Before you get bombarded with people telling you that this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, I will say that no matter what Apple/Linus do at this point, it's still M$'s game to lose.
You're dead wrong. The "average user", who I take to mean the fabled "average American" in this case, is willingly letting all sorts of civil rights go by the wayside as we speak. The fact that John Poindexter is gonna know what videos I rented from 1988-1993 really disturbs me. The fact is, people don't care. By the time they do care, it'll be too late.
Wow, this should be fun. From Microsoft (Fascism) to Communism in one thread? Cool. Maybe we can also tackle the Israeli-Palestinian thing, world hunger and the next Pauly Shore movie?
I remember in school the history teachers telling us that the right is so far right and the left is so far left that they actually meet.
I am an Open Source proponent, but you make it sound like we take breaks from coding to go sing strains of "Give Peace A Chance" while tending vegetable gardens on our laid-back Hacker Kibbutz. There's a broad spectrum here: just because I'm for socialized medicine doesn't mean I'm in favor of rationing out toilet paper. I think you're making a pretty big leap here, and more power to your shiny red ass, but thankyouvermuch I am a capitalist pig who supports Open Source.
So, you say Microsoft will ultimately destroy itself? Well, la deefreakin' da! What megalitic entity throughout the history of time that's been destroyed hasn't destroyed themselves? See the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union or the Roman Catholic Church for a refresher.
I just hope I'm not supposed to feel sorry for Bill, Steve and the gang because they're getting some pushback from the Microserfs.
I tend to think the reason we're starting to see dissention up at the Redmond Institute for Wayward Boys is an ecomonic one: in the 80's and 90's, developers at Microsoft were making the same sort of crap/bloat/spy/suck-ware, but the difference was they were making a mint off of it. Now, the fully-vested huge stock options are not there, staff turnover is high, and the cro-magnon managers that drive projects have become more and more unpleasant to work for. I speak from some experience, as a former Microsoftie. So, just like any of us who are feeling more pressure to perform with smaller reward at the end of the day, the geeks out there are starting to bitch and moan.
This happens in bajillions of companies every day, particulalry from the IT infrastructure: just ask IBM'ers off-the-record how happy they are with their company's adherence to J2EE spec's, as an example. But don't get the lofty idea that the programmers at Bill Central are nobly rising up to give an Open-Source pimp-slap to their.NET oppressors. If they were getting the juice, they'd be happy as clams.
And don't fault them for it: it's why they went to M$ to begin with. These are people who are not agonizing over the social and geek-topian ramifications of their work. They've made their peace with that. Now, we can (and will, dammit) harrangue them for being a part of said same awful machine, but that's who they is, folks.
This isn't about technology anymore than it is about macaroni and cheese. This is about moolah. As long as they can put in their 10 hours a day building flight simulation easter eggs into the latest version of FrontPage, they will tolerate the occasional Nazi-esque rally with Ballmer or the (less-occasional) ass-reaming they receive from their managers. It's just as the rewards for such easter egging have been diminishing, the risk for complaining about the coroporate ethos has dimished as well.
Oh come on, why would they encrypt communications to and from a ga-jillion (technical term) dollar spacecraft? It seems like a perfectly good idea to let anyone who wants to do a packet replacing have at it.
"All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access. "
So what? I bought a name brand PC a few weeks ago that came with Quicken Deluxe on it, to be used only if I have bought the reg key.
The real issue here is that this won't work: within two weeks of these bad boys hitting the street, there will be dozens of postings on how to circumvent Pressplay's reg/purchase code strategy and gain access to all of the music, just as I can go to any one of dozens of sites for hacks into getting my unregistered copy of Quicken to work. I wouldn't do this, of course: no no, not me....
There's a metaphor here from Apocalypse Now: the Bridge at Do Long. Every day the Americans would rebuild the bridge, and every night the Vietnamese would blow it up. Each new tack by the RIAA and its DMCA cronies to secure rights in this fashion will be defeated, sometimes within minutes of hitting the street.
This points to the need for them to dynamite their business model and think up something new: how many people actually pay for content? (And porn doesn't count. Besides, porn is largely stolen anyway!) The answer is none, zero, nada. AOL-TimeWarner's about to find this out the hard way. Gateway and Pressplay are making it easier than some to circumvent by the fact that the files are on your machine, and you can ostensibly do what you want to with them without them knowing. But even if you had to download them, you'll still be able to hack them.
