That's all fine and dandy so long as both sides are willing to compromise and get along. What if they're not? What if one side's demands, such as "we want to kill all Jews" is completely incompatible with the other side? How do you compromise? Just let them kill a few Jews?
With some people there is no compromise available. It's then that the guns are needed, and the more and better guns we have, the more likely others are to compromise their extremist views. Either that or the Darwinian forces of "extermination by choice of refusal to compromise" will start to come into play.
I can not think of a single wholy selfless use of US militray might, ever.
Good! I'm not paying taxes so we can use our military might to be the world's do-gooder police force, I'm paying taxes because I want U.S. interests looked after. If other countries are smart, they'll align their interests with ours and profit from it. If they're not, they'll oppose us and get sanctioned for it. If they oppose us strongly enough, they'll get -- ahem -- disenfranchised for it.
Where did this whole "you've got to do nice things for other people" come into play in world politics? Since when have any of these half-assed dictatorships, tyrants, and self-appointed monarchies ever do anything nice for the U.S.?
Tit for tat is the byword in international politics. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. You don't get something for nothing. You want the U.S. to be nice to everyone else and do good for everyone else? Fine. We'll be more than happy to if everyone else will simply behave and play nice with everyone else. Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. This isn't Utopia, this is reality.
A kind word goes far, but a kind word and a gun goes farther.
Yeah, I do. We won, remember? USSR gone, USA still here. And we didn't win it by being all touchy-feely and limp-wristed, either. We won it by making sure the other side knew we meant business and had the capability and will to use our weapons to enforce our policies. It's for damned sure they would've been more than happy to use their weapons to enforce their policies had we not been ready, willing, and able to oppose them. Or would you argue that we should've sent Kruschev a nice fruit basket and an "I Love You" card? I'm sure that would've made the U.S. a safer place instead of the "behave or we'll blow you away" approach that did ultimately work.
I swear, you people with your "WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER" mentality. Did you ever stop to ask youself "If war isn't the answer, what is?" It sure doesn't seem like it. Much easier just to oppose something without having to present a practical solution. Such is the mind of a liberal.
How can this be seen as anything *but* an act of aggression (NOT self-defense) by the rest of the world?
How does me taking a judo class, or learning to use a firearm, or any other such method translate into "aggression" towards another human being? It doesn't. Your argument is not logical.
Just about any defensive technology or technique can be used offensively. That does not mean defense is aggression, it is preparation for countering aggression.
And if you think the U.S. is some bloodthirsty colonialist nation bent on conquering the world by force, I've got news for you: we could already do that if we wanted to. Who could oppose us? Russia? Not with their rusting military. China? We could nuke them to atoms. The Arabs? Does "bombed back to the Stone Age" sound familiar?
The point is, we have the capability to be as bloodthirsty as we want, and with relative impunity at that. However, for all the muscle we have, the United States hasn't territorially conquered another nation for over a hundred years. Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and (shortly) Iraq have all been handed back to their own countrymen. Is this the action of a conqueror? Only in the wildest possible minds of a liberal hater of America.
Pointing a gun at someone's head does not make it less likely that you get hurt.
I beg to differ. Do the words "don't move or I'll blow your brains out" mean anything to you? Just how likely is it that you will initiate hostilities against someone holding a gun to your head?
Oh, and if you don't want a gun held to your head, don't do anything that would require someone to pull the gun in the first place. The U.S. is more than happy to assist those who share in our worldviews. Those that have allied themselves with the U.S. benefit economically, politically, and militarilly. It's those that have shunned us that are feeling all the pain these days, and somehow I just can't find it in my heart to feel much -- no, any -- pity for them.
You are completely disregarding all the bad things that will happen due to this, which FAR outweigh your fears.
You completely disregard all the bad things that will happen if the U.S. takes a stance an isolationist standpoint on global security matters. If we have no steel to back up our words and policies, how are we to enforce them when others oppose? Or would you argue that the U.S. just needs to quit opposing and start doing what everyone else tells us to do?
"Being able to drop MORE weapons on other nations does not do ANYTHING to "protect" the US citizens."
It has little to do with dropping "more" weapons and everything to do with putting more accurate, more lethal, less collaterally destructive weapons on a target at a moment's notice with absolute impunity. Right now, the U.S. does not possess that ability.
Try to think about it from a bank robber's perspective. If you know that the instant you engage in some sort of nefarious activity, you're going to get engaged, perhaps lethally, by police officers, what's the likelihood you're going to do your evil deed? And if you have no method to dissuade or engage the officers yourself, you cannot prevent them from stopping you and you cannot intimidate them into not stopping you out of fear for their own lives.
This is the ultimate in "bolt from the blue" technology, and it sure as hell will raise the hairs on the back of any erstwhile fanatic setting up a terrorist training camp in the middle of the Gobi desert.
Bombers are vulnerable to being shot down with the accompanying worry of the loss of a serviceman's life. Cruise missles get rid of the loss-of-life worry (except on the receiving end, of course) but are sometimes not accurate enough for pinpoint strikes and always require a launch platform within a few hundred miles of the target. Satellites, on the other hand, are always up there, endanger no personnel, and require no overflight rights.
What you don't get is that "protection" also works proactively instead of reactively. What does getting a tetanus booster "protect" you from? Nothing, so long as you don't step on a rusty nail. But if you do get in a situation where you need that booster, you're much better off having proactively protected yourself than otherwise.
Neither is parroting a PR-crafted argument from the company that stands to lose most from an avoidance of monoculture.
Or whining that I made a derogatory comment about it.
Ooooooohhhh...testy, testy. Did I disturb that carefully balanced chip that was resting on your shoulder?
By the way, it's not parroting when you're coming up with intelligent comments on the relevant issue. But it does seem you most definitely don't like it when someone exposes and uncomfortable truth to you. Maturity issues, I presume?
Kind of like driving productivity has suffered from the varied places auto manufacturers put the "high beams" control? I think you dramatically overestimate the difficulty (and frequency) of people switching from one system's GUI to another's.
You know, it's thinking like this that's got the Munich Windows-to-Linux migration project in trouble right now. You should read up on it, but you won't. It's a case study on how to underestimate the difficulty that plain old run of the mill users have when switching "insignificant" things like the GUI. It may be easy for you to switch, and it may be easy for me to switch, but as much as I dislike sharing any category with you, you and I are not the common majority. So you think I "dramatically overestimate" the difficulty, eh? Just try moving a few thousand users from even something as similar as Win2K to WinXP. You've obviously never even thought about such a thing, otherwise you'd know better than to suggest it's not difficult. The Munich LiMux team now knows better. So should you, but you won't.
The data-interchange issue is also a red herring. Common file formats can be (and have been) developed to allow easy exchange of data.
So nice of you to sweep the most common complaint so easily under the rug. Thank you for making the world so simple! We should all just decide to use some lowest-common-denominator common file format. And, of course, you have the ability to make all application developers conform to this immeidately, don't you? And when a new feature comes out in one application, this file format will automatically allow that feature to be utilized in other, competing applications, right? What a software miracle worker you are! I salute you!
doesn't mean it A) has to be that way, or B) should be.
Ah, but you ommitted "C) but it is that way despite my rose-colored-glasses view of the world.
Perhaps is time to devote less attention to making excuses for how we got here, and more attention on how to fix it.
