You are mistaken -- there have been several successful coups in the history of Korea, and in no case did the North attempt to invade. See, the principal reason of a coup is because the military feels the government is not doing its job, and so they see that overthrowing the government will serve the people better than protecting it.
That being said, they do not need a coup. They need to invade North Korea, free their brethren, and eradicate this constant threat that they have lived under for too long. Nothing will help their freedom more than being free from the threat of immediate invasion.
South Korea is 23 times as powerful as North Korea, economically. There is no reason why they should continue to treat North Korea as an equal, and there is no reason why they should not raise an army that would threaten China herself to insure their peace. Nothing besides war itself does anything more to prevent war than the threat of total annihilation to your enemies. That is what kept us alive for the past century, and that is what will keep them alive and insure their freedom forever.
The best example of anonymous, free speech are the Federalist papers, published by several of our Founding Fathers under the pseudonym "Publius".
Without that influential publication, we would probably not have survived as a nation, as our strong federal government would never have been formed.
Today, we require free speech -- the freedom to say what we want, in the medium we want to say it, whenever and however we like to say it -- under whatever name we want to use.
Just like guns protect our right to our property, our family, and our way of life when threatened, using pseudonyms allow us to protect our right to free speech when it is threatened. Take it away, and we might as well invite Saddam to be our president, as no one will dare sacrifice their name and reputation for dissenting thought and speech.
Caught between the political (and often physical) warfare between freedom and communism, most Koreans have learned that to stay alive, you have to be sheep-like and go with whoever is in charge. This unfortunately has held true for the great majority of the world for the great majority of the time. You can only name a few societies -- and those in recent history only -- where someone is allowed to speak out for his rights, and to challenge government and their legitimacy, without fear of any repercussion from the government.
There has been the Korean "Founding Father" types -- but they have all been martyred by the Japanese. Then there were the political advocates who wanted more freedom -- unfortunately, they were contemporaries of some of the most ruthless communist movements, and distinguishing the two is difficult. Being a communist in that day and age was suicide, because the government had to crack down to prevent revolutions and the slaughter of entire villages.
We in America are truly blessed. We revolted against the British, and our Founding Fathers lived to tell the story. You can imagine how different we would be as a people if they didn't survive. Imagine how different we would be if we had lost to the British, the Nazis, the Japanese, or the Russians.
As to the future of Korea, there are those who are coming out of the woodwork, standing up for real freedom and less government intrusion. There are those advocating limited government and the powerful individual. It won't happen overnight, but there is a way for them to gain a peaceful, free society. Unlike some other countries in the area, they do believe that there is a right and a wrong, and giving your life for the right is noble, even when those around you say otherwise. I think this is another reason why Christianity has prospered in Korea.
One of the steps to get them to real freedom will have to be the abandonment of the universal registration and identification system. It serves no purpose, other than to allow someone to steal your identity, or allow corrupt government officials to track you down.
It is a right of the people to speak anonymously, especially when what they say is liable to get them hurt or killed. Didn't the federalist papers get published by an anonymous writer who used a pseudonym? Why should the Korean people not be allowed to publish anonymous comments on the message boards of their servant, the government?
I would suspect that the police would have to go through the normal means of obtaining a warrant before they could grab the data from the GPS system in the car. This would be no different that the police getting a warrant to rifle through a guy's home looking for evidence to convict him. It's just that a GPS system gives much more accurate data than a few hairs or a spot of blood could, in terms of location and time.
If the government is able to have access to this data without a warrant, that would be unconstitutional, and might be a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Even the patriot act doesn't allow that.
I second that. The book is very well written -- I would argue that it is probably the best written book I had during the entire four years I was there.
However, before you dive into Griffith's, you'll really have to brush up on Calculus and Differential Equations, as well as a variety of mathematics that you probably won't see unless you are going to grad school in math. The best book for this is "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" by Mary Boas.
This book was used for the "weed-out" class in the sophomore year at the University of Washington Physics department. The reason was that if you couldn't keep up with the math, and if you couldn't make sense of it all, than you really couldn't cut it as a physicist. It was the class where 100 people show up the first quarter, and 15 show up the next (because the other 85 lost interest or failed). Those 15 graduated with reasonably good grades.
If you complete Boas's book, and you can understand the math behind Griffith's book, then you are well on to your way to grad school in physics, if you desire it. Just brush up in a few other areas (EM, thermo, GR, etc...), and you might be ready for the GRE.
Anyway, it'll be interesting having another "real" physicist around here who actually understands what the Uncertainty Principle really means and where it comes from and its effect on the universe, rather than these posers who have no idea that a fourier transform applies to QM at all.
