out. If you harvest a tree, you have gained some wood and removed from the world some habitat and a carbon sink. You should have to pay to harvest that tree, because a cost is incurred by society. The same principle applies to clearcutting 100 acres, except the cost is much greater.
Forests produce as much CO2 as they consume. A tree grows, sucking CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering carbon within its body. Eventually the tree dies, falls to the forest floor and rots. As the tree is digested, bacteria, fungi and insects on the forest floor release the same amount of CO2 back into the atmosphere as the tree absorbed in growth. This process is part of what is known as the carbon cycle.
Carbon sinks don't work unless you harvest the trees. Harvesting trees prevents the CO2 from being release back into the air as the trees decay. If you beleive that externalities should have costs, then you believe that people should be paid to harvest trees beyond the value which they receive for the sale of lumber. Everyone in socity benefits when a tree is harvested, not just the seller and the buyer of the lumber. All of human society should be taxed, and those who harvest trees should recieve a portion of the revenues.
Note that there are two exceptions, neither of which are likely to apply. First, if the forest is in bog and the trees will sink deeply into that bog, preventing bacterial decay and eventually converting converting to a fossil fuel, then, carbonwise, leaving trees in the forrest is no different than harvesting the trees. Secondly, when trees are burned for fuel, the CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. But burning lumber for fuel is so unprofitable that industry doesn't do that anymore.
Of course, I am not seriously advocating that we tax the world and give the revenues to those who cut down trees. What I am doing is pointing out that sometimes internalizing externalities is just not worth the effort.
The authors put their money where their mouths are. In 1994 they started a design firm that puts these principles into practice.
The authors are trying to sell their business by associating it with environmentalism. It is a selling point, they hope to increase their profits by doing so. That's not the same as "putting their money where their mouths are". They are putting their customer's money their. I think a little skepticism is in order here.
It revolves around the idea that in nature, waste equals food. Other than incoming energy from the sun, our environment is basically a closed system. Whenever (non-human) life on our planet uses a resource, it is left in a form readily useable to other life. Humans must do the same.
Environmental contaminants which promote growth can be just as harmful as those which limit it. Fertilizer runnoff from farm fields promotes algae growth in lakes and streams. This pretty much destroyes the ecologicial balance. The algae take over, displacing fish and everything else. In the specific instance of biodegradable fabrics, perhaps there is a net advantage in creating waste which can be consumed by nature. But contrary to what the authors claim, the creation of eco-consumable waste should not be endorsed as a general principle.
And the fabric, of course, could be readily disposed of by tossing it onto the ground where it would decompose back into the soil without leaving toxic chemicals behind.
Note that if you are one of those who fear CO2, then this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Decay releases CO2 into the atmosphere. If you want to reduce atmospheric CO2 then you must imitate nature in different way; entomb your waste under the ground. Coal and landfills are both ways of accomplishing the same thing-- Removing Carbon from the atmosphere locking it beneath the surface.
The irony that the government is more competitive than a private industry is not lost on me
I think maybe what you mean is that there is irony in the government being more competent, not that there is irony in it being more competitive. The US Treasury has exclusive rights to produce US currency. There is really no institutional competition for the work in guarding the authenticity of US currency. As you describe the treasury's performance, they are doing a good job, in other words, they are competent.
But I don't see the irony. Government employees can accomplish brilliant things. There is nothing about the government giving you paycheck which suddenly turns you into an idiot. Whenever government follows the "Find the smartest people in the world, give them tons of money and some degree of freedom to make decisions for themselves" funding policy, then we get impressive results. Atomic bombs, the internet, stuff like that. The same strategy works equally well in business, Bell labs and the transistor, Intel and the microprocessor.
Government earns a reputation for incompetance because it typically favors the politically well connected over genius. Occasionally, when the stakes are high enough to compel responsible spending behavior, or by chance alone, federal funds are directed to competent and responsible individuals.
Unlike government, private profit-making institutions lose revenue to the extent that they practice favoratism and fail to reward merit. Profits tend to end up at the companies where the president passes over his own nephew for the 300K/year sallary and hires the top MIT graduate instead. Hence, in a free market, there is a natural force which compels competency; Companies which persist in giving tons of money to morons sooner or later fail.
Government's power to spend is also coupled to how well it directs spending, but the relationship is the inverse of that in the market. Government compels revenue by taxation, and its ability to raise taxes improves the more irresponsibly it spends; The more wasteful the spending, the poorer the results. The poorer the results, the greater the perceived need for spending, and the easier to justify higher levels of spending and more tax increases.
In busines, the argument "We are perfoming terribly, give us more money" is likely to influence people not to give you any money. In goverment, the argument "We are perfoming terribly, give us more money" is likely to influence people to give you much more money. Hence, business tends to direct money to efficient ends, and government tends to direct money to inefficient ends. But neither tendency prevents both efficient and inefficient spending by both business and government.
Public education is failing, so it needs more funding. Minority-owned business is underperforming, it needs more government support. Big steel is failing, it needs government support. Some farms are failing, they need government support. Alternative energy is too wasteful to support itself, it needs subsidy. By choosing to direct funds selectivly to the worst perfomers, government makes ineffiency the goal. Many claim that government is inefficient. Few realize wastefulnes to be its true purpose. That it sometimes fails in that purpose and produces something worthwhile is not "ironic".
- The Kyoto treaty caps CO2 emissions. CO2 is believed to cause global warming. Global warming is undesirbable. It would disrupt human and natural habitat, for example by melting arctic ice, raising sea levels and flooding coastal lowlands, renedering most major port cities in the world uninhabitable. So, to put it simply: Either limit CO2 emisions or wreak devastation upon the earth.
- The most popular and convenient source of energy is the combustion of hydrocarbons. CO2 emisions are an unavoidabal consequence of hydrocarbon combustion. Energy is a good. Reducing CO2 consumption requires sacrifice; giving up desired activity which consumes energy. (Either that, or redirecting resources from a more-desired activity to the development and manufacture of efficient forms of consumption. Note this also has a cost, and requires a sacrifice.).
-Europe is reducing energy consumption in an effort to prevent global warming. Europeans are giving up something that they want in a effort to save the planet. This is responsible. The U.S. refuses to reduce energy consumption. We are incapable of limiting our consumption. Because global warming harms the entire planet, our energy gluttony will harm not just ourselves, but the entire world. The U.S. irresponsibly harming others.
What's wrong with this picture ?
- Extreme global temperature change is natural and unavoidable. Even if we reduced CO2 emissions to pre-industrial levels, it is certain that at some point in the future global temperature will rise and the oceans will flood the coasts. How do we know this ? It has happened many times in the past. The history of global temperature change is inferred from oxygen isotope ratios in arctic ice cores. The results are not under scientific dispute. If you have heard of ice ages, then it should come as no surprise that the temperature of the earth fluctuates naturally and dramatically. We are a bit below the long-term mean temperature now. Independent of CO2 emmissions, odds are it's going to get hotter next, though it could also get colder. The great challenge is not to restrain our influence on the climate, but to exercise it so to artifically stabilize the climate.
- The relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature is not known. The popular press is full of reports of models which show a link. The scientifically illiterate masses mistake a published model for evidence. It is not. None of the models have been validated using empirical evidence. That can't be done, until we know the future of the global climate. Until then, models are only unverifiable speculation.