Fine. Offer me a practical solution that everyone can agree upon and mutually decided to endorse and I'll jump on board immediately. But you can no more force that to happen than you can stop the Earth's rotation. You're living in a wonderful pipe dream where everyone acts altruistically, nobody's greedy, and even arch competitors work together for the common user good. It ain't gonna happen, comrade.
The only problem with your analogy is that apache (Like most OSS) has at least 2 versions and normally many more, which are currently in widespread usage.
Just like Windows has maintained dual code bases with the Win9x series and the WinNT/2K/XP/2K3 series. That doesn't change anything. And even the NT-based kernels are significant variations on one another (at least as significant as the kernel or various Apache versions).
If an exploit is found in apach 2.0.48, great but maybe I'm still running 2.0.47 and the bug was just introduced, maybe I'm running version 1 still, this diversity of versions creates alot of diversity in the unix world
And many Windows users don't bother patching their systems to the fullest extent, creating the exact same scenario. Some might have this patch but not that hotfix, making them vulnerable to this but not to that. Some might be running Outlook and thus be vulnerable to a worm, whereas some may be running Netscape mail and not be vulnerable. The analogy remains good despite your attempts to unseat it.
therefore, you can't as a virus writer rely on some windows dll, and make calls against it, because there is no gaurantee the library you need will be there in the linux world
So you just do what any other virus writer does and you try all the normal defaults you find in every Redhat, Debian, SuSE, Slackware, and Mandrake install. All of these systems install core utilities and binaries in predictable, known ways. If an exploit is discovered against any of these defaults then all installations of that product are potentially vulnerable. And since all of these have the Linux kernel at their heart, a kernel bug means all of them are susceptible. Again, you fail to see how a Linux/Unix monoculture is just as bad as any Windows monoculture, and a duoculture buys you very little for what you have to give up.
and you will have to write a much larger virus to gaurantee you have the functionality you need on the system once you infect it.
Have you ever even heard of punctuation, pal? Periods? Commas? The ever-elusive semicolon? Your post is like reading one long run-on sentence. No, wait, it is one long run-on sentence.
OK, let's continue to misunderstand my comment in the most Apache-favorable way, shall we? I never said a damned thing about 1.3 vs. 2.0. Duh! It's rather obvious that these two are strikingly different versions of the same program. But that's not what I was saying and I think you know that. If you don't you're denser than I thought.
Now, once again, with feeling: the Apache 1.3 core code on any platform is strikingly similar to the Apache 1.3 core code on any other platform. The same thing goes for 2.0. Apples go with apples, oranges with oranges. There, now do you see where you were completely and totally wrong? Good, I thought so.
Well, Outlook can be integrated, but if you don't buy Office it can't be.
As for IE, at least MS did something smart by disabling IE in the default install of Win2k3. The result? Win2k3 has had far fewer bugs and exploits than any other MS OS at this time in its development life cycle. Go check the bug rate for NT 4.0 and Win2k and you'll see it. Microsoft is improving. Maybe not as fast as we'd all like, but they're certainly moving closer to where we'd like them to be. Now if only they'd revise their pricing...downwards this time.
I should point out that the experts -- by which I mean David Kay, the man Bush hired to look for weapons programs and not Fox News pundits -- would disagree with you.
Uh, no, this just again proves that you can't read or assimilate information...or at least, you can't read and assimilate anything you don't already agree with. David Kay's report said "we didn't find anything." It did, however, go to some pain to say that there was ample opportunity for Saddam & Co. to move the stuff out prior to the war. Lack of proof is not proof of lack. And, might I remind you-who-cannot-read-too-well, U.N resolution 1441 required Iraq to demonstrably show evidence of the destruction of the weapons the U.N. agreed he had prior to the war. It was not the U.S.'s burden to find these things, it was Iraq's burden to prove they no longer had them. Iraq chose not to do so. Whether that was because they didn't want to reveal secret weapons or because they felt like bluffing is irrelevant. Saddam broke the cease-fire agreement he made after the 1991 war, and he's now suffering the consequences. You've conveniently forgotten all of these, dismissed all of it, because you don't care to hear anything you don't like. I'll also point out that internal CIA studies have repeatedly stated that the likelihood of ever finding these weapons, even if they do exist, is nearly nil. Too much country, too small weapons.
Not without retribution.
I'd say retribution has now been handed out. Your argument is that we should've omitted this retribution step. Quite illogical to have an ulimatum with no consequences. It doesn't make for much of an ultimatum, now, does it? Next!
Didn't do that much the first time, did it? It actually helped pick up the economy quite a bit when we stepped on his little army the last time.
Check your figures again. Fuel costs during the war rose dramatically and had hugely negative effects for the entire transportation sector of the U.S. economy. Higher airline costs led to a decrease in business travel, which hit the hospitality and convention economy areas. That had a ripple effect everywhere else. You minimize far too much.
Again, you miss the fact that Saddam didn't like jihadists like al-Qai'da. (Furthermore, according to the linked article, Osama didn't like Saddam either.)
Great Comrade Stalin once coined the term "useful idiots" for anyone whom you may despise and denigrate but who also might serve a one-time useful purpose. Saddam might've disliked the religious fanatics, but that didn't stop him from trying to use them to stir up the populace against the U.S. invasion -- twice! And Al-Queda does not have the resource to mount a large nuclear or chemical weapon, but Saddam did. As you said, Saddam was a political animal, and anything that increased his power and wealth was something he'd be interested in. He was very interested in fostering his Arabic image as the defier of the United States. If he could sell WMD's to Al-Queda to use against the U.S. while keeping his hands relatively clean, what's not to like?
But what it ultimately comes back to is what GWB said in his State of the Union address (paraphrasing): "trusting an insane dictator is not an option".
Hate does not grow in a vacuum.
Very true. It grows where it is fostered. The various Arab theocracies and dictatorships have found a convenient way to deflect unrest against their regimes: blame the Americans. The Saudi's are doing a grand job of it, or at least they had been prior to Iraq being taken out. Now all these thugs posing as leaders see that the U.S. will no longer tolerate this covert army-building of hatemongers to occur unmolested. Chalk another one up for pre-emptive foreign policy!
We were a threat. We were one of vast majority of countries that cut off diplomatic ties when they rose to power
Platform neutral is always a good thing, but it has a tendency to move slower (sometimes much slower) than any one vendor/developer could. What happens then? Well, if companies A through Y are all clinging to the standard, but company Z comes out with a new "killer" feature, companies A through Y could be in serious jeopardy of being upstaged by company Z. And it's not like it doesn't happen, because Microsoft is the penultimate example of it. Look at how the Internet is now arranged around the needs of IE as opposed to the strict HTML spec.
The result? The standards process is frequently upstaged by faster, more nimble competitors. Design by consensus is always slow and almost always less functional than what a single company might come up with. And in a capitalistic society such as ours, whoever gives the customers what they want the fastest gets the dough.
And Apache has never had any such flaw? I beg to differ. Apache has suffered several root-access flaws during its development. All of them are now patched, but they did exist. You can say the same thing about IIS 3, IIS 4, and so on.
Your ignorance of the facts kind of paints you as an anti-MS zealot. Perhaps you should try reading up on that which you're so adept at criticizing.
As a first step, I would suggest that everyone using MS operating systems stop using Outlook and IE.
This alone would practically stop 95% of all Internet-based attacks aimed at Windows machines. Which again goes to show that it's not so much the OS that's at risk as it is the applications.
As far as integration goes, I think HTML and HTTP, TCP/IP show how easy this can be if we can some up with standards for data formats and transmission protocols.