With all due respect to the good (and smart!) professor, people have been singing this tune for years now. Oracle was gonna make OS's irrelevant. Then Sun was. Blah blah blah.
What the nerdish community (I am including myself in this) fails to realize is that a lot of people (and not just geeks!) like they do their cars and their office cubicles: they personalize the hell out of them. From soul-crushing cute-and-fuzzy-bunny stickers to desktop pictures to skins to gut-wrenching.WAV files played when email arrives, many (not all, but many) people project into their computers their own vision of what it should look like, sound like, behave like.
The OS-agnostic, computer-as-information-portal idea is a grand one and might work for business travellers hitting kiosks and library users, etc. However, until a rich, customizable environment gives this "personalization community" the same ability to turn their desktop into a fairy princess or a NASCAR cockpit or what have you, OS's will continue to rule.
My two cents: keep the change.
Re:I won't move to Mac. Make Mac move to me
on
Moving to Mac Made Easy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd definitely recommend staying with x86 if you are a power user. Leave the Mac for the artists and people who are confused by a mouse with two buttons.
Not to sound haughty and pedantic, but isn't it possible that it's not a confusion issue, but the fact that it's simply more elegant? Just a thought.
Your PC is not a musical instrument: it's a tool, dummy. I'm a musician, too, and feel it's not only plausible, but preferible to using a PC. Yes there's expense, and yes there's hassle. But if you really view your PC as an instrument then you should want the Stratavarius, not the Suzuki.
One takes ones Karma where one can get it. Just wait until Sun pisses me off one day: the $'s in Sun Solaris make me salivate.
Re:I won't move to Mac. Make Mac move to me
on
Moving to Mac Made Easy
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think you're mistaken on this. Yes, your hard-earned 1000 quid went into that box, but we both know it'll be obselete within a year (oh, quit moaning: it's true!). Computer buyers are becoming savvy enough to know this (I know, not ALL of them, but many of them). Therefore, I don't think it's a stretch that some people will think: "Hmm, I gotta blow a buttload of money on an item that'll last me about as long as an ice cream sandwich - how about I get one that does stuff better, looks better, and doesn't crash?" No, we're not talking about scads of people using this logic, but some do. Apple is beyond trying to win back substantial marketshare from WinTel (face it, they lost), but modest gains are suitable, and the types of users who might think this way are precisely the people Apple wants as a user community.
I am certain Apple is happy to have an idiot like me pontificating about what THEY want.:)
As a long time Mac user, I recently convinced my wife to take the plunge and switch from W2K to a shiny new iBook. While she loves the form and function of the 'book, and she loves how all the apps work, migration of her data was a beee-otch! This software really wouldn't have done anything to resolve the big issues: moving calendars and email. I was able to to this through several machinations because I (huzzah!) am a trained IT professional (and I'm used to dealing with M$ making it as difficult as possible to move from PC-to-Mac). But if she had to do this on her own, or more-to-the-point, if all of the other mom-and-pop's out there who Apple is targeting with their "Switch" campaign had to do it alone, she would have booted the iBook across the room and gone back to her namby-pamby W2K box.
Apple really needs to address this: they've done a good job stating the case as to WHY a "switch" would be in user's interests: they damn sure need to make this process simple, bulletproof and COMPLETE, before they find a lot of people switching their sorry keisters back to Windows faster than you can say "Blue Screen of Death".
>> The fortune-100 client has also been making cuts, but instead of cutting salary, they cut people. We figure the ultimate goal is to cut their IT department by 1/2 of the size it was a year ago. Projects are much harder to come by.
On the upside for contractors, as they get money back, they are less likely to be willing to commit bucks to core staff that they worry they might have to can again in short order. So, they are more likely to re-supplement their staff with contractors, at least in the near term.
You are SORELY mistaken, Dragoness. The facts are, a) ditch digging (aka Excavation) is a booming, big business in the US, b) these companies rarely pay benefits and c) they often pay between 9 and 13 bucks an hour. Oh and (D!) they are rarely unionized as well.
Look, my point is not to make a tale of woe for ditch diggers. I just think people in our positions tend to see the world from the perspective of our own horn-rimmed glasses. Joe Sixpack (whose opinion doesn't matter to me, per se, but to the extent we want to be considered fellow workers their perception does) thinks we're a bunch of snots.
Maybe a better analogy would be UNIONIZED (heh) Nurses, making 14-18 bucks an hour, being forced to stay overtime at the whim and needs of their hospitals, etc....