- The relationship between global temperature and ocean levels is not known. The belief that rising global temperatures melt arctic ice is a solid one. But warmer temperatures raise levels of water vapor in the atmosphere, increasing actic snowfall. Melting and snowfall counterbalance each other, but predicting which effect dominates relies on accurate and validated models of climate, which we don't have.
-Plants, and especially trees, sequester Carbon; they suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. The correct measure of a nation's contribution to global CO2 levels is not the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activity. Rather, it is the difference between the total amount of CO2 released in the nation (from human activity, farting cows, ants etc.) and the amount removed by plants. The United States maintains vast forests for recreation, preservation, and lumber. Measures of net US release of CO2 place it at zero. Note that that zero is heavily disputed, but those who dispute the zero figure nontheless place the figure close to zero. All estimates of net EU CO2 release reveal Europeans to be great sinners in this regard, that is, if you believe, as do they, that CO2 is sinful.
- The US proposed during negotiations that limits be placed on **net** CO2 emissions. What this means is that any country which wanted to increase energy consumption and consequently increase CO2 emissions could do so, so long as they planted more trees somewhere to mop up the extra CO2. This allows for economic growth(good) and concomitant increases in CO2 production while mandating a compensatory increase in forests (good if you like trees) without raising global CO2 levels (for those who believe in that faith). Europe absolutely refused to use net CO2 release as a measure of compliance. This stance is inconsistant with their stated goal, which is to reduce global CO2 levels. Why ? To foster the image of their own ethical superiority while undermining competitive foreign economies. First they did not want a treaty to which the US would agree because if the US were to sign such a treaty, Europeans would have to abandon their attitude of moral superiority. Second, the only treaty allowable by the europeans was one which damaged the US economy. A treaty which reduced net CO2 emmissions from the US, without damaging the US economy, was not acceptable to them.
-Europe is not in compliance with Kyoto and is likely to never be. Some nations (France) already far exceed allowable CO2 emissions, to a degree that they could not cut back without risking major economic collapse (we're talking soup lines). Kyoto is not meant to be enforced, but to be worn as a badge of moral superiority.
Specifically, the statement declares that "in order to make the bnetd software work, certain programmers at bnetd copied Blizzard code relating to password and username authentication, and incorporated it into the bnetd server program."
But according to the bnetd developers, there was never any intent to encourage piracy or to otherwise financially gain at Blizzard's expense.
Does bnetd include pirated code or not ?
Read the excerpt above; Salon.com quotes Blizzard accusing the bnetd project of piracy, and then it quotes "bnetd developers", as if in response to that allegation specifically, and they don't deny it.
Have the lead bnetd developers ever denied that bnetd contains code stolen from Blizzard ? And even if they did deny it, how could we trust their statement ? Any contributor to bnetd who got his hands on Blizzard's source could have snuck it into bnetd, claiming it as his own work. Since nobody except Blizzard has seen Blizzard's source, how is anyone on the bnetd project to know whether bnetd includes code stolen from Blizzard ?
By backing bnetd in this the EFF is setting itself up to be painted as a defender not of free software, but as a defender of software piracy; If Blizzard can prove that bnetd includes stolen code, EFF gets screwed.
Blizzard has seen Blizzard's source and, we can assume, they have seen bnetd source. The EFF has only seen bnetd source. Blizzard is alleging piracy. Think about it.
"Very bad" understates its condition; It is a heap of crap.
At one point the review states (emphasis added):
"Another shock WHEN READING THE MONITOR'S SPECS - with a contrast ratio of 200:1, a brightness of 200 cd/m2, a response time of 50 ms and a vertical viewing angle of 90 and a horizontal of 120"
So it seems that "their" conclusions are just copied right from specs given to them by the manufacturers. This means that any comparison between figures which they name is meaningless. Manufacturers test displays under different conditions, useing different test criteria, and then exagerate performance to an unknown degree. For a mesurement to be of any use, every monitor described must be tested with the same equipment, under identical conditions, using the same performance criterion.
Consider the measure of viewing angle. The drop in luminance as a function of viewing angle is a continuous function. So how big is the viewing angle ? Well, it depends on what the monitor manufacturer considers to be an acceptable degree of luminance loss, that is, where he arbitrarily thresholds a continuous function.
Consider measurements of luminance and contrast ranges: You can crank the luminance all the way up, and you can crank the contrast all the way up, but what happens when you do both at once ? Are luminance and contrast ranges independent variables, and if they are not, to what degree does your choice of one limit the other ? Did every manufacturer measure contrast range at the same luminance levels ? Did every manufacturer measure maximum luminance at the same contrast setting ?
The point here is not that the manufacturers are to blame for how they portray performance. Rather it's that, to present a credible comparative review, you must make mesaurements yourself, so to hold the testing procedure and performance criteria constant.
"... While the L365 can display very dark shades perfectly, whereas its rivals always tend to display them as black, it has certain problems displaying lighter hues accurately.
"
The obvious explanation is that he's set the brightness and contrast on the L365 so that the contrast saturates at the top of the range, and he's set the other monitors to saturate at the bottom of their ranges. Then he describes the L365 saturating at the top of its range, as if this is some great insite, and like it tells us anything at all about the L365.
Oh, and let's have a look at the their test methods section:
"We used N-Test for the following purposes...to verify whether the frequency is set automatically"
1) WTF is N-Test, and if they are too lazy to tell us, why can't they at least link to it ?
2) If they did this, why dont' they tell us the results ?
3) Why don't they tell us the results of other tests which they claim to have done ? Except for the part about surfing the internet and playing quake, the claim that they did tests smells like horseshit.
"We surfed the Internet...We ran...games, such as Civilization III, Tropico, and Quake III"
Lets summarize: They claim to do tests, but they do not give us the results of those tests. The results which they do give us are not their own results, but instead are copied from those given to them by the manufacturers. Their conclusions are therefore useless for the purpose of comparing the perfomance of displays, the fundamental aim of a compartive review. The authors are pissed that Samsung did not give them a monitor for testing purposes, though they did not give their own test results for any monitor which they were given for review. The only plausible use which the authors did make of these monitors was to play games and surf the web.
... I would think if *I* was relying on NASA to do something in space, I would sure want "technical excellence" at any cost... or am I wrong?
If you have technical excellence at any cost, and that cost you can not afford, then you do not have technical excellence. If, on the other hand, you have technical excellence at affordable cost, then you do have technical excellence.
I don't know whether all the claims made about XBox encryption are true, but even if they are, the XBox encrytpion is more a nuisance than a serious technical barrier to porting other OSes such as Linux and the BSDs to the XBox.
That the BIOS is encrypted, that the network stack is encrypted, bla bla bla, none of this matters to Linux, which has no use for the native Xbox drivers and would certainly supplant those with its own drivers. Even code-tampering detection routines could likely be sidestepped, unless they are implemented with hardware interrupts which execute routines in soldered-on ROM. (And that oes not seem likely, because any validation rule which rejected changes to the system code would reject MS firmware updates.)
Getting at the drivers isn't a bad idea though. Using Microsoft's XBOX binaries to deduce the Xbox hardware configuration could be quite helpul. But those binaries must be accessible because not ALL of the software on the box can be encrypted. Somewhere, there must be an unencrypted decryption routine which loads and decodes the encrypted code.
While XBOX encryption can not be an impregnable technical barrier, it is a serious legal barrier. The DMCA prevents hackers from legally passing around the tools to decrypt Xbox binaries. And copyright law prevents you from passing around the binaries themselves. So its going to be impossible to legally use the Xbox binaries do deduce things like register locations on custom chips. For the non-custom chips with published specs, just find the base address and you know the rest.