I disagree. These protocols do very simple things and none of them are secure. Look at the current problems we're having with SMTP mail. It is an inherently insecure protocol that offers no integrated method to determine the authenticity of the sender, leaving the way open for massive reply-to-spoofing spam companies like we have today. TCP/IP doesn't handle security, either, and neither does HTTP (HTTPS excepted, of course). HTML is still far more limited than even a garden-variety word processor when it comes to displaying complexly-formatted documents. You're giving examples of simple components like nuts and bolts. I'm talking about the whole machine.
but you forget to mention that apache is much more secure than IIS.
This is an assertion that cannot be backed up. I've had NT 4.0 webserver that have run years without compromise, and I've seen poorly-run Apache systems that were hacked within 30 minutes of going live. You can say that Apache is much more secure than IIS by default, but an experienced administrator can secure any box, even an IIS one.
It all comes down to knowing what you're doing and which platform you're more familiar with. I'd rather have an IIS box run by a guru-level administrator than a Linux/Apache box run by a newbie anyday.
Yes, it runs across more platforms, but the core code across all of them is strikingly similar. Most Apache exploits to date have been completely cross-platform exploits, meaning that it really is more of a monoculture than you might think. No slam against Apache, by the way, but it's the truth.
OK, you get a B+ for successfully paraphrasing the Microsoft flack's comments.
If I didn't know better, I'd say that's a derogatory comment. Not a good way to start off your response if you want to be taken objectively.
But did you critically evaluate whether his argument that we'd need ridiculous numbers of OSes is sound? Ireland didn't need thousands of breeds of potatoes for its population to all survive the potato blight; a handful of still-viable varieties would have been enough to feed them.
All analogies break down at some point (yet another paraphrasing job, I'm afraid). You say a handful of still-viable varieties would be enough. What if a virus targetted those? To achieve total practical immunity, each organism (or application/OS) would have to be unique. Obviously that's impractical, so what you're actually arguing is at what level is the risk acceptable?
Likewise, in an alternate universe where the desktop computer landscape today was a roughly even mix of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, OS/2, BeOS, and Amiga, the "network effect" that spreads malware like wildfire in our universe would be drastically reduced.
Productivity would almost certainly be similarly reduced due to lack of high-level interoperability between these disparate platforms. Oh, sure, you'd have some base level of commonality amongst all of them (a potential attack vector, by the way), but what you'd end up with is lowest-common-denominator functionality. That is not a blueprint for progress. New functionality would then only come as a result of consensus between competing vendors, traditionally a long, drawn out process. Further, customers just don't like to wait for that stuff. Outlook is a prime example. It introduced a number of non-standard ways for dealing with email (many of which have resulted in security holes, BTW), but consumers loved it enough to eschew the standards-based alternatives. This has been the case in software for decades (remember when Netscape flouted the HTML standards committee on frames?) and is not likely to change.
You're right that Linux won't "fix it all". But a duoculture is more robust than a monoculture, and a true multiculture - even if it consisted of equal numbers of just the top four of the desktop OSes I mentioned - would be even more so.
Again, you completely ignore the possible effects any such duo- or multiculture might introduce into the current setup. Right now, people can exchange data between monocultures pretty seamlessly, flawlessly, and effortlessly. By going to a duoculture you may double the work a hacker may do, but you've also doubled the number of points of failure for software interoperability, you've doubled the technical support requirements of both helpdesks and software developers, and you've potentially (worst case) halved the productivity of people trying to exchange data between differing platforms. These are not insignificant concerns.
You also can't argue that these disparate platforms would ever work well together. By definition of avoidance of monoculture, convergence of the platforms would almost have to be actively discouraged; history has shown us that convergence is a natural phenomena with any group of disparate programs that are expected to work together. Any such convergence would again lead us to a quasi-monoculture scenario where an attack vector exists where application/OS overlap and interoperability exist.
In short, you can't have it both ways. Users like programs and systems that work together easily, yet those same systems are at higher risk to attack due to that same interoperability. Removing that attack vector would also remove many productivity-enhancing tools and methodologies we've gained due to greater software integration. I don't know about you, but it's been my experience that if users have to choose between security and functionality, they choose functionality almost exclusively. After, Windows and Office offer lo
...that Greer's against monoculture but doesn't explore the effects of what would be needed to overcome that monoculture.
As outlined in the article (assuming anyone reads it), critics of Greer point out that simply adding a new OS into the mix (dare I say Linux?) wouldn't substantially help. You'd have a duoculture instead of a monoculture. How much more difficult would it be for hackers to create a devastating hack? It even extends beyond OS's. Apache has the majority market share for all web servers worldwide. What affect would a devastating Apache exploit have on such a near-monoculture? Nobody wants to say anything about that, though, because Apache represents the side of good and Microsoft is evil.
To truly achieve the technological equivalent of biodiversity, we'd need hundreds or thousands of OS's and differing applications. The complexity of trying to get all that crap to work together would be impossible, especially since convergence of any two app's/OS's would be actively discourages to prevent cross-pollination-type attacks.
It's all well and good to bash Microsoft's monoculture. I'm sure there are many here who'll do nothing but that. However, defining the problem is only the first step; you must present a practical, workable solution. Just saying "Linux will fix it all" simply replaces one monoculture with another. But I bet most people here haven't thought that far ahead.
I can see that talking sense to you is utterly useless. When the U.S. gets a coalition together, it must be because they were blackmailed or bribed. When the eco-radicals get a coalition together, it's got to be because everyone is feeling so damned altruistic.
Unfortunately, I really do think you're myopic and naive enough to actually believe your own argument whilst simultaneously ignoring everyone else's. Thus, I will no longer waste my time with you.
I will say, however, that your pathetic and total hatred of George Bush is so intense that you're fundamentally incapable of seeing past it.
I can see that talking sense to you is utterly impossible. When the U.S. gets a coalition together, it must be because they were blackmailed or bribed. When the eco-radicals get a coalition together, it's got to be because everyone is feeling so damned altruistic.
Unfortunately, I really do think you're myopic and naive enough to actually believe your own argument whilst simultaneously ignoring everyone else's. Thus, I will no longer waste my time with you.
A huge amount of countries have signed the Kyoto Protocol and most of them have even ratified the Protocol.
Ah, let's go down the list. Hmm, let's see...not a lot of industrialized nations on this list. In fact, the vast majority of the worlds economic and productive nations aren't anywhere to be found in this list! Oddly enough, it seems like it's mostly backwater, third-world nations with nothing to lose and everything to gain by signing this treaty! Nah, this couldn't be their own signs of self-interest, could it?
Of course, I could also take the tack that all the Bush-hating, Saddam-loving liberals have taken in the war against Iraq. America got a coalition of nations willing to back the Iraq war, but since Russia, Germany, and France were left out, it was deemed "unilateral", despite the fact that the definition of unilateral is "only one". But now that the shoe's on the other foot and not only America but Russia, Britain, and most of Europe hasn't signed it, it's only the U.S. that gets faulted.
Why don't you just come out and say what you're really feeling? You hate the U.S. It's that simple. Why try to manufacture contradictory arguments, slanted facts, half truths, and outright lies to get your hatred across? Why not just stand up and say "I hate the United States because they're the richest, most powerful, most free nation on this Earth!" Wouldn't that be easier than what you're doing?
It amazes me how readily so many people accept the doctrine of pre-emption. Are you all insane? Realistically, Iraq was not in any way a threat to America or any other western power.