I'm currently working at a consulting firm which was forced into a similar (but _far_ less drastic) set of cuts.
As someone who has gone through this in each of the last three companies I've worked for (maybe its me?), I am beginning to come to grips with this being the inherent risk of working in this sector. The fact is, none of us were pissing and moaning when we were being overpaid (of course not, why would we?); should we expect sympathy now that there's been this "market correction"?
Keep in mind that, to the outside (read "non-programming", "AOL _is_ the Internet!") world, even with these new hardships we are all a bunch of Nintendo junkies with nothing to contribute to the world aside from internet porn, Quake and the hamster dance.
Is this perception correct? Hell no. But try _seriously_ explaining that to someone who digs ditches for nine bucks an hour with no benefits.
This line of discussion is, in itself, a fishing expedition that has no possibility of catching anything. M$ clearly perceives Open Source as a threat (and let's face it, it is a threat), and they will behave accordingly. We've all seen how the Redmonsters deal with perceived threats (just ask Novell, IBM, Apple and a litter of smaller companies).
They're not changing their position, folks, no matter how much we beg and plead, unless there is a business reason to do so. M$'s ultimate weakness is its hubris. They really believe the spin their marketing people and strategy people pump out: that their products are better, that Open Source is anti-competitive, that they aren't a monopoly, etc. They also believe that customers will continue to pay a premium to be a part of their endless upgrade cycle, a belief that will be shattered as XP gets shot down as a solution for more and more corporate desktops, and ASP's look toward lower-cost alternatives to.N(Y)ET in their datacenters.
I say go on and let them go about their business. More developers and users will get abused, surely, and that sucks. But we've seen that Open Source is a movement, not a revolution. Expecting it to cause instantaneous upheaval at the world's most successfuly company is arrogant, short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive.
In the end, only Microsoft can bring down Microsoft. And it will. Just not in time for supper.
Isn't it at least _possible_ that all crazy Larry's trying to do is make a buck by selling some enormously expensive software (and the obligatory ga-jillions of dollars in support) to the Government?
I don't know that there's something sinister afoot here. If it's not him, it'll be IBM or SAP or someone else trying to sell Uncle Sam on it.
The peril that these sorts of limitations put on the freedoms we hold dearly and are accustomed to are obvious and many. But (and I know this make me a namby-pamby pantywaist)....
Instead of offering up this "take your laws off my BIOS" reaction, can we come up with some _practical_ solutions? I mean, we all know that no one's going to listen to us, but it's what we do. Given the example where Fixer is afraid to speak out against group X because of repercussions that might occur: What if Fixer doesn't just want to speak out against Group X, but wants to damage them physically? Does Group X have the right to be "free from the tyranny" of Fixer? Or does Fixer's rights to privacy tower over Group X's rights to not be persecuted?
It seems to me that a line in the sand must be drawn, but maybe 30 paces ahead of that line we should be prepared for some flexibility.
One thing we should carefully consider is the fact that Afghanistan has never been taken. This is no mean feat, if you think about it. Just ask Ghengis Khan, the Persians, the British and oh yeah, that fun little after-school club called the USSR: and none of them were able to break these hard people or their hard land.
And, just to prove that my minor in English actually has some value, a stanza from Rudyard Kipling's "The Young British Soldier" comes to mind:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
We're getting into something we can't even begin to comprehend. I am hoping against hope that reason prevails.
Come on now, do you really think that's gonna happen?
This is exactly what he wants. I'm not saying it isn't what he should get, but I am saying that we are talking about someone who saw the mighty USSR beat down like they were the bench-warmers for the Bad News Bears. And the Soviets didn't have any of the moral ambiguities that we're going to have about this kind of war.
If we _don't_ get Bin Laden, he becomes a nomadic hero who will continue to plague the US with his network. If we _do_ get Bin Laden, he will become a martyr, making his network even more powerful from beyond the grave.
I don't have the answers here, but this gung-ho, sir-yes-sir, you-want-me-on-that-wall-you-need-me-on-that-wall mentality about fighting these guys is a bunch of bunk. It's going to be ugly, and they are going to hit us back: many many many times. It's now been done twice, heck at the same building even. You think because the mighty US of A decides it wants to roll up its sleeves and go after him he's gonna just say "Ooops, kidding!"? No, I don't think so.
Like I said, I don't have the solution, and I'm not sure that a war with him _isn't_ the answer, but I can't see how anyone could be glib about it.