But I'm wondering, could hackers in non-DMCA countries reverse-engineer the hardware from the MS Xbox binaries, publish what they discover about the hardware, and the rest of us poor oppressed DMCA-governed folks then legally use what they've discovered to write Linux or BSD drivers ?
There is no man-made creation produced by representatives of as many cultures, languages, and countries as is Linux.
Linux is what happens when free people exchange information, ideas, and products globally. Let us not forget where our favorite operating system came from. A student at non-profit educational institution in Finland wrote it in a language(C) developed in the research division (Bell Labs) of large American corporate telephone monopoly (AT&T). Linux began on a machine architecuture designed by the dominant mainframe computer manufacturer of the day (IBM) to squash a rival upstart (Apple) started by two guys (Jobs and Wozniak) in a garage in California. The machine architecture was based on a microprocessor (Intel i386), a direct decendent of the original microprocessor, a device created by Intel engineers under contract from Japanese manufacturer designing a desktop calculator. Microprossors themsleves are instances of computuing machines, the origins of which involve a 19th Century French loom maker (Jacquard) a Victorian Mathemetician (Babbage)and the daughter (Ada Byron) of an English Poet (Lord Byron). Theoretical work in computing had been greatly advanced by a homosexual British mathemetician (Alan Turing) and John von Neuman, a Hungarian emigree. To name just a few of the many involved.
The history which lead us to Linux is a global history. Just as the culturally and economically isolated play no role in development of Linux today, they took no part in the history which led to its creation. The economic and socially isolationist factions of the anti-globalist movement oppose the only proven route to progress: international commerce in goods and ideas.
Previously, carriers were limited to 45 megahertz of spectrum in big markets, or one-fourth of the available airwaves.
from the FCC link:
"the FCC's shift from an inflexible spectrum cap rule to reliance on case-by-case review of CMRS spectrum aggregation."
What's going on is that the FCC has decided that the "Anyone owning more than 1/4 of the spectrum is an illegal monopolist" rule is horse shit. Apparently, there are better measures of market competition than that.
Communist tyranies and liberal democracies are not morally equivalent. Your implication that acts committed in defense of freedom and those committed to spread communism should be judged equally is ethically abhorent. Communism murders and enslaves, democracy promotes life and frees. Reciprocal acts committed with disimilar motive are not objectively equal.
So you are seriously supposing that when anti-communists kill lots of innocents that's ok?
The difficulty is that you are one of those sorts who receives extremely low scores on the verbal comprehension part of the exam. That " when anti-communists kill lots of innocents that's ok?" is not implied by the passage with which you preceed it.
you seemed ignorant of the horrendous terrorist acts committed by Americans (and others) against innocent people in the name of anti-communism.
So there is a debate to be had about what would have been acceptable civilian casualty rates in U.S. military conflicts, what was the actual causualty rate, what was the magnitude of the opposing threat, and what would have been the consquences of non-involvment. Importanlty, what would have been the social cost of adjusting the civilian casuality rate ? If you have an argument to make on that subject, then lay it out. Until you succeed, vague and sensationalistic reference to "horrendous terrorist acts committed by Americans (and others) against innocent people" can not be invoked as evidence.
Concern for civilian causualites is an important concern. However, you are discriminating in which civilian causulties you mention when critizing U.S. military action. This suggests that your primary interest is the political cause of particular U.S. adversaries, not reducing civilian casualties; You are looking for reasons to critisize U.S. action only when it opposes a particular system of government, one which you do not oppose.
Those who bemoan the misfortune of civilian Vietnamese causualites but not civilian German casualties understand the threat of Nazism but not that of Communism. They claim theirs is a position of superior knowledge, but in fact it is a position of inferior understanding: inferior understanding of the threat posed by an expansionist communist state.
You can offer no examples of United States actions for which terrorism is a rational response...
the first part evidences your own false dichotomy
There is no dichotomy, false or otherwise, in what you have quoted. If you must speculate about the basis for my beliefs, then do not pretend this passage which you have quoted supports that speculation.
You need to paint anyone who dares question the US as trying to justify the terrorist actions. Whereas the rest of us in the real world just wonder if the US has been responsible for some of the anger that fuelled the attacks.
You make irrelevent distinction between A) The U.S. having unecessarily provoked anger which led to the attacks and B) The U.S. being responsible, or partly responsible for the attacks.
If you assert A then you necessary imply B. You feel as if you have been misrepresented because you fail to recognize the implications of your own statments.
It's easy to fight an argument when you pretend that the other side is saying what's easiest for you to respond to.
To repeat, I am just not buying this "We provoked their anger uneccesary which resulted in their attacking us, but we didn't cause them to attack us" distinction. When you can show that the former does not imply the latter, you will have evidence that I "pretend that the other side is saying what's easiest for you to respond to".
In making the distinction which you do, you simply insert a link in the causal chain then claim the result to be something entirely different.
Nonetheless, enforcing any political system onto another country is wrong.
Suppose a country were practicing mass genocide on its population, and a second country intervened to impose a non-genocideal system of government on the first. According to the rule you offer this action to stop genocide would be "wrong." Perhaps in your world view stopping genocide is indeed "wrong." Let us assume otherwise, and reject your statement that "enforcing any political system onto another country is wrong."
Communism is just another political system. A mostly failed one at that, certainly not one very open to freedom.
The first sentence denies a distinction between Communism and other systems of government. The second sentence makes two such distinctions. It is a peculiar juxtaposition of contrary belief. If you had wished to make the point of your first sentence, it would have been better to present that sentence alone, for the combintion is nonsensical. If your point is that of the second sentence then it would have been clearer to present alone a statement such as this:
Communism is a failed system of government mostly closed to freedom.
The reader must speculate as to why, if that is your point, you accompanied it with an opposing statement. So let us speculate: Communism is indeed a failed system of government, you know this, and therefore feel compelled to admit it. However, part of you sides with communism, or is at least sympathetic to it. So despite your knowledge that communism is a failed system of government you have some emotional affinity for it. It is this emotional affinity which causes you to contradict your factual statements of the failures of communism by preceeding them with the the contradictory remark that "Communism is just another political system."
The trappings of corporatism -- using technologies to create low wages
Technology increases worker productivity and raises wages. This is WHY industrialized countries have higher wage levels than non-industrialized countries. It is also why exporting domestic industrial practices raises wage levels abroad.
Unfortunately pointing out someone else's tactics doesn't tend to help the actual discussion.
When disecting those tactics reveals that they have lead to false conclusions, it is indeed a benefit. I do not assert, without explanation, that a statement is false. I explain why it is false, accounting for misteps in reason, my explanation serving as evidence of that statement's falsehood.
what would make these people angry enough to now suddenly attack the US (likely to result in their own deaths in the retaliation) if the US has done nothing to offend them?
Ingrained in human psychology is the conviction that suffering is inevitably a consequence of the sufferer's misdeeds. Theology and philosophy have worked to account for contradictions arrising from that belief without recognizing the cause of their failure: It is a false conviction. Institutionalized systems of irrational belief indoctrinate rationalizations explaining why, though, the innocent appear to suffer underservingly, their fates are a consquence of their own guilt. Divine retribution and original sin are examples such rationalizations. When the evidence of a victim's innocense is too powerful to deny, then we deny the suffering itself, a Panglossian dismissal of human pain as shadows in the best of all possible worlds.