Then you're incapable of reading and reasoning, then. Let me describe in the most simplisitc, most childishly plain terms that I can, and perhaps it will register in the dark recessess of your underused cranium: Iraq had the ability to manufacturer chemical, biological, and nuclear arms. While I doubt Hussein would've been stupid enough to use them directly to attack the U.S. mainland, his very possession of them could put him in a position of blackmailing the entire world. It doesn't help that, as the formerly most powerful Arabic nation, he could have singlehandedly walked all over Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and more if he chose to do so. Such an action would've caused grave economic damage to this nation, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1970's OPEC oil crunch. So, despite your inability to understand how Hussein could indirectly damage the U.S., he sure had the ability to do so.
the risks of american intelligence finding out and retaliating wouldn't be worth the meagre political gains of seeing america attacked.
Again, you completely misunderstand the subtlety involved here. Hussein manufactures weapons. Hussein sells weapons to Al Queda. Al Queda uses weapons against U.S. Hussein's hands are relatively clean unless we somehow get Al Queda to 'fess up on who supplied the weapons. Fat chance of that.
Also, Hussein didn't have to want political gains here. Haven't you noticed that these terrorists aren't trying to make political points? They're attempting to wage fanatical, religious-based genocide against anyone who isn't a Muslim. They don't care about winning, they care about killing. It's like the Japanese kamikaze in WWII; you can't reason with someone who is willing to die to advance their worldview.
And from the terrorists point of view, it's much easier to manufacture weapons using equipment bought on the open market in america than it is to smuggle it in.
Sure, I'll just head down to the corner Nuke-R-Us store and pick up a 20 kiloton thermonuclear device. Open market my ass. RPG's and Kalishnikov's can be found on the open market. Ricin, Anthrax, sarin, and nukes aren't.
Before you go singing the praises of pre-emption, consider this: America has always had the power to level afganistan to the ground; was Al Qaeda justified in launching a pre-emptive strike on America?
Did we threaten their interests? Nope. They were perfectly willing and able to spew their anti-American, anti-Western, anti-anything-that-isn't-puritanical-Muslim views for years before attracting our attention by hosting Osama. Had they not done so, they'd still be in power. So, contrary to your selective, convenient memory, the Taliban decided to ally themselves with our enemies before the first blow was struck. I suppose you'll now argue that Hitler was justified in attacking Poland because Poland was allied with Britain and France.
There were people arguing during the design of the Hubble that we shouldn't abandon our existing orbital telescopes because the Hubble might fail? What orbital telescopes where they talking about?
No, there were people arguing during the design of Hubble that we shouldn't bother lofting an orbital 'scope at all because ground-based 'scopes could do just as good of a job. Then there were the naysayers that said even if we did launch it, it would never work. You're arguing the same negativity about Hubble's replacement as they were about Hubble's ability to supplement or replace ground-based observatories.
Which they did under the assumption of an operating Hubble.
No, you're wrong again. Hubble's lifetime was well established by NASA quite some time ago, and it's actually exceeded that by a small amount. However, the next generation 'scope has been widely announced long before now, and everyone in the astronomical community knows that it's coming. Hubble cannot simply stay up there without support. The gyros are failing, the solar panels are degrading, and it's orbit is decaying. Without regular service it will either cease to function or fall out of the sky (or both). Service costs money, and NASA only has so much of it to go around. They're making a pragmatic decision to save funds for the next 'scope rather than spend it to extend the life of Hubble. It's rather like saying you're not going to continue to maintain your old junker automobile because you're buying a replacement in a few years. Just drive the old one until the wheels fall off, then buy your new one. Spending $10,000 to repair an old car is silly when you're not far from buying a new one altogether.
Great. Then you won't argue that it's safe to go to the ISS but not to the Hubble. That's the argument being made by NASA officials, and that is being criticized here.
In this we are in agreement. I think the ISS is not only an unsafe mission for the Shuttle, I think it's a waste of tax dollars. If every dollar spent on the ISS and Shuttle had instead been spent on a lunar colony, we'd have people living, working, and breeding on the moon by now. It is a sad fact that the last man to set foot on the moon may die of old age before the next man follows in his footsteps. What a sad ending to such an amazing leap made by humanity over thirty years ago.
I'd also point out that a lunar observatory would give nearly all the same advantages (no atmos. distortion, no X-ray filtering, etc.) of an orbiting 'scope with much easier maintenance requirements.
You act like the U.S. is the only country that didn't sign the pact. If you'll bother to check the facts, you'll see that Russia is also refusing to accept the treaty without changes, a stance identical to the U.S. position. Quite simply, the Kyoto treaty demands massive concessions by first world nations in exchange for virtually unlimited ability to pollute by everyone else. This is a treaty to stop pollution, it's an attempt to "even the scales" economically by wrecking the economy of industrialized nations.
As a side note, your spelling is attrocious. I suppose you went to a government school, didn't you? Or are you even out of school yet?
Attack countries like it was done in the middle age.
Well, I don't see any catapults and seige towers in our military inventory, so you're wrong there. We're not impaling people on pikes. We're not slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians. Nope, no middle ages here.
And for one last time, I'll address this supposed bloodlust for death that the U.S. seems to have. If we wished to kill everyone in Iraq, don't you think we could've done it much more efficiently and quickly? Tactical nukes could've reduced much of the population to ashes while leaving the valuable oil fields untouched. Chemical and biological agents could've been used and even left all the cities standing. Even a 1940's still conventional bombing campaign could've reduced the entire country to ruins in less than a year, killing most of the population.
But we didn't take that tack. We went in on the ground with tanks and close air support, we tried to keep collateral damage to a minimum. The actual number of civilians killed were less than those killed in one bombing raid during WWII. So you can just drop the whole bloodthirsty American idea, because it's stupid, it's crass, and it's not supported by the facts.
Pretend to be the protectors of the world, with power to do everything they want without being questioned.
No, we're not claiming to be the protectors of the world, just protectors of ourselves and our interests. However, in this day and age when a single terrorist with a suitcase nuke or a few vials of biological agent can kill millions, the only practical way to fight it is to pre-emptively seek it out and destroy it no matter where it's at. The cost of allowing just one terrorist to succeed is too much for any nation to bear.
Disband space technology/health studies in favor of military studies.
This is a pure fabrication on your part. The U.S. is not disbanding any space studies, and health research is carried on by civilian firms. As for the increase in military research, I guess you've never heard of the concept of trickle-down. GPS, lasers, computers, satellites, composites...all of these were either pioneered by military ventures or used some technology that was originally created for the military.
When I was young, I though about America as presented by Hollywood:
And that's where you expose your naivety. You think the world ought to be neat, clean, and sweet, just like it is on TV. That is the mental worldview of a child. Reality is not like on television, my shortsighted comrade. Reality evil dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Husseain killing millions of their own people, starting wars with other nations that kill even more millions. Evil cannot be fought passively, but I'm sure you don't believe me. After all, on TV, all the world's major problems are solved before the last commercial break, right?
I know it's a us centric site, and I'll be modded down, but someone had to say it:P
And it's a mark of just how ignorant both you are and the moderators are that you got modded up as insightful. Why bother checking facts and learning the truth when you can simply decide to just hate America? It's just more fun to hate the U.S., isn't it?
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Try compromising and getting along.