Frankly, I'm just too saddened by what happened Tuesday to get much frat-boy dude-let's-kick-his-ass machismo going...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh this should be fun....
Before you get bombarded with people telling you that this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, I will say that no matter what Apple/Linus do at this point, it's still M$'s game to lose.
You're dead wrong. The "average user", who I take to mean the fabled "average American" in this case, is willingly letting all sorts of civil rights go by the wayside as we speak. The fact that John Poindexter is gonna know what videos I rented from 1988-1993 really disturbs me. The fact is, people don't care. By the time they do care, it'll be too late.
Wow, this should be fun. From Microsoft (Fascism) to Communism in one thread? Cool. Maybe we can also tackle the Israeli-Palestinian thing, world hunger and the next Pauly Shore movie?
I remember in school the history teachers telling us that the right is so far right and the left is so far left that they actually meet.
I am an Open Source proponent, but you make it sound like we take breaks from coding to go sing strains of "Give Peace A Chance" while tending vegetable gardens on our laid-back Hacker Kibbutz. There's a broad spectrum here: just because I'm for socialized medicine doesn't mean I'm in favor of rationing out toilet paper. I think you're making a pretty big leap here, and more power to your shiny red ass, but thankyouvermuch I am a capitalist pig who supports Open Source.
So, you say Microsoft will ultimately destroy itself? Well, la deefreakin' da! What megalitic entity throughout the history of time that's been destroyed hasn't destroyed themselves? See the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union or the Roman Catholic Church for a refresher.
.NET oppressors. If they were getting the juice, they'd be happy as clams.
I just hope I'm not supposed to feel sorry for Bill, Steve and the gang because they're getting some pushback from the Microserfs.
I tend to think the reason we're starting to see dissention up at the Redmond Institute for Wayward Boys is an ecomonic one: in the 80's and 90's, developers at Microsoft were making the same sort of crap/bloat/spy/suck-ware, but the difference was they were making a mint off of it. Now, the fully-vested huge stock options are not there, staff turnover is high, and the cro-magnon managers that drive projects have become more and more unpleasant to work for. I speak from some experience, as a former Microsoftie. So, just like any of us who are feeling more pressure to perform with smaller reward at the end of the day, the geeks out there are starting to bitch and moan.
This happens in bajillions of companies every day, particulalry from the IT infrastructure: just ask IBM'ers off-the-record how happy they are with their company's adherence to J2EE spec's, as an example. But don't get the lofty idea that the programmers at Bill Central are nobly rising up to give an Open-Source pimp-slap to their
And don't fault them for it: it's why they went to M$ to begin with. These are people who are not agonizing over the social and geek-topian ramifications of their work. They've made their peace with that. Now, we can (and will, dammit) harrangue them for being a part of said same awful machine, but that's who they is, folks.
This isn't about technology anymore than it is about macaroni and cheese. This is about moolah. As long as they can put in their 10 hours a day building flight simulation easter eggs into the latest version of FrontPage, they will tolerate the occasional Nazi-esque rally with Ballmer or the (less-occasional) ass-reaming they receive from their managers. It's just as the rewards for such easter egging have been diminishing, the risk for complaining about the coroporate ethos has dimished as well.
Let the flaming begin.
It's time for NetBEUI to make a comeback!
Oh come on, why would they encrypt communications to and from a ga-jillion (technical term) dollar spacecraft? It seems like a perfectly good idea to let anyone who wants to do a packet replacing have at it.
"All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access. "
So what? I bought a name brand PC a few weeks ago that came with Quicken Deluxe on it, to be used only if I have bought the reg key.
The real issue here is that this won't work: within two weeks of these bad boys hitting the street, there will be dozens of postings on how to circumvent Pressplay's reg/purchase code strategy and gain access to all of the music, just as I can go to any one of dozens of sites for hacks into getting my unregistered copy of Quicken to work. I wouldn't do this, of course: no no, not me....
There's a metaphor here from Apocalypse Now: the Bridge at Do Long. Every day the Americans would rebuild the bridge, and every night the Vietnamese would blow it up. Each new tack by the RIAA and its DMCA cronies to secure rights in this fashion will be defeated, sometimes within minutes of hitting the street.