Overcoming your own inate conviction in the guilt of the victim is a necessary step to reforming your thoughts. Maintaining that the slaughter of American by terrorists must be a consequence of American policy is like saying that if your severed head ended up in Jeffery Dahmer's refrigerater, well then you must have done something to deserve that.
Okay, We're being bombed just for the hell of it. is not the only other option, but it is one of only two real options
Well, there you go again, with your conviction that we must somehow be at fault.
You overlook the most obvious explanation: Bin Laden is a murderous villian out to kill the innocent. There are historical precedents:--Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler. Each, just as Bin Laden, cast himself as a defender and portrayed his own crimes as retribution for alleged misdeeds of his victims. It was only the corrupt and feeble-minded who agreed. A ginned-up excuse for mass murder consitutes no cause for that act.
You may think that the US's actions are all fine and not deserving of any ire, but is that likely to be the perspective of other countries?
The existance of faults in United States foreign policy is not at issue, though you pretend otherwise. What is at issue is whether those faults are just cause for the murder of Americans. If you claim yes, then we can both agree that is your position on that issue. If you claim no, then their acts still require an explanation: the culprits are deranged fanatics.
Whereas the rest of us in the real world just wonder if the US has been responsible for some of the anger that fuelled the attacks.
We most certainly are responsible. Religious pluralism, democracy, and individual liberty are an affront to radical islam. By sustaining these practices within our country or by promoting them abroad we fuel the hatred which resulted in the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
I submit the following as a test of your ideology. How can that ideology legitimize the first question without legitimizing the second:
what would make these people angry enough to now suddenly attack the US (likely to result in their own deaths in the retaliation) if the US has done nothing to offend them?
what would make these people angry enough to now suddenly kill all those Jews in the concentration camps (likely to result in their own deaths in the retaliation) if the Jews had done nothing to offend them?
So when communists kill lots of people it's murder, but when (anti-communist) Americans kill people, even millions of people, you can't even bring yourself to consider it a "misdeed"!!!
Communist tyranies and liberal democracies
are not morally equivalent. Your implication that acts committed in defense of freedom and those committed to spread communism should be judged equally is ethically abhorent. Communism murders and enslaves, democracy promotes life and frees. Reciprocal acts committed with disimilar motive are not objectively equal.
you can't even bring yourself to consider it a "misdeed"!!!
You can not know what I consider and what I do not consider. You can only know what I state. Therefore, when you alone state what I have considered, you make a baseless assertion. Unable to supply real facts, it seems you resort to making some up. And you are not even good at doing that. You pretend to know what I consider through what means ? It could be nothing plausible.
So... the US invades or bombs country X (where X is any of a long list already posted in this thread), killing innocent people, naturally in a regretful, but ulimately "flawed" way. Then, if any of the orphans or widows of country X feel aggrieved enough to retaliate, that makes them demented fanatics!!!
Grievances, rational or not, do not characterize one as a demented fanatic. Terrorist acts comitted against the innocent do. Lest you weasel on the definition of "Terrorist", causualties of war are not victims of a terrorist aggression.
Get your hand off your dick and try to get out a bit more, is my friendly advice to you.
People who enjoy smartass comments might appreciate that remark. Those who seriosly consider issues will notice that in the first part of that sentence you say something rude and insulting, and in the second part you describe this as "friendly" advice. The contradiction is obvious. As someone whose reasoning ability is so impaired that he is blind to self-contradiction, you have no credibility.
You might believe that you can advance your views by implying that those who contradict you masterbate and don't leave their homes. In fact, you weaken your postion substantially by making such comments. Slashdot identities are anonymous. You can not know who I am, where I am, or where are my hands. Your assertion of what you can not know brands you liar. Your remarks, by association with you their author, a proven liar, are suspect.
You call me pro-communist simply because I point out the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam as blunders?
You specifically sited those acts as examples of American "misdeeds", and it was that to which I replied. Now, with blatent dishonsty, you pretend to have been critisized for calling them blunders.
it's about our image as a big, powerful country who consistantly fails to get results when they support something
An easily refutable statement. To demonstrate that this claim, that we "consistantly fail to get results" is untrue, it is sufficient to site a single example of success. I choose American participation in the defeat of Germany in the second world war; we got a result.
Your position is compromised by inaccurate claims and invalid reasoning. You could strengthen your arguments by ommiting false statements, for they do great damage to your writing. Advice: After every word typed, read what you have written and pause to reflect on its meaning. Ask yourself "Is what I have written bullshit ?" If your mind says "yes", then start hitting that backspace key.
For example after you typed "You call me pro-communist simply because I point out the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam as blunders", you should ask yourself "Did he call me pro-communist because I pointed out that the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam were blunders?" In fact, and quite evidently, I declared you pro-communist because you labeled these acts in opposition to communism as american misdeeds. Did you discribe them as misdeeds ? You did. Enlightement would dawn, the bullshit alarms would sound within your head, revelation would follow: "What I have written is bullshit!". Reach then for the backspace key.
Again you get yourself into trouble when you write that we "consistently fail to get results". Ask yourself "Do we consistently fail to get results ?, do we sometimes fail to get results ?, do we usually fail to get results ?" Had you considered the meaning of your words the bullshit alarms would again have sounded within your head. Because they did not, you are left defending an unmaintainable position. You could in further replies resort to dishonesty or insult to cover for this error. You could again misrepresent your own statements, or accuse me of having a violent character, or of consuming illegal drugs, and other crap like that.
If instead you had examined and considred your own typing, then you would have no cause to issue face-saving dishonesties and libel. Had you written "sometimes..." or "usually fail to get results", you now would be in a defensible or plausibly defensible position. Because you do not scrutinize your own writing for bullshit, you are cornered into defending your own false assertions. Now I have identified your inaccuracies, and again, as before, you feel that to save face you must spew forth further inaccuracies in defense, extending your liabilities, dragging yourself deeper into a personally manifesting chasm of bullshit.
This whining recititaton of a trite falacy: If we are held in contempt then we must have done something to deserve that contempt.
Which makes a hell of a lot more sense than We're being bombed just for the hell of it.
You rely on a false dichotomy, reasoning that terrorists attack the United States "just for the hell of it" or that they attack us in retribution for our own acts. You exclude the former and conclude (modus tolendo ponens) the latter. Your contrived limit of two explanations is both a blatent failure of logic and a dishonest rhetoricial tactic.
The Taliban hates us for those reasons, yes. But others hate us for the reasons...this country's past misdeeds [:]...The Bay of Pigs, the coup leading to the building of the Panama Canal, and (the biggest blunder in recent deades) Vietnam all play a part in this, as does our support of one side and not the other in Israel, our injecting ourselves into the affairs of Bosnia and Iraq and Columbia....
Therein your reluctancy to provide examples is explained: You can offer no examples of United States actions for which terrorism is a rational response, and your pro-communist position would detract from the popular appeal of your remarks.
Your ludicrous assertion that the acquisition of the Panamanian canal zone drives modern anti-american hostilities is a desperate attempt to buttress a failed argument.
Recall Communism: Stalin, Lenin and Mao murdered tens of millions. Mao's aim of the Cultural Revolution was the destruction of Chineese culture, by means of killing intellectuals and smashing historical artifacts. In Berlin, there was a wall, and those attempting to flee communism through that wall were machine gunned to death on the spot as a matter of state policy. The prisoners of communist countries, their inhabitatants, who bravely opposed these policies were awoken in the night by state authorities and shot in the head.