That's all fine and dandy so long as both sides are willing to compromise and get along. What if they're not? What if one side's demands, such as "we want to kill all Jews" is completely incompatible with the other side? How do you compromise? Just let them kill a few Jews?
With some people there is no compromise available. It's then that the guns are needed, and the more and better guns we have, the more likely others are to compromise their extremist views. Either that or the Darwinian forces of "extermination by choice of refusal to compromise" will start to come into play.
I can not think of a single wholy selfless use of US militray might, ever.
Good! I'm not paying taxes so we can use our military might to be the world's do-gooder police force, I'm paying taxes because I want U.S. interests looked after. If other countries are smart, they'll align their interests with ours and profit from it. If they're not, they'll oppose us and get sanctioned for it. If they oppose us strongly enough, they'll get -- ahem -- disenfranchised for it.
Where did this whole "you've got to do nice things for other people" come into play in world politics? Since when have any of these half-assed dictatorships, tyrants, and self-appointed monarchies ever do anything nice for the U.S.?
Tit for tat is the byword in international politics. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. You don't get something for nothing. You want the U.S. to be nice to everyone else and do good for everyone else? Fine. We'll be more than happy to if everyone else will simply behave and play nice with everyone else. Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. This isn't Utopia, this is reality.
A kind word goes far, but a kind word and a gun goes farther.
Fear produces HATE.
Thank you, Yoda.
Don't you remember the cold war at all?
Yeah, I do. We won, remember? USSR gone, USA still here. And we didn't win it by being all touchy-feely and limp-wristed, either. We won it by making sure the other side knew we meant business and had the capability and will to use our weapons to enforce our policies. It's for damned sure they would've been more than happy to use their weapons to enforce their policies had we not been ready, willing, and able to oppose them. Or would you argue that we should've sent Kruschev a nice fruit basket and an "I Love You" card? I'm sure that would've made the U.S. a safer place instead of the "behave or we'll blow you away" approach that did ultimately work.
I swear, you people with your "WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER" mentality. Did you ever stop to ask youself "If war isn't the answer, what is?" It sure doesn't seem like it. Much easier just to oppose something without having to present a practical solution. Such is the mind of a liberal.
How can this be seen as anything *but* an act of aggression (NOT self-defense) by the rest of the world?
How does me taking a judo class, or learning to use a firearm, or any other such method translate into "aggression" towards another human being? It doesn't. Your argument is not logical.
Just about any defensive technology or technique can be used offensively. That does not mean defense is aggression, it is preparation for countering aggression.
And if you think the U.S. is some bloodthirsty colonialist nation bent on conquering the world by force, I've got news for you: we could already do that if we wanted to. Who could oppose us? Russia? Not with their rusting military. China? We could nuke them to atoms. The Arabs? Does "bombed back to the Stone Age" sound familiar?
The point is, we have the capability to be as bloodthirsty as we want, and with relative impunity at that. However, for all the muscle we have, the United States hasn't territorially conquered another nation for over a hundred years. Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and (shortly) Iraq have all been handed back to their own countrymen. Is this the action of a conqueror? Only in the wildest possible minds of a liberal hater of America.
Pointing a gun at someone's head does not make it less likely that you get hurt.
I beg to differ. Do the words "don't move or I'll blow your brains out" mean anything to you? Just how likely is it that you will initiate hostilities against someone holding a gun to your head?
Oh, and if you don't want a gun held to your head, don't do anything that would require someone to pull the gun in the first place. The U.S. is more than happy to assist those who share in our worldviews. Those that have allied themselves with the U.S. benefit economically, politically, and militarilly. It's those that have shunned us that are feeling all the pain these days, and somehow I just can't find it in my heart to feel much -- no, any -- pity for them.
You are completely disregarding all the bad things that will happen due to this, which FAR outweigh your fears.
You completely disregard all the bad things that will happen if the U.S. takes a stance an isolationist standpoint on global security matters. If we have no steel to back up our words and policies, how are we to enforce them when others oppose? Or would you argue that the U.S. just needs to quit opposing and start doing what everyone else tells us to do?
"Being able to drop MORE weapons on other nations does not do ANYTHING to "protect" the US citizens."
It has little to do with dropping "more" weapons and everything to do with putting more accurate, more lethal, less collaterally destructive weapons on a target at a moment's notice with absolute impunity. Right now, the U.S. does not possess that ability.
Try to think about it from a bank robber's perspective. If you know that the instant you engage in some sort of nefarious activity, you're going to get engaged, perhaps lethally, by police officers, what's the likelihood you're going to do your evil deed? And if you have no method to dissuade or engage the officers yourself, you cannot prevent them from stopping you and you cannot intimidate them into not stopping you out of fear for their own lives.
This is the ultimate in "bolt from the blue" technology, and it sure as hell will raise the hairs on the back of any erstwhile fanatic setting up a terrorist training camp in the middle of the Gobi desert.
Bombers are vulnerable to being shot down with the accompanying worry of the loss of a serviceman's life. Cruise missles get rid of the loss-of-life worry (except on the receiving end, of course) but are sometimes not accurate enough for pinpoint strikes and always require a launch platform within a few hundred miles of the target. Satellites, on the other hand, are always up there, endanger no personnel, and require no overflight rights.
What you don't get is that "protection" also works proactively instead of reactively. What does getting a tetanus booster "protect" you from? Nothing, so long as you don't step on a rusty nail. But if you do get in a situation where you need that booster, you're much better off having proactively protected yourself than otherwise.
Neither is parroting a PR-crafted argument from the company that stands to lose most from an avoidance of monoculture.
Or whining that I made a derogatory comment about it.
Ooooooohhhh...testy, testy. Did I disturb that carefully balanced chip that was resting on your shoulder?
By the way, it's not parroting when you're coming up with intelligent comments on the relevant issue. But it does seem you most definitely don't like it when someone exposes and uncomfortable truth to you. Maturity issues, I presume?
Kind of like driving productivity has suffered from the varied places auto manufacturers put the "high beams" control? I think you dramatically overestimate the difficulty (and frequency) of people switching from one system's GUI to another's.
You know, it's thinking like this that's got the Munich Windows-to-Linux migration project in trouble right now. You should read up on it, but you won't. It's a case study on how to underestimate the difficulty that plain old run of the mill users have when switching "insignificant" things like the GUI. It may be easy for you to switch, and it may be easy for me to switch, but as much as I dislike sharing any category with you, you and I are not the common majority. So you think I "dramatically overestimate" the difficulty, eh? Just try moving a few thousand users from even something as similar as Win2K to WinXP. You've obviously never even thought about such a thing, otherwise you'd know better than to suggest it's not difficult. The Munich LiMux team now knows better. So should you, but you won't.
The data-interchange issue is also a red herring. Common file formats can be (and have been) developed to allow easy exchange of data.
So nice of you to sweep the most common complaint so easily under the rug. Thank you for making the world so simple! We should all just decide to use some lowest-common-denominator common file format. And, of course, you have the ability to make all application developers conform to this immeidately, don't you? And when a new feature comes out in one application, this file format will automatically allow that feature to be utilized in other, competing applications, right? What a software miracle worker you are! I salute you!
doesn't mean it A) has to be that way, or B) should be.
Ah, but you ommitted "C) but it is that way despite my rose-colored-glasses view of the world.
Perhaps is time to devote less attention to making excuses for how we got here, and more attention on how to fix it.