You are approaching the point where the information you'll get from others won't apply to you, because you are pioneering new territory with your company's technology.
You have a website that has its needs. I can't imagine what kind of application you are using, how much memory it needs, whether it is processor intensive or disk intensive, or both. Depending on how your website works, there are a variety of solutions available. One solution to one problem might actually cause more problems for you if applied inappropriately.
It might make a lot of sense to consolidate the database onto an advanced server -- with 2 procs, RAID SCSI drives, and a fair amount of memory. It might make a lot of sense to get cheaper boxes with more memory and only one processor to run the web servers. Perhaps you can mount them all off of one giant NFS file server, and have the data that the web servers need held in a cache on the web server. It might make a lot of sense to go talk to IBM and Sun and see what they have to offer as well. It might also make a lot of sense to redesign the way your web application works to reduce the load.
But no one can tell you the right way to do it, because your situation is unique. No one can even give you a good estimate of cost. Your best bet if you are truly lost is to hire someone to analyze your code, your servers, and your needs, and come up with a plan. Those guys cost a bit of money, and finding a good one is near impossible. You're better off at studying up on what your website really needs and experimenting with possible solutions.
This is where you start to realize why web people can earn up to 6 digits. We don't just design web sites or program applications. We have to make sure they scale as well.
I've lived in South Korea for more than three years. My wife is a Korean. Let me explain why these MMORPGs are so popular.
When a kid comes home from school, he doesn't go straight home. He has to go to after school classes. Sometimes, he has some spare time, and he spends these few hours in the game rooms. Today, that means he is spending his time in a "PC Bang" which literally means a "PC Room". A decade ago it was a video game room.
What are these places? They are a small part in a building with anywhere from 10 to 50 complete PC systems. It costs about a buck an hour, depending on the quality of the system, and the cost of living of the neighborhood, so it is pretty cheap.
The games that are available are pretty much what's available here, with quite a few home-brew one. Starcraft and Diablo are pretty popular. However, the most popular games are the ones where you interact with other people online. Since these rooms have excellent internet connections, these games run flawlessly, compared to your average AOL user.
The most popular game for a long time was a Korean-made one that was pretty much like Ultima Online, but far more cheesier. It was something like "Land of the Wind" -- in Korean, "Param ae Nara" -- or something like that.
Why do these games get so popular? Because the kids have nothing better to do, and they certainly don't want to spend the time doing homework. You got to admit, if you had a couple hours every day you had to kill, and you had limited options and a couple of bucks, you would waste it on something like Everquest or Ultima Online if it were available. That's what I did when I was waiting for a train or an airplane when I was there.
Just because someone buys the machine and doesn't use CnR doesn't mean they have pirated and installed windows on it. First off, where are they going to obtain a copy of windows? Do you really think they are downloading and burning their own copy of windows?
If they do install windows, most likely they will install a version that they have already bought and paid for and have handy.
If they don't, then they are probably not using the machine at all, or they are satisfied with the one or two free apps they got. (probably email and mozilla).
Or, perhaps, just perhaps, they bought the machine and installed a different distribution on it. As one poster mentioned, it doesn't take much to turn it into a debian machine. As any linux guy knows, it doesn't take much to turn it into any linux distribution.
Don't accuse people of piracy you don't know, and you certainly don't have evidence of. You sound like Bill Gates when you do. Remember, people are innocent until proven guilty in this country, unlike certain other countries.
Another issue that you don't have to worry about is what to do when your project becomes popular.
When you have many users, they will help you with the code, with testing, and with documentation. All you have to do is organize them.
When you have many users, finding hosts and mirrors will not be a problem. Someone among them will be willing to put up a mirror, or host it all outright. All you have to do is ask.
When you have many users, even raising funds to finance bandwidth isn't too big of a concern. Ask for grants from companies that use your software. Ask for donations from the members. I'm sure that rather than give you money, they will be more willing to give you bandwidth, but in those cases where money is necessary, you will be able to get it. Remember the Blender project.
This is why the open source model kicks butt versus the closed source model -- open source projects are truly scaleable in all senses of the word.
You don't outgrow SourceForge. Look at some of the projects hosted there - ViM, Python, several Kernel patches, and much more. Some of the projects there are open-source behemoths, with millions of users.
SourceForge wants to host the big projects. They want millions of people to view the advertisement banners, and they want to get plugged by the best projects out there. You can imagine what they could do to boost sales if they could say, "You know that ultra-popular huge open source project X? We host it. We can host your software as well."
And if you are worried about bandwidth -- that's not even a concern. With mirrors being added a couple a year, bandwidth isn't a concern, and it never will be.