The United States in Vietnam and in Cuba sought to contain this menace. Your perverse labelling of these American actions as "misdeeds" reveals a consistant sympathy for the perpetratrors of mass murder. Your inclination to blame the victims of terrorist attacks for failing to understand the fanatical thinking of their killers supports that interpretation.
The conduct of American foreign and domestic policy has indeed been flawed, notwithstanding your inability to name any of those flaws. Yet the flaws constitute a basis for anti-american hostilities in only the minds of demented fanatics.
Your warm and fuzzy "If only we understood them better there would be peace" attitude is poorly reasoned and subversive attempt to strengthen the political position of terrorists.
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone besides me get a kick out of the screen shots which accompany these instructions ? The "loophole" menu, which lets you change the region and disable Macrovision, displays a message on the bottom of the screen. It says "You should not be here".
The proposed helmet solves only half of the problem-- unpaid viewing of copyrighted material. But what about the other half of the problem, illegal avoidance of mandatory viewing? How would this helmet prevent me from stealing advertising revenues from television networks by not viewing commercials ? Suppose I watch five minutes of "Friends" then make out with my girlfriend during the commercials? To satisfy the copyright mafia, I think the helmet would also have to be equiped with mechanical actuators and display miniaturized displays. It would pry my eyelids open and force me to watch advertising.
Yes, but that's assuming that most of the wood/paper generated from the trees doesn't biodegrade or burn.
And that is exactly what the philosophy expounded in this book dictates; Wood and paper should biodegrade and burn, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
there's only a certain amount of stuff we can sequester.
Prove it.
Trees are also responsible for pulling enormous amounts of water out of the soil and into the air
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Yet another externality. People who maintain forests whould be taxed for that contribution to greenhouse gas emmissions, so your line of reasoning dictates.
People must understand the complete cost of their actions, as this book tries to point out. If you harvest a tree, you have gained some wood and removed from the world some habitat and a carbon sink. You should have to pay to harvest that tree, because a cost is incurred by society. The same principle applies to clearcutting 100 acres, except the cost is much greater.
Forests produce as much CO2 as they consume. A tree grows, sucking CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering carbon within its body. Eventually the tree dies, falls to the forest floor and rots. As the tree is digested, bacteria, fungi and insects on the forest floor release the same amount of CO2 back into the atmosphere as the tree absorbed in growth. This process is part of what is known as the carbon cycle.
Carbon sinks don't work unless you harvest the trees. Harvesting trees prevents the CO2 from being release back into the air as the trees decay. If you beleive that externalities should have costs, then you believe that people should be paid to harvest trees beyond the value which they receive for the sale of lumber. Everyone in socity benefits when a tree is harvested, not just the seller and the buyer of the lumber. All of human society should be taxed, and those who harvest trees should recieve a portion of the revenues.
Note that there are two exceptions, neither of which are likely to apply. First, if the forest is in bog and the trees will sink deeply into that bog, preventing bacterial decay and eventually converting converting to a fossil fuel, then, carbonwise, leaving trees in the forrest is no different than harvesting the trees. Secondly, when trees are burned for fuel, the CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. But burning lumber for fuel is so unprofitable that industry doesn't do that anymore.
Of course, I am not seriously advocating that we tax the world and give the revenues to those who cut down trees. What I am doing is pointing out that sometimes internalizing externalities is just not worth the effort.
The authors put their money where their mouths are. In 1994 they started a design firm that puts these principles into practice.
The authors are trying to sell their business by associating it with environmentalism. It is a selling point, they hope to increase their profits by doing so. That's not the same as "putting their money where their mouths are". They are putting their customer's money their. I think a little skepticism is in order here.
It revolves around the idea that in nature, waste equals food. Other than incoming energy from the sun, our environment is basically a closed system. Whenever (non-human) life on our planet uses a resource, it is left in a form readily useable to other life. Humans must do the same.
Environmental contaminants which promote growth can be just as harmful as those which limit it. Fertilizer runnoff from farm fields promotes algae growth in lakes and streams. This pretty much destroyes the ecologicial balance. The algae take over, displacing fish and everything else. In the specific instance of biodegradable fabrics, perhaps there is a net advantage in creating waste which can be consumed by nature. But contrary to what the authors claim, the creation of eco-consumable waste should not be endorsed as a general principle.
And the fabric, of course, could be readily disposed of by tossing it onto the ground where it would decompose back into the soil without leaving toxic chemicals behind.
Note that if you are one of those who fear CO2, then this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Decay releases CO2 into the atmosphere. If you want to reduce atmospheric CO2 then you must imitate nature in different way; entomb your waste under the ground. Coal and landfills are both ways of accomplishing the same thing-- Removing Carbon from the atmosphere locking it beneath the surface.
Buildings should produce more energy than they use
How does that work ? Are the buildings powered by perpetual motion machines ?
The irony that the government is more competitive than a private industry is not lost on me
I think maybe what you mean is that there is irony in the government being more competent, not that there is irony in it being more competitive. The US Treasury has exclusive rights to produce US currency. There is really no institutional competition for the work in guarding the authenticity of US currency. As you describe the treasury's performance, they are doing a good job, in other words, they are competent.
But I don't see the irony. Government employees can accomplish brilliant things. There is nothing about the government giving you paycheck which suddenly turns you into an idiot. Whenever government follows the "Find the smartest people in the world, give them tons of money and some degree of freedom to make decisions for themselves" funding policy, then we get impressive results. Atomic bombs, the internet, stuff like that. The same strategy works equally well in business, Bell labs and the transistor, Intel and the microprocessor.
Government earns a reputation for incompetance because it typically favors the politically well connected over genius. Occasionally, when the stakes are high enough to compel responsible spending behavior, or by chance alone, federal funds are directed to competent and responsible individuals.
Unlike government, private profit-making institutions lose revenue to the extent that they practice favoratism and fail to reward merit. Profits tend to end up at the companies where the president passes over his own nephew for the 300K/year sallary and hires the top MIT graduate instead. Hence, in a free market, there is a natural force which compels competency; Companies which persist in giving tons of money to morons sooner or later fail.
Government's power to spend is also coupled to how well it directs spending, but the relationship is the inverse of that in the market. Government compels revenue by taxation, and its ability to raise taxes improves the more irresponsibly it spends; The more wasteful the spending, the poorer the results. The poorer the results, the greater the perceived need for spending, and the easier to justify higher levels of spending and more tax increases.
In busines, the argument "We are perfoming terribly, give us more money" is likely to influence people not to give you any money. In goverment, the argument "We are perfoming terribly, give us more money" is likely to influence people to give you much more money. Hence, business tends to direct money to efficient ends, and government tends to direct money to inefficient ends. But neither tendency prevents both efficient and inefficient spending by both business and government.
Public education is failing, so it needs more funding. Minority-owned business is underperforming, it needs more government support. Big steel is failing, it needs government support. Some farms are failing, they need government support. Alternative energy is too wasteful to support itself, it needs subsidy. By choosing to direct funds selectivly to the worst perfomers, government makes ineffiency the goal. Many claim that government is inefficient. Few realize wastefulnes to be its true purpose. That it sometimes fails in that purpose and produces something worthwhile is not "ironic".