Fine. Offer me a practical solution that everyone can agree upon and mutually decided to endorse and I'll jump on board immediately. But you can no more force that to happen than you can stop the Earth's rotation. You're living in a wonderful pipe dream where everyone acts altruistically, nobody's greedy, and even arch competitors work together for the common user good. It ain't gonna happen, comrade.
The only problem with your analogy is that apache (Like most OSS) has at least 2 versions and normally many more, which are currently in widespread usage.
Just like Windows has maintained dual code bases with the Win9x series and the WinNT/2K/XP/2K3 series. That doesn't change anything. And even the NT-based kernels are significant variations on one another (at least as significant as the kernel or various Apache versions).
If an exploit is found in apach 2.0.48, great but maybe I'm still running 2.0.47 and the bug was just introduced, maybe I'm running version 1 still, this diversity of versions creates alot of diversity in the unix world
And many Windows users don't bother patching their systems to the fullest extent, creating the exact same scenario. Some might have this patch but not that hotfix, making them vulnerable to this but not to that. Some might be running Outlook and thus be vulnerable to a worm, whereas some may be running Netscape mail and not be vulnerable. The analogy remains good despite your attempts to unseat it.
therefore, you can't as a virus writer rely on some windows dll, and make calls against it, because there is no gaurantee the library you need will be there in the linux world
So you just do what any other virus writer does and you try all the normal defaults you find in every Redhat, Debian, SuSE, Slackware, and Mandrake install. All of these systems install core utilities and binaries in predictable, known ways. If an exploit is discovered against any of these defaults then all installations of that product are potentially vulnerable. And since all of these have the Linux kernel at their heart, a kernel bug means all of them are susceptible. Again, you fail to see how a Linux/Unix monoculture is just as bad as any Windows monoculture, and a duoculture buys you very little for what you have to give up.
and you will have to write a much larger virus to gaurantee you have the functionality you need on the system once you infect it.
Have you ever even heard of punctuation, pal? Periods? Commas? The ever-elusive semicolon? Your post is like reading one long run-on sentence. No, wait, it is one long run-on sentence.
OK, let's continue to misunderstand my comment in the most Apache-favorable way, shall we? I never said a damned thing about 1.3 vs. 2.0. Duh! It's rather obvious that these two are strikingly different versions of the same program. But that's not what I was saying and I think you know that. If you don't you're denser than I thought.
Now, once again, with feeling: the Apache 1.3 core code on any platform is strikingly similar to the Apache 1.3 core code on any other platform. The same thing goes for 2.0. Apples go with apples, oranges with oranges. There, now do you see where you were completely and totally wrong? Good, I thought so.
This ends our lesson. Thank you for playing.
Well, Outlook can be integrated, but if you don't buy Office it can't be.
As for IE, at least MS did something smart by disabling IE in the default install of Win2k3. The result? Win2k3 has had far fewer bugs and exploits than any other MS OS at this time in its development life cycle. Go check the bug rate for NT 4.0 and Win2k and you'll see it. Microsoft is improving. Maybe not as fast as we'd all like, but they're certainly moving closer to where we'd like them to be. Now if only they'd revise their pricing...downwards this time.
I should point out that the experts -- by which I mean David Kay, the man Bush hired to look for weapons programs and not Fox News pundits -- would disagree with you.
Uh, no, this just again proves that you can't read or assimilate information...or at least, you can't read and assimilate anything you don't already agree with. David Kay's report said "we didn't find anything." It did, however, go to some pain to say that there was ample opportunity for Saddam & Co. to move the stuff out prior to the war. Lack of proof is not proof of lack. And, might I remind you-who-cannot-read-too-well, U.N resolution 1441 required Iraq to demonstrably show evidence of the destruction of the weapons the U.N. agreed he had prior to the war. It was not the U.S.'s burden to find these things, it was Iraq's burden to prove they no longer had them. Iraq chose not to do so. Whether that was because they didn't want to reveal secret weapons or because they felt like bluffing is irrelevant. Saddam broke the cease-fire agreement he made after the 1991 war, and he's now suffering the consequences. You've conveniently forgotten all of these, dismissed all of it, because you don't care to hear anything you don't like. I'll also point out that internal CIA studies have repeatedly stated that the likelihood of ever finding these weapons, even if they do exist, is nearly nil. Too much country, too small weapons.
Not without retribution.
I'd say retribution has now been handed out. Your argument is that we should've omitted this retribution step. Quite illogical to have an ulimatum with no consequences. It doesn't make for much of an ultimatum, now, does it? Next!
Didn't do that much the first time, did it? It actually helped pick up the economy quite a bit when we stepped on his little army the last time.
Check your figures again. Fuel costs during the war rose dramatically and had hugely negative effects for the entire transportation sector of the U.S. economy. Higher airline costs led to a decrease in business travel, which hit the hospitality and convention economy areas. That had a ripple effect everywhere else. You minimize far too much.
Again, you miss the fact that Saddam didn't like jihadists like al-Qai'da. (Furthermore, according to the linked article, Osama didn't like Saddam either.)
Great Comrade Stalin once coined the term "useful idiots" for anyone whom you may despise and denigrate but who also might serve a one-time useful purpose. Saddam might've disliked the religious fanatics, but that didn't stop him from trying to use them to stir up the populace against the U.S. invasion -- twice! And Al-Queda does not have the resource to mount a large nuclear or chemical weapon, but Saddam did. As you said, Saddam was a political animal, and anything that increased his power and wealth was something he'd be interested in. He was very interested in fostering his Arabic image as the defier of the United States. If he could sell WMD's to Al-Queda to use against the U.S. while keeping his hands relatively clean, what's not to like?
But what it ultimately comes back to is what GWB said in his State of the Union address (paraphrasing): "trusting an insane dictator is not an option".
Hate does not grow in a vacuum.
Very true. It grows where it is fostered. The various Arab theocracies and dictatorships have found a convenient way to deflect unrest against their regimes: blame the Americans. The Saudi's are doing a grand job of it, or at least they had been prior to Iraq being taken out. Now all these thugs posing as leaders see that the U.S. will no longer tolerate this covert army-building of hatemongers to occur unmolested. Chalk another one up for pre-emptive foreign policy!
We were a threat. We were one of vast majority of countries that cut off diplomatic ties when they rose to power
Which is our right. We can choose who we want
Platform neutral is always a good thing, but it has a tendency to move slower (sometimes much slower) than any one vendor/developer could. What happens then? Well, if companies A through Y are all clinging to the standard, but company Z comes out with a new "killer" feature, companies A through Y could be in serious jeopardy of being upstaged by company Z. And it's not like it doesn't happen, because Microsoft is the penultimate example of it. Look at how the Internet is now arranged around the needs of IE as opposed to the strict HTML spec.
The result? The standards process is frequently upstaged by faster, more nimble competitors. Design by consensus is always slow and almost always less functional than what a single company might come up with. And in a capitalistic society such as ours, whoever gives the customers what they want the fastest gets the dough.
And Apache has never had any such flaw? I beg to differ. Apache has suffered several root-access flaws during its development. All of them are now patched, but they did exist. You can say the same thing about IIS 3, IIS 4, and so on.
Your ignorance of the facts kind of paints you as an anti-MS zealot. Perhaps you should try reading up on that which you're so adept at criticizing.
As a first step, I would suggest that everyone using MS operating systems stop using Outlook and IE.
This alone would practically stop 95% of all Internet-based attacks aimed at Windows machines. Which again goes to show that it's not so much the OS that's at risk as it is the applications.