This points to the need for them to dynamite their business model and think up something new: how many people actually pay for content? (And porn doesn't count. Besides, porn is largely stolen anyway!) The answer is none, zero, nada. AOL-TimeWarner's about to find this out the hard way. Gateway and Pressplay are making it easier than some to circumvent by the fact that the files are on your machine, and you can ostensibly do what you want to with them without them knowing. But even if you had to download them, you'll still be able to hack them.
A moot issue, even? Yuk yuk yuk.
With all due respect to the good (and smart!) professor, people have been singing this tune for years now. Oracle was gonna make OS's irrelevant. Then Sun was. Blah blah blah.
.WAV files played when email arrives, many (not all, but many) people project into their computers their own vision of what it should look like, sound like, behave like.
What the nerdish community (I am including myself in this) fails to realize is that a lot of people (and not just geeks!) like they do their cars and their office cubicles: they personalize the hell out of them. From soul-crushing cute-and-fuzzy-bunny stickers to desktop pictures to skins to gut-wrenching
The OS-agnostic, computer-as-information-portal idea is a grand one and might work for business travellers hitting kiosks and library users, etc. However, until a rich, customizable environment gives this "personalization community" the same ability to turn their desktop into a fairy princess or a NASCAR cockpit or what have you, OS's will continue to rule.
My two cents: keep the change.
I'd definitely recommend staying with x86 if you are a power user. Leave the Mac for the artists and people who are confused by a mouse with two buttons.
Not to sound haughty and pedantic, but isn't it possible that it's not a confusion issue, but the fact that it's simply more elegant? Just a thought.
Your PC is not a musical instrument: it's a tool, dummy. I'm a musician, too, and feel it's not only plausible, but preferible to using a PC. Yes there's expense, and yes there's hassle. But if you really view your PC as an instrument then you should want the Stratavarius, not the Suzuki.
One takes ones Karma where one can get it. Just wait until Sun pisses me off one day: the $'s in Sun Solaris make me salivate.
I think you're mistaken on this. Yes, your hard-earned 1000 quid went into that box, but we both know it'll be obselete within a year (oh, quit moaning: it's true!). Computer buyers are becoming savvy enough to know this (I know, not ALL of them, but many of them). Therefore, I don't think it's a stretch that some people will think: "Hmm, I gotta blow a buttload of money on an item that'll last me about as long as an ice cream sandwich - how about I get one that does stuff better, looks better, and doesn't crash?" No, we're not talking about scads of people using this logic, but some do. Apple is beyond trying to win back substantial marketshare from WinTel (face it, they lost), but modest gains are suitable, and the types of users who might think this way are precisely the people Apple wants as a user community.
:)
I am certain Apple is happy to have an idiot like me pontificating about what THEY want.
As a long time Mac user, I recently convinced my wife to take the plunge and switch from W2K to a shiny new iBook. While she loves the form and function of the 'book, and she loves how all the apps work, migration of her data was a beee-otch! This software really wouldn't have done anything to resolve the big issues: moving calendars and email. I was able to to this through several machinations because I (huzzah!) am a trained IT professional (and I'm used to dealing with M$ making it as difficult as possible to move from PC-to-Mac). But if she had to do this on her own, or more-to-the-point, if all of the other mom-and-pop's out there who Apple is targeting with their "Switch" campaign had to do it alone, she would have booted the iBook across the room and gone back to her namby-pamby W2K box.
Apple really needs to address this: they've done a good job stating the case as to WHY a "switch" would be in user's interests: they damn sure need to make this process simple, bulletproof and COMPLETE, before they find a lot of people switching their sorry keisters back to Windows faster than you can say "Blue Screen of Death".
OK.
On the upside for contractors, as they get money back, they are less likely to be willing to commit bucks to core staff that they worry they might have to can again in short order. So, they are more likely to re-supplement their staff with contractors, at least in the near term.
You are SORELY mistaken, Dragoness. The facts are, a) ditch digging (aka Excavation) is a booming, big business in the US, b) these companies rarely pay benefits and c) they often pay between 9 and 13 bucks an hour. Oh and (D!) they are rarely unionized as well.
Look, my point is not to make a tale of woe for ditch diggers. I just think people in our positions tend to see the world from the perspective of our own horn-rimmed glasses. Joe Sixpack (whose opinion doesn't matter to me, per se, but to the extent we want to be considered fellow workers their perception does) thinks we're a bunch of snots.
Maybe a better analogy would be UNIONIZED (heh) Nurses, making 14-18 bucks an hour, being forced to stay overtime at the whim and needs of their hospitals, etc....