It looks like this:
- The Kyoto treaty caps CO2 emissions. CO2 is believed to cause global warming. Global warming is undesirbable. It would disrupt human and natural habitat, for example by melting arctic ice, raising sea levels and flooding coastal lowlands, renedering most major port cities in the world uninhabitable. So, to put it simply: Either limit CO2 emisions or wreak devastation upon the earth.
- The most popular and convenient source of energy is the combustion of hydrocarbons. CO2 emisions are an unavoidabal consequence of hydrocarbon combustion. Energy is a good. Reducing CO2 consumption requires sacrifice; giving up desired activity which consumes energy. (Either that, or redirecting resources from a more-desired activity to the development and manufacture of efficient forms of consumption. Note this also has a cost, and requires a sacrifice.).
-Europe is reducing energy consumption in an effort to prevent global warming. Europeans are giving up something that they want in a effort to save the planet. This is responsible. The U.S. refuses to reduce energy consumption. We are incapable of limiting our consumption. Because global warming harms the entire planet, our energy gluttony will harm not just ourselves, but the entire world. The U.S. irresponsibly harming others.
What's wrong with this picture ?
- Extreme global temperature change is natural and unavoidable. Even if we reduced CO2 emissions to pre-industrial levels, it is certain that at some point in the future global temperature will rise and the oceans will flood the coasts. How do we know this ? It has happened many times in the past. The history of global temperature change is inferred from oxygen isotope ratios in arctic ice cores. The results are not under scientific dispute. If you have heard of ice ages, then it should come as no surprise that the temperature of the earth fluctuates naturally and dramatically. We are a bit below the long-term mean temperature now. Independent of CO2 emmissions, odds are it's going to get hotter next, though it could also get colder. The great challenge is not to restrain our influence on the climate, but to exercise it so to artifically stabilize the climate.
- The relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature is not known. The popular press is full of reports of models which show a link. The scientifically illiterate masses mistake a published model for evidence. It is not. None of the models have been validated using empirical evidence. That can't be done, until we know the future of the global climate. Until then, models are only unverifiable speculation.
- The relationship between global temperature and ocean levels is not known. The belief that rising global temperatures melt arctic ice is a solid one. But warmer temperatures raise levels of water vapor in the atmosphere, increasing actic snowfall. Melting and snowfall counterbalance each other, but predicting which effect dominates relies on accurate and validated models of climate, which we don't have.
-Plants, and especially trees, sequester Carbon; they suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. The correct measure of a nation's contribution to global CO2 levels is not the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activity. Rather, it is the difference between the total amount of CO2 released in the nation (from human activity, farting cows, ants etc.) and the amount removed by plants. The United States maintains vast forests for recreation, preservation, and lumber. Measures of net US release of CO2 place it at zero. Note that that zero is heavily disputed, but those who dispute the zero figure nontheless place the figure close to zero. All estimates of net EU CO2 release reveal Europeans to be great sinners in this regard, that is, if you believe, as do they, that CO2 is sinful.
- The US proposed during negotiations that limits be placed on **net** CO2 emissions. What this means is that any country which wanted to increase energy consumption and consequently increase CO2 emissions could do so, so long as they planted more trees somewhere to mop up the extra CO2. This allows for economic growth(good) and concomitant increases in CO2 production while mandating a compensatory increase in forests (good if you like trees) without raising global CO2 levels (for those who believe in that faith). Europe absolutely refused to use net CO2 release as a measure of compliance. This stance is inconsistant with their stated goal, which is to reduce global CO2 levels. Why ? To foster the image of their own ethical superiority while undermining competitive foreign economies. First they did not want a treaty to which the US would agree because if the US were to sign such a treaty, Europeans would have to abandon their attitude of moral superiority. Second, the only treaty allowable by the europeans was one which damaged the US economy. A treaty which reduced net CO2 emmissions from the US, without damaging the US economy, was not acceptable to them.
-Europe is not in compliance with Kyoto and is likely to never be. Some nations (France) already far exceed allowable CO2 emissions, to a degree that they could not cut back without risking major economic collapse (we're talking soup lines). Kyoto is not meant to be enforced, but to be worn as a badge of moral superiority.
Does bnetd include pirated code or not ? Read the excerpt above; Salon.com quotes Blizzard accusing the bnetd project of piracy, and then it quotes "bnetd developers", as if in response to that allegation specifically, and they don't deny it.
Have the lead bnetd developers ever denied that bnetd contains code stolen from Blizzard ? And even if they did deny it, how could we trust their statement ? Any contributor to bnetd who got his hands on Blizzard's source could have snuck it into bnetd, claiming it as his own work. Since nobody except Blizzard has seen Blizzard's source, how is anyone on the bnetd project to know whether bnetd includes code stolen from Blizzard ?
By backing bnetd in this the EFF is setting itself up to be painted as a defender not of free software, but as a defender of software piracy; If Blizzard can prove that bnetd includes stolen code, EFF gets screwed.
Blizzard has seen Blizzard's source and, we can assume, they have seen bnetd source. The EFF has only seen bnetd source. Blizzard is alleging piracy. Think about it.
"Very bad" understates its condition; It is a heap of crap.
...games, such as Civilization III, Tropico, and Quake III"
At one point the review states (emphasis added):
"Another shock WHEN READING THE MONITOR'S SPECS - with a contrast ratio of 200:1, a brightness of 200 cd/m2, a response time of 50 ms and a vertical viewing angle of 90 and a horizontal of 120"
So it seems that "their" conclusions are just copied right from specs given to them by the manufacturers. This means that any comparison between figures which they name is meaningless. Manufacturers test displays under different conditions, useing different test criteria, and then exagerate performance to an unknown degree. For a mesurement to be of any use, every monitor described must be tested with the same equipment, under identical conditions, using the same performance criterion.
Consider the measure of viewing angle. The drop in luminance as a function of viewing angle is a continuous function. So how big is the viewing angle ? Well, it depends on what the monitor manufacturer considers to be an acceptable degree of luminance loss, that is, where he arbitrarily thresholds a continuous function.
Consider measurements of luminance and contrast ranges: You can crank the luminance all the way up, and you can crank the contrast all the way up, but what happens when you do both at once ? Are luminance and contrast ranges independent variables, and if they are not, to what degree does your choice of one limit the other ? Did every manufacturer measure contrast range at the same luminance levels ? Did every manufacturer measure maximum luminance at the same contrast setting ?
The point here is not that the manufacturers are to blame for how they portray performance. Rather it's that, to present a credible comparative review, you must make mesaurements yourself, so to hold the testing procedure and performance criteria constant.
"... While the L365 can display very dark shades perfectly, whereas its rivals always tend to display them as black, it has certain problems displaying lighter hues accurately.
"
The obvious explanation is that he's set the brightness and contrast on the L365 so that the contrast saturates at the top of the range, and he's set the other monitors to saturate at the bottom of their ranges. Then he describes the L365 saturating at the top of its range, as if this is some great insite, and like it tells us anything at all about the L365.
Oh, and let's have a look at the their test methods section:
"We used N-Test for the following purposes...to verify whether the frequency is set automatically"
1) WTF is N-Test, and if they are too lazy to tell us, why can't they at least link to it ?
2) If they did this, why dont' they tell us the results ?
3) Why don't they tell us the results of other tests which they claim to have done ? Except for the part about surfing the internet and playing quake, the claim that they did tests smells like horseshit.