As far as integration goes, I think HTML and HTTP, TCP/IP show how easy this can be if we can some up with standards for data formats and transmission protocols.
I disagree. These protocols do very simple things and none of them are secure. Look at the current problems we're having with SMTP mail. It is an inherently insecure protocol that offers no integrated method to determine the authenticity of the sender, leaving the way open for massive reply-to-spoofing spam companies like we have today. TCP/IP doesn't handle security, either, and neither does HTTP (HTTPS excepted, of course). HTML is still far more limited than even a garden-variety word processor when it comes to displaying complexly-formatted documents. You're giving examples of simple components like nuts and bolts. I'm talking about the whole machine.
but you forget to mention that apache is much more secure than IIS.
This is an assertion that cannot be backed up. I've had NT 4.0 webserver that have run years without compromise, and I've seen poorly-run Apache systems that were hacked within 30 minutes of going live. You can say that Apache is much more secure than IIS by default, but an experienced administrator can secure any box, even an IIS one.
It all comes down to knowing what you're doing and which platform you're more familiar with. I'd rather have an IIS box run by a guru-level administrator than a Linux/Apache box run by a newbie anyday.
Yes, it runs across more platforms, but the core code across all of them is strikingly similar. Most Apache exploits to date have been completely cross-platform exploits, meaning that it really is more of a monoculture than you might think. No slam against Apache, by the way, but it's the truth.
OK, you get a B+ for successfully paraphrasing the Microsoft flack's comments.
If I didn't know better, I'd say that's a derogatory comment. Not a good way to start off your response if you want to be taken objectively.
But did you critically evaluate whether his argument that we'd need ridiculous numbers of OSes is sound? Ireland didn't need thousands of breeds of potatoes for its population to all survive the potato blight; a handful of still-viable varieties would have been enough to feed them.
All analogies break down at some point (yet another paraphrasing job, I'm afraid). You say a handful of still-viable varieties would be enough. What if a virus targetted those? To achieve total practical immunity, each organism (or application/OS) would have to be unique. Obviously that's impractical, so what you're actually arguing is at what level is the risk acceptable?
Likewise, in an alternate universe where the desktop computer landscape today was a roughly even mix of Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, OS/2, BeOS, and Amiga, the "network effect" that spreads malware like wildfire in our universe would be drastically reduced.
Productivity would almost certainly be similarly reduced due to lack of high-level interoperability between these disparate platforms. Oh, sure, you'd have some base level of commonality amongst all of them (a potential attack vector, by the way), but what you'd end up with is lowest-common-denominator functionality. That is not a blueprint for progress. New functionality would then only come as a result of consensus between competing vendors, traditionally a long, drawn out process. Further, customers just don't like to wait for that stuff. Outlook is a prime example. It introduced a number of non-standard ways for dealing with email (many of which have resulted in security holes, BTW), but consumers loved it enough to eschew the standards-based alternatives. This has been the case in software for decades (remember when Netscape flouted the HTML standards committee on frames?) and is not likely to change.
You're right that Linux won't "fix it all". But a duoculture is more robust than a monoculture, and a true multiculture - even if it consisted of equal numbers of just the top four of the desktop OSes I mentioned - would be even more so.
Again, you completely ignore the possible effects any such duo- or multiculture might introduce into the current setup. Right now, people can exchange data between monocultures pretty seamlessly, flawlessly, and effortlessly. By going to a duoculture you may double the work a hacker may do, but you've also doubled the number of points of failure for software interoperability, you've doubled the technical support requirements of both helpdesks and software developers, and you've potentially (worst case) halved the productivity of people trying to exchange data between differing platforms. These are not insignificant concerns.
You also can't argue that these disparate platforms would ever work well together. By definition of avoidance of monoculture, convergence of the platforms would almost have to be actively discouraged; history has shown us that convergence is a natural phenomena with any group of disparate programs that are expected to work together. Any such convergence would again lead us to a quasi-monoculture scenario where an attack vector exists where application/OS overlap and interoperability exist.
In short, you can't have it both ways. Users like programs and systems that work together easily, yet those same systems are at higher risk to attack due to that same interoperability. Removing that attack vector would also remove many productivity-enhancing tools and methodologies we've gained due to greater software integration. I don't know about you, but it's been my experience that if users have to choose between security and functionality, they choose functionality almost exclusively. After, Windows and Office offer lo
...that Greer's against monoculture but doesn't explore the effects of what would be needed to overcome that monoculture.
As outlined in the article (assuming anyone reads it), critics of Greer point out that simply adding a new OS into the mix (dare I say Linux?) wouldn't substantially help. You'd have a duoculture instead of a monoculture. How much more difficult would it be for hackers to create a devastating hack? It even extends beyond OS's. Apache has the majority market share for all web servers worldwide. What affect would a devastating Apache exploit have on such a near-monoculture? Nobody wants to say anything about that, though, because Apache represents the side of good and Microsoft is evil.
To truly achieve the technological equivalent of biodiversity, we'd need hundreds or thousands of OS's and differing applications. The complexity of trying to get all that crap to work together would be impossible, especially since convergence of any two app's/OS's would be actively discourages to prevent cross-pollination-type attacks.
It's all well and good to bash Microsoft's monoculture. I'm sure there are many here who'll do nothing but that. However, defining the problem is only the first step; you must present a practical, workable solution. Just saying "Linux will fix it all" simply replaces one monoculture with another. But I bet most people here haven't thought that far ahead.
I can see that talking sense to you is utterly useless. When the U.S. gets a coalition together, it must be because they were blackmailed or bribed. When the eco-radicals get a coalition together, it's got to be because everyone is feeling so damned altruistic.
Unfortunately, I really do think you're myopic and naive enough to actually believe your own argument whilst simultaneously ignoring everyone else's. Thus, I will no longer waste my time with you.
I will say, however, that your pathetic and total hatred of George Bush is so intense that you're fundamentally incapable of seeing past it.
I can see that talking sense to you is utterly impossible. When the U.S. gets a coalition together, it must be because they were blackmailed or bribed. When the eco-radicals get a coalition together, it's got to be because everyone is feeling so damned altruistic.
Unfortunately, I really do think you're myopic and naive enough to actually believe your own argument whilst simultaneously ignoring everyone else's. Thus, I will no longer waste my time with you.
A huge amount of countries have signed the Kyoto Protocol and most of them have even ratified the Protocol.
Ah, let's go down the list. Hmm, let's see...not a lot of industrialized nations on this list. In fact, the vast majority of the worlds economic and productive nations aren't anywhere to be found in this list! Oddly enough, it seems like it's mostly backwater, third-world nations with nothing to lose and everything to gain by signing this treaty! Nah, this couldn't be their own signs of self-interest, could it?
Of course, I could also take the tack that all the Bush-hating, Saddam-loving liberals have taken in the war against Iraq. America got a coalition of nations willing to back the Iraq war, but since Russia, Germany, and France were left out, it was deemed "unilateral", despite the fact that the definition of unilateral is "only one". But now that the shoe's on the other foot and not only America but Russia, Britain, and most of Europe hasn't signed it, it's only the U.S. that gets faulted.
Why don't you just come out and say what you're really feeling? You hate the U.S. It's that simple. Why try to manufacture contradictory arguments, slanted facts, half truths, and outright lies to get your hatred across? Why not just stand up and say "I hate the United States because they're the richest, most powerful, most free nation on this Earth!" Wouldn't that be easier than what you're doing?