I've installed LFS before. LFS is just the instructions on how to install Linux from scratch (hence the name, Linux From Scratch). They supply a few pieces of software conveniently in one place so you don't have to spend hours finding it on your own and figuring out what version goes with what. It is just enough to get an OS that works, but not enough to do much except put more software on it.
BLFS is a collection of instructions for installing various bits of popular software like Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, and more.
I would like to point out that LFS is not Gentoo. LFS is literally Linux From Scratch. There are no installation scripts. There are no system management tools. There is no pretty interface, or simple instructions. It is a book, not a piece of software.
You literally go through each piece of software and configure, compile, and install it. It is pretty cool because they describe what each piece of software is for, and you can see how one piece builds on another. You'll certainly never look at your system the same again, because you'll know what each bit does.
I wouldn't suggest trying LFS unless you are interested in what exactly goes on under the hood, or you are building your own distro from scratch.
I am confused. You seem to be talking about physicists and mathematicians, not computer science professors. What area of computer science has actually been pushed forward by scientists recently? Perhaps you can name some examples, because I am at a loss. While they had a monopoly on computer systems, they were able to have a monopoly on innovation, but now that just isn't true.
All the innovation I see come from people who actually write code instead of talking about it. Many of these people have no formal education at all. Look at Slashdot. Is that not an innovation worth mentioning? What computer scientist prompted this?
Computer Science is an odd field because anyone who can code can make significant contributions. It really doesn't take a formal education or a rigorous graduate study program to produce highly innovative programmers. All it takes is an idea and the time to write it out in code.
Banging on a tree is a good method to get the insect inhabitants out. It works marvelously for termites and ants. Don't believe me? Try it sometime on a bees nest.
The problem is that banging on a tree with your head results in concussion and death. It is a horrible way to make a living, unless you are a woodpecker with the appropriate structure to do this day in and day out for their entire lives.
And how does the bird grip the tree? The woodpecker has special claws that allow it to grasp the tree vertically.
There are many more traits of the woodpecker that had to develop simultaneously for it to be able to eat insects in the tree. I guess if you are willing to believe that life can be created from nothing, then you are willing to believe all the traits could be developed in one generation.
I admit, I don't, I can't, know everything. No one can. Life is just too short, and the universe is just too big.
However, knowing what I know, evolution makes no sense. Knowing what I know about woodpeckers -- just one species among millions -- means that evolution was statistically impossible.
Knowing what I know about humanity and the human mind -- how can something so powerful and so wonderful have evolved in a natural world based on savage laws? Why didn't we evolve into cold-hearted, blood-thirsty, fanged and clawed armored monsters? I could admit that maybe a race like the Klingons have evolved, but definitely not humans.
Also the burden of proof probably would not matter to you. If I told you which book to read that would prove evolution to you, would you read it? Have you ever read anything about evolution that was not written by a religous person?
<sarcasm>You caught me! I am really an ignorant fool. I have never studied the issue of evolution, nor have I read any part of any book on the subject! Yes, I only read the Bible all day long, and that is my source for all of my knowledge.</sarcasm>
Have you ever read anything written by a religious person at all? Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, Moses really did part the sea, that Christ really was resurrected, and that this whole God thing is real?
Speak for yourself, I do not think I am nothing, I will continue to try to create something that will last forever.
You misunderstand the consequences of your own beliefs. You cannot create something that lasts forever -- the big crunch, remember? You can certainly try though, but you are wasting your time.
If you believe you evolved from nothing, and if you believe that evolution is ongoing, then you are nothing and can never be anything. At most, you are a microbe compared to what is going to happen in a few more million years in our human evolution. The memory of you after a million years will be the same as the memory of that microbe that died several million years ago. Nothing. From nothing, to nothing. Everything you do, even if you are Bill Gates or George Bush, means nothing.
Or, in other words, how do you explain bad backs and appendicitis, without resorting to non-explanatory statements like "God works in mysterious ways?"
Because we are designed to die, and we are designed to suffer in this world. That is the way life works. We are born, we live, and then we die.
The machine of our body does exactly what it is supposed to do.
You might imagine a God who created everything in a perfect state; so do I. That happened several thousand years ago and we call it the paradise of the Garden of Eden. But you might imagine a God that prohibits any evil, because of his goodness. I am not so naive. I know that this life is a special time in our immortal existence. This is the time when we are tried and tested, when we live by faith in God alone, and when we should prove our ability to live with God forever. How can we be tested in a perfect world? How can we be tempted to do evil unless there is evil in the world?
Reading through the first pages of Richard Dawkins book I found his perspective close-minded and insulting. He concludes that finding a watch on the road cannot mean it had a creator and a designer, because it cannot mean that. His evidence of proving Darwinism is Darwinism itself.