"We surfed the Internet...We ran
Lets summarize: They claim to do tests, but they do not give us the results of those tests. The results which they do give us are not their own results, but instead are copied from those given to them by the manufacturers. Their conclusions are therefore useless for the purpose of comparing the perfomance of displays, the fundamental aim of a compartive review. The authors are pissed that Samsung did not give them a monitor for testing purposes, though they did not give their own test results for any monitor which they were given for review. The only plausible use which the authors did make of these monitors was to play games and surf the web.
"...it's legal to shoot a Welshman... I've often been tempted to see how well this'd stand up in court..... but I don't think it's worth the risk."
The risk to yourself or to the Welshman ?
Could you can say anymore about where you heard about this, anythying that would help me to track down more about it ?
If you have technical excellence at any cost, and that cost you can not afford, then you do not have technical excellence. If, on the other hand, you have technical excellence at affordable cost, then you do have technical excellence.
So yes, you are wrong.
My brain has a mind of its own.
It looks interesting, but $390.00 is a commitement.
My brain has a mind of its own.
If you think that you are stuck with Verizon, try these guys: www.acedsl.com . They operate in Verizon's market.
Static IP, supply your own modem, no setup or installation fees, $50/month, month-by-month contract.
I don't know whether all the claims made about XBox encryption are true, but even if they are, the XBox encrytpion is more a nuisance than a serious technical barrier to porting other OSes such as Linux and the BSDs to the XBox.
That the BIOS is encrypted, that the network stack is encrypted, bla bla bla, none of this matters to Linux, which has no use for the native Xbox drivers and would certainly supplant those with its own drivers. Even code-tampering detection routines could likely be sidestepped, unless they are implemented with hardware interrupts which execute routines in soldered-on ROM. (And that oes not seem likely, because any validation rule which rejected changes to the system code would reject MS firmware updates.)
Getting at the drivers isn't a bad idea though. Using Microsoft's XBOX binaries to deduce the Xbox hardware configuration could be quite helpul. But those binaries must be accessible because not ALL of the software on the box can be encrypted. Somewhere, there must be an unencrypted decryption routine which loads and decodes the encrypted code.
While XBOX encryption can not be an impregnable technical barrier, it is a serious legal barrier. The DMCA prevents hackers from legally passing around the tools to decrypt Xbox binaries. And copyright law prevents you from passing around the binaries themselves. So its going to be impossible to legally use the Xbox binaries do deduce things like register locations on custom chips. For the non-custom chips with published specs, just find the base address and you know the rest.
But I'm wondering, could hackers in non-DMCA countries reverse-engineer the hardware from the MS Xbox binaries, publish what they discover about the hardware, and the rest of us poor oppressed DMCA-governed folks then legally use what they've discovered to write Linux or BSD drivers ?
There is no man-made creation produced by representatives of as many cultures, languages, and countries as is Linux.
Linux is what happens when free people exchange information, ideas, and products globally. Let us not forget where our favorite operating system came from. A student at non-profit educational institution in Finland wrote it in a language(C) developed in the research division (Bell Labs) of large American corporate telephone monopoly (AT&T). Linux began on a machine architecuture designed by the dominant mainframe computer manufacturer of the day (IBM) to squash a rival upstart (Apple) started by two guys (Jobs and Wozniak) in a garage in California. The machine architecture was based on a microprocessor (Intel i386), a direct decendent of the original microprocessor, a device created by Intel engineers under contract from Japanese manufacturer designing a desktop calculator. Microprossors themsleves are instances of computuing machines, the origins of which involve a 19th Century French loom maker (Jacquard) a Victorian Mathemetician (Babbage)and the daughter (Ada Byron) of an English Poet (Lord Byron). Theoretical work in computing had been greatly advanced by a homosexual British mathemetician (Alan Turing) and John von Neuman, a Hungarian emigree. To name just a few of the many involved.
The history which lead us to Linux is a global history. Just as the culturally and economically isolated play no role in development of Linux today, they took no part in the history which led to its creation. The economic and socially isolationist factions of the anti-globalist movement oppose the only proven route to progress: international commerce in goods and ideas.
from the MarketWatch link:
Previously, carriers were limited to 45 megahertz of spectrum in big markets, or one-fourth of the available airwaves.
from the FCC link:
"the FCC's shift from an inflexible spectrum cap rule to reliance on case-by-case review of CMRS spectrum aggregation."
What's going on is that the FCC has decided that the "Anyone owning more than 1/4 of the spectrum is an illegal monopolist" rule is horse shit. Apparently, there are better measures of market competition than that.
Morpheus, Grokster, and Kazaa ...
So the usership is growing huge and by that measure they successful, but what about their profitability ?
And what is the business model for these services ? How do the providers make money at this ? User fees or what ?
The difficulty is that you are one of those sorts who receives extremely low scores on the verbal comprehension part of the exam. That " when anti-communists kill lots of innocents that's ok?" is not implied by the passage with which you preceed it.
So there is a debate to be had about what would have been acceptable civilian casualty rates in U.S. military conflicts, what was the actual causualty rate, what was the magnitude of the opposing threat, and what would have been the consquences of non-involvment. Importanlty, what would have been the social cost of adjusting the civilian casuality rate ? If you have an argument to make on that subject, then lay it out. Until you succeed, vague and sensationalistic reference to "horrendous terrorist acts committed by Americans (and others) against innocent people" can not be invoked as evidence.Concern for civilian causualites is an important concern. However, you are discriminating in which civilian causulties you mention when critizing U.S. military action. This suggests that your primary interest is the political cause of particular U.S. adversaries, not reducing civilian casualties; You are looking for reasons to critisize U.S. action only when it opposes a particular system of government, one which you do not oppose.
Those who bemoan the misfortune of civilian Vietnamese causualites but not civilian German casualties understand the threat of Nazism but not that of Communism. They claim theirs is a position of superior knowledge, but in fact it is a position of inferior understanding: inferior understanding of the threat posed by an expansionist communist state.
You make irrelevent distinction between A) The U.S. having unecessarily provoked anger which led to the attacks and B) The U.S. being responsible, or partly responsible for the attacks.
If you assert A then you necessary imply B. You feel as if you have been misrepresented because you fail to recognize the implications of your own statments.
To repeat, I am just not buying this "We provoked their anger uneccesary which resulted in their attacking us, but we didn't cause them to attack us" distinction. When you can show that the former does not imply the latter, you will have evidence that I "pretend that the other side is saying what's easiest for you to respond to".
In making the distinction which you do, you simply insert a link in the causal chain then claim the result to be something entirely different.
Suppose a country were practicing mass genocide on its population, and a second country intervened to impose a non-genocideal system of government on the first. According to the rule you offer this action to stop genocide would be "wrong." Perhaps in your world view stopping genocide is indeed "wrong." Let us assume otherwise, and reject your statement that "enforcing any political system onto another country is wrong."
The first sentence denies a distinction between Communism and other systems of government. The second sentence makes two such distinctions. It is a peculiar juxtaposition of contrary belief. If you had wished to make the point of your first sentence, it would have been better to present that sentence alone, for the combintion is nonsensical. If your point is that of the second sentence then it would have been clearer to present alone a statement such as this:
The reader must speculate as to why, if that is your point, you accompanied it with an opposing statement. So let us speculate: Communism is indeed a failed system of government, you know this, and therefore feel compelled to admit it. However, part of you sides with communism, or is at least sympathetic to it. So despite your knowledge that communism is a failed system of government you have some emotional affinity for it. It is this emotional affinity which causes you to contradict your factual statements of the failures of communism by preceeding them with the the contradictory remark that "Communism is just another political system."