It amazes me how readily so many people accept the doctrine of pre-emption. Are you all insane? Realistically, Iraq was not in any way a threat to America or any other western power.
Then you're incapable of reading and reasoning, then. Let me describe in the most simplisitc, most childishly plain terms that I can, and perhaps it will register in the dark recessess of your underused cranium: Iraq had the ability to manufacturer chemical, biological, and nuclear arms. While I doubt Hussein would've been stupid enough to use them directly to attack the U.S. mainland, his very possession of them could put him in a position of blackmailing the entire world. It doesn't help that, as the formerly most powerful Arabic nation, he could have singlehandedly walked all over Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and more if he chose to do so. Such an action would've caused grave economic damage to this nation, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1970's OPEC oil crunch. So, despite your inability to understand how Hussein could indirectly damage the U.S., he sure had the ability to do so.
the risks of american intelligence finding out and retaliating wouldn't be worth the meagre political gains of seeing america attacked.
Again, you completely misunderstand the subtlety involved here. Hussein manufactures weapons. Hussein sells weapons to Al Queda. Al Queda uses weapons against U.S. Hussein's hands are relatively clean unless we somehow get Al Queda to 'fess up on who supplied the weapons. Fat chance of that.
Also, Hussein didn't have to want political gains here. Haven't you noticed that these terrorists aren't trying to make political points? They're attempting to wage fanatical, religious-based genocide against anyone who isn't a Muslim. They don't care about winning, they care about killing. It's like the Japanese kamikaze in WWII; you can't reason with someone who is willing to die to advance their worldview.
And from the terrorists point of view, it's much easier to manufacture weapons using equipment bought on the open market in america than it is to smuggle it in.
Sure, I'll just head down to the corner Nuke-R-Us store and pick up a 20 kiloton thermonuclear device. Open market my ass. RPG's and Kalishnikov's can be found on the open market. Ricin, Anthrax, sarin, and nukes aren't.
Before you go singing the praises of pre-emption, consider this: America has always had the power to level afganistan to the ground; was Al Qaeda justified in launching a pre-emptive strike on America?
Did we threaten their interests? Nope. They were perfectly willing and able to spew their anti-American, anti-Western, anti-anything-that-isn't-puritanical-Muslim views for years before attracting our attention by hosting Osama. Had they not done so, they'd still be in power. So, contrary to your selective, convenient memory, the Taliban decided to ally themselves with our enemies before the first blow was struck. I suppose you'll now argue that Hitler was justified in attacking Poland because Poland was allied with Britain and France.
There were people arguing during the design of the Hubble that we shouldn't abandon our existing orbital telescopes because the Hubble might fail? What orbital telescopes where they talking about?
No, there were people arguing during the design of Hubble that we shouldn't bother lofting an orbital 'scope at all because ground-based 'scopes could do just as good of a job. Then there were the naysayers that said even if we did launch it, it would never work. You're arguing the same negativity about Hubble's replacement as they were about Hubble's ability to supplement or replace ground-based observatories.
Which they did under the assumption of an operating Hubble.
No, you're wrong again. Hubble's lifetime was well established by NASA quite some time ago, and it's actually exceeded that by a small amount. However, the next generation 'scope has been widely announced long before now, and everyone in the astronomical community knows that it's coming. Hubble cannot simply stay up there without support. The gyros are failing, the solar panels are degrading, and it's orbit is decaying. Without regular service it will either cease to function or fall out of the sky (or both). Service costs money, and NASA only has so much of it to go around. They're making a pragmatic decision to save funds for the next 'scope rather than spend it to extend the life of Hubble. It's rather like saying you're not going to continue to maintain your old junker automobile because you're buying a replacement in a few years. Just drive the old one until the wheels fall off, then buy your new one. Spending $10,000 to repair an old car is silly when you're not far from buying a new one altogether.
Great. Then you won't argue that it's safe to go to the ISS but not to the Hubble. That's the argument being made by NASA officials, and that is being criticized here.
In this we are in agreement. I think the ISS is not only an unsafe mission for the Shuttle, I think it's a waste of tax dollars. If every dollar spent on the ISS and Shuttle had instead been spent on a lunar colony, we'd have people living, working, and breeding on the moon by now. It is a sad fact that the last man to set foot on the moon may die of old age before the next man follows in his footsteps. What a sad ending to such an amazing leap made by humanity over thirty years ago.
I'd also point out that a lunar observatory would give nearly all the same advantages (no atmos. distortion, no X-ray filtering, etc.) of an orbiting 'scope with much easier maintenance requirements.
Boicot Kioto pact.
:P
You act like the U.S. is the only country that didn't sign the pact. If you'll bother to check the facts, you'll see that Russia is also refusing to accept the treaty without changes, a stance identical to the U.S. position. Quite simply, the Kyoto treaty demands massive concessions by first world nations in exchange for virtually unlimited ability to pollute by everyone else. This is a treaty to stop pollution, it's an attempt to "even the scales" economically by wrecking the economy of industrialized nations.
As a side note, your spelling is attrocious. I suppose you went to a government school, didn't you? Or are you even out of school yet?
Attack countries like it was done in the middle age.
Well, I don't see any catapults and seige towers in our military inventory, so you're wrong there. We're not impaling people on pikes. We're not slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians. Nope, no middle ages here.
And for one last time, I'll address this supposed bloodlust for death that the U.S. seems to have. If we wished to kill everyone in Iraq, don't you think we could've done it much more efficiently and quickly? Tactical nukes could've reduced much of the population to ashes while leaving the valuable oil fields untouched. Chemical and biological agents could've been used and even left all the cities standing. Even a 1940's still conventional bombing campaign could've reduced the entire country to ruins in less than a year, killing most of the population.
But we didn't take that tack. We went in on the ground with tanks and close air support, we tried to keep collateral damage to a minimum. The actual number of civilians killed were less than those killed in one bombing raid during WWII. So you can just drop the whole bloodthirsty American idea, because it's stupid, it's crass, and it's not supported by the facts.
Pretend to be the protectors of the world, with power to do everything they want without being questioned.
No, we're not claiming to be the protectors of the world, just protectors of ourselves and our interests. However, in this day and age when a single terrorist with a suitcase nuke or a few vials of biological agent can kill millions, the only practical way to fight it is to pre-emptively seek it out and destroy it no matter where it's at. The cost of allowing just one terrorist to succeed is too much for any nation to bear.
Disband space technology/health studies in favor of military studies.
This is a pure fabrication on your part. The U.S. is not disbanding any space studies, and health research is carried on by civilian firms. As for the increase in military research, I guess you've never heard of the concept of trickle-down. GPS, lasers, computers, satellites, composites...all of these were either pioneered by military ventures or used some technology that was originally created for the military.
When I was young, I though about America as presented by Hollywood:
And that's where you expose your naivety. You think the world ought to be neat, clean, and sweet, just like it is on TV. That is the mental worldview of a child. Reality is not like on television, my shortsighted comrade. Reality evil dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Husseain killing millions of their own people, starting wars with other nations that kill even more millions. Evil cannot be fought passively, but I'm sure you don't believe me. After all, on TV, all the world's major problems are solved before the last commercial break, right?
I know it's a us centric site, and I'll be modded down, but someone had to say it
And it's a mark of just how ignorant both you are and the moderators are that you got modded up as insightful. Why bother checking facts and learning the truth when you can simply decide to just hate America? It's just more fun to hate the U.S., isn't it?