I'm currently working at a consulting firm which was forced into a similar (but _far_ less drastic) set of cuts.
As someone who has gone through this in each of the last three companies I've worked for (maybe its me?), I am beginning to come to grips with this being the inherent risk of working in this sector. The fact is, none of us were pissing and moaning when we were being overpaid (of course not, why would we?); should we expect sympathy now that there's been this "market correction"?
Keep in mind that, to the outside (read "non-programming", "AOL _is_ the Internet!") world, even with these new hardships we are all a bunch of Nintendo junkies with nothing to contribute to the world aside from internet porn, Quake and the hamster dance.
Is this perception correct? Hell no. But try _seriously_ explaining that to someone who digs ditches for nine bucks an hour with no benefits.
They're not changing their position, folks, no matter how much we beg and plead, unless there is a business reason to do so. M$'s ultimate weakness is its hubris. They really believe the spin their marketing people and strategy people pump out: that their products are better, that Open Source is anti-competitive, that they aren't a monopoly, etc. They also believe that customers will continue to pay a premium to be a part of their endless upgrade cycle, a belief that will be shattered as XP gets shot down as a solution for more and more corporate desktops, and ASP's look toward lower-cost alternatives to .N(Y)ET in their datacenters.
I say go on and let them go about their business. More developers and users will get abused, surely, and that sucks. But we've seen that Open Source is a movement, not a revolution. Expecting it to cause instantaneous upheaval at the world's most successfuly company is arrogant, short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive.
In the end, only Microsoft can bring down Microsoft. And it will. Just not in time for supper.
Let the flaming begin.
Shouldn't that be ThemSQL?
Here's our chance: how about an Open Source Big Brother DB?
Isn't it at least _possible_ that all crazy Larry's trying to do is make a buck by selling some enormously expensive software (and the obligatory ga-jillions of dollars in support) to the Government?
I don't know that there's something sinister afoot here. If it's not him, it'll be IBM or SAP or someone else trying to sell Uncle Sam on it.
He's a salesman, not a spook. Sheesh.
The peril that these sorts of limitations put on the freedoms we hold dearly and are accustomed to are obvious and many. But (and I know this make me a namby-pamby pantywaist)....
Instead of offering up this "take your laws off my BIOS" reaction, can we come up with some _practical_ solutions? I mean, we all know that no one's going to listen to us, but it's what we do. Given the example where Fixer is afraid to speak out against group X because of repercussions that might occur: What if Fixer doesn't just want to speak out against Group X, but wants to damage them physically? Does Group X have the right to be "free from the tyranny" of Fixer? Or does Fixer's rights to privacy tower over Group X's rights to not be persecuted?
It seems to me that a line in the sand must be drawn, but maybe 30 paces ahead of that line we should be prepared for some flexibility.
Let the flaming begin....
One thing we should carefully consider is the fact that Afghanistan has never been taken. This is no mean feat, if you think about it. Just ask Ghengis Khan, the Persians, the British and oh yeah, that fun little after-school club called the USSR: and none of them were able to break these hard people or their hard land.
And, just to prove that my minor in English actually has some value, a stanza from Rudyard Kipling's "The Young British Soldier" comes to mind:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
We're getting into something we can't even begin to comprehend. I am hoping against hope that reason prevails.
Come on now, do you really think that's gonna happen?
This is exactly what he wants. I'm not saying it isn't what he should get, but I am saying that we are talking about someone who saw the mighty USSR beat down like they were the bench-warmers for the Bad News Bears. And the Soviets didn't have any of the moral ambiguities that we're going to have about this kind of war.
If we _don't_ get Bin Laden, he becomes a nomadic hero who will continue to plague the US with his network. If we _do_ get Bin Laden, he will become a martyr, making his network even more powerful from beyond the grave.
I don't have the answers here, but this gung-ho, sir-yes-sir, you-want-me-on-that-wall-you-need-me-on-that-wall mentality about fighting these guys is a bunch of bunk. It's going to be ugly, and they are going to hit us back: many many many times. It's now been done twice, heck at the same building even. You think because the mighty US of A decides it wants to roll up its sleeves and go after him he's gonna just say "Ooops, kidding!"? No, I don't think so.
Like I said, I don't have the solution, and I'm not sure that a war with him _isn't_ the answer, but I can't see how anyone could be glib about it.
Frankly, I'm just too saddened by what happened Tuesday to get much frat-boy dude-let's-kick-his-ass machismo going...