Technology increases worker productivity and raises wages. This is WHY industrialized countries have higher wage levels than non-industrialized countries. It is also why exporting domestic industrial practices raises wage levels abroad.
When disecting those tactics reveals that they have lead to false conclusions, it is indeed a benefit. I do not assert, without explanation, that a statement is false. I explain why it is false, accounting for misteps in reason, my explanation serving as evidence of that statement's falsehood.
Ingrained in human psychology is the conviction that suffering is inevitably a consequence of the sufferer's misdeeds. Theology and philosophy have worked to account for contradictions arrising from that belief without recognizing the cause of their failure: It is a false conviction. Institutionalized systems of irrational belief indoctrinate rationalizations explaining why, though, the innocent appear to suffer underservingly, their fates are a consquence of their own guilt. Divine retribution and original sin are examples such rationalizations. When the evidence of a victim's innocense is too powerful to deny, then we deny the suffering itself, a Panglossian dismissal of human pain as shadows in the best of all possible worlds.
Overcoming your own inate conviction in the guilt of the victim is a necessary step to reforming your thoughts. Maintaining that the slaughter of American by terrorists must be a consequence of American policy is like saying that if your severed head ended up in Jeffery Dahmer's refrigerater, well then you must have done something to deserve that.
Well, there you go again, with your conviction that we must somehow be at fault. You overlook the most obvious explanation: Bin Laden is a murderous villian out to kill the innocent. There are historical precedents:--Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler. Each, just as Bin Laden, cast himself as a defender and portrayed his own crimes as retribution for alleged misdeeds of his victims. It was only the corrupt and feeble-minded who agreed. A ginned-up excuse for mass murder consitutes no cause for that act.
The existance of faults in United States foreign policy is not at issue, though you pretend otherwise. What is at issue is whether those faults are just cause for the murder of Americans. If you claim yes, then we can both agree that is your position on that issue. If you claim no, then their acts still require an explanation: the culprits are deranged fanatics.
We most certainly are responsible. Religious pluralism, democracy, and individual liberty are an affront to radical islam. By sustaining these practices within our country or by promoting them abroad we fuel the hatred which resulted in the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
I submit the following as a test of your ideology. How can that ideology legitimize the first question without legitimizing the second:
Communist tyranies and liberal democracies are not morally equivalent. Your implication that acts committed in defense of freedom and those committed to spread communism should be judged equally is ethically abhorent. Communism murders and enslaves, democracy promotes life and frees. Reciprocal acts committed with disimilar motive are not objectively equal.
You can not know what I consider and what I do not consider. You can only know what I state. Therefore, when you alone state what I have considered, you make a baseless assertion. Unable to supply real facts, it seems you resort to making some up. And you are not even good at doing that. You pretend to know what I consider through what means ? It could be nothing plausible.
Grievances, rational or not, do not characterize one as a demented fanatic. Terrorist acts comitted against the innocent do. Lest you weasel on the definition of "Terrorist", causualties of war are not victims of a terrorist aggression.
People who enjoy smartass comments might appreciate that remark. Those who seriosly consider issues will notice that in the first part of that sentence you say something rude and insulting, and in the second part you describe this as "friendly" advice. The contradiction is obvious. As someone whose reasoning ability is so impaired that he is blind to self-contradiction, you have no credibility.
You might believe that you can advance your views by implying that those who contradict you masterbate and don't leave their homes. In fact, you weaken your postion substantially by making such comments. Slashdot identities are anonymous. You can not know who I am, where I am, or where are my hands. Your assertion of what you can not know brands you liar. Your remarks, by association with you their author, a proven liar, are suspect.
You specifically sited those acts as examples of American "misdeeds", and it was that to which I replied. Now, with blatent dishonsty, you pretend to have been critisized for calling them blunders.
An easily refutable statement. To demonstrate that this claim, that we "consistantly fail to get results" is untrue, it is sufficient to site a single example of success. I choose American participation in the defeat of Germany in the second world war; we got a result.
Your position is compromised by inaccurate claims and invalid reasoning. You could strengthen your arguments by ommiting false statements, for they do great damage to your writing. Advice: After every word typed, read what you have written and pause to reflect on its meaning. Ask yourself "Is what I have written bullshit ?" If your mind says "yes", then start hitting that backspace key.
For example after you typed "You call me pro-communist simply because I point out the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam as blunders", you should ask yourself "Did he call me pro-communist because I pointed out that the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam were blunders?" In fact, and quite evidently, I declared you pro-communist because you labeled these acts in opposition to communism as american misdeeds. Did you discribe them as misdeeds ? You did. Enlightement would dawn, the bullshit alarms would sound within your head, revelation would follow: "What I have written is bullshit!". Reach then for the backspace key.
Again you get yourself into trouble when you write that we "consistently fail to get results". Ask yourself "Do we consistently fail to get results ?, do we sometimes fail to get results ?, do we usually fail to get results ?" Had you considered the meaning of your words the bullshit alarms would again have sounded within your head. Because they did not, you are left defending an unmaintainable position. You could in further replies resort to dishonesty or insult to cover for this error. You could again misrepresent your own statements, or accuse me of having a violent character, or of consuming illegal drugs, and other crap like that.
If instead you had examined and considred your own typing, then you would have no cause to issue face-saving dishonesties and libel. Had you written "sometimes..." or "usually fail to get results", you now would be in a defensible or plausibly defensible position. Because you do not scrutinize your own writing for bullshit, you are cornered into defending your own false assertions. Now I have identified your inaccuracies, and again, as before, you feel that to save face you must spew forth further inaccuracies in defense, extending your liabilities, dragging yourself deeper into a personally manifesting chasm of bullshit.
You rely on a false dichotomy, reasoning that terrorists attack the United States "just for the hell of it" or that they attack us in retribution for our own acts. You exclude the former and conclude (modus tolendo ponens) the latter. Your contrived limit of two explanations is both a blatent failure of logic and a dishonest rhetoricial tactic.
Therein your reluctancy to provide examples is explained: You can offer no examples of United States actions for which terrorism is a rational response, and your pro-communist position would detract from the popular appeal of your remarks.
Your ludicrous assertion that the acquisition of the Panamanian canal zone drives modern anti-american hostilities is a desperate attempt to buttress a failed argument.
Recall Communism: Stalin, Lenin and Mao murdered tens of millions. Mao's aim of the Cultural Revolution was the destruction of Chineese culture, by means of killing intellectuals and smashing historical artifacts. In Berlin, there was a wall, and those attempting to flee communism through that wall were machine gunned to death on the spot as a matter of state policy. The prisoners of communist countries, their inhabitatants, who bravely opposed these policies were awoken in the night by state authorities and shot in the head.
The United States in Vietnam and in Cuba sought to contain this menace. Your perverse labelling of these American actions as "misdeeds" reveals a consistant sympathy for the perpetratrors of mass murder. Your inclination to blame the victims of terrorist attacks for failing to understand the fanatical thinking of their killers supports that interpretation.
The conduct of American foreign and domestic policy has indeed been flawed, notwithstanding your inability to name any of those flaws. Yet the flaws constitute a basis for anti-american hostilities in only the minds of demented fanatics.
Your warm and fuzzy "If only we understood them better there would be peace" attitude is poorly reasoned and subversive attempt to strengthen the political position of terrorists.