I read another post and refernce about speciation. It is interesting that the best they can do is demonstrate that some children are infertile, and some grandchildren are infertile. They rely on cross-breeding and polyploids. If these mechanisms were used to evolve into the current world, then that would mean there were a greater number of species before than after, and the number of genomes in our bodies would certainly be much larger. There are a few mentions of some cases of speciation potentially beginning, but no mentions of speciation occuring. In short, my original claim. All the scientists, despite their intelligence and effort, have yet to uncover even one case of speciation, despite the millions of species on this planet, and the hundred years time to study it. They merely have to demonstrate speciation to prove that evolution is possible. Proving that it actually occured is another story altogether.
1) Stop funding or depending on state education. The government has no interest in seeing intelligent, well-educated people vote, so they do all they can to prevent intelligent people from becoming educated. However, private educational systems need to raise community leaders in order to attract more students, so they have a vested interest in raising people who are well-educated and intelligent.
Knowledge = Power. Do you think those fatheads in DC really want you to have all of their hard-earned power? That's why they do everything they can to prevent education from happening. And remember, what makes America great is our distrust of our government.
2) Realize your vote and voice does indeed count. See, when you say something, other people hear it. And if what you say has any truth to it, it will ring in their ears. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrows, but eventually, they will realize that what you were saying is right. If you disagree with someone, stand up and say, "Hey, I disagree!" If you want something to get done, you say, "Hey, I want something to get done!"
If you shut up and don't vote, then your voice and vote doesn't count. Pretty simple concept, huh?
3) Learn the system! Get out a copy of the constitution and study it. Get educated on the issues, and not just current ones. Let history be your guide. Instead of trying to topple the system, take a lesson from Aikido and use the system in your best interests. Government in a free society is still about 'selfish' people getting stuff done that they want done. Just make sure it is what YOU want and not what THEY want.
Another interesting thing about republics is that it works best when you have lots of people with strong opinions go at it with each other. All the people that refuse to participate, and who ultimately don't care or know enough to care, don't count.
So get off your butt, do some reading, support a candidate, and start flapping your gums!
I guarantee you that every election in America is held by those who want to have it. All the rest don't count. If a majority don't care about our future, that's their problem. I am making sure my views get expressed, and my issues get passed, are you?
I am a strict creationist. I believe that God created the heavens and the earth, exactly as described in the scriptures. I don't believe that one species can evolve into another. It has not yet been demonstrated, nor will it ever. No one can explain the evolution of the woodpecker. No one can explain the evolution of man. Why? Because there is always a step or two that just doesn't make sense. Why did a bird start banging its head against wood? Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright? No one can sufficiently explain this, because there is no explanation. I mean, there has been over a century of countless scientists, all very intelligent, and none of them can describe how the evolution of any creature has occured. Not even the simplest of microbes!
And the burden of proof is on them, not me. I say this because if you discovered a watch in the desert, you would assume it was created by someone, not that it was made from random motions of particles in the desert. Aren't even the simplest organisms far more complex than even the most complicated machines we can build? If the motion of sand cannot create a watch, how can any random motion create a living organism, let alone the hosts of living organisms that inhabit and have inhabited this world? How can you deny the intelligence of the creations? If you cannot deny the intelligence, then you cannot deny that they were created by an intelligent being. And seeing as how the intelligence exhibited in these organisms far surpass our own, this being must be the God described in scripture.
That doesn't affect my ability to study or understand how the living creations of God behave on this earth. In fact, it actually extends my understanding, because I am really looking at a machine built with far greater technology than I can even imagine, with far greater precision than I can ever master, with far greater intelligence than I can surmise.
See, it used to be that biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and all scientists, were all exploring the beauty, simplicity, and intelligence of this beautiful world built by God himself. It used to be that mathematicians would delve deep into the mind of God, seeking to pierce the veil of His great understanding. It used to be that physicists would study each intricacy of nature, trying to discover the rules that God uses to govern the entire universe. It used to be that biologists were reverse-engineering the most marvelous feats of engineering in existence.
Every small discover was like a small image of the face of God. Perhaps together, they could piece together God Himself, drawing closer to His level by understanding Him more.
But now we are just studying bags of sand and water, and patterns that lead us nowhere, and rules that mean nothing.
We used to be miniature gods, no, Gods in training, seeking to become like the great God himself by mastering our minds and understanding our univserse. We used to believe that we were literally offspring of God. Now we are lost souls, studying science to erase those panging doubts that creep into our minds, that tell us nothing is worth anything, and all is in vain. We believe that we are nothing, never were anything, and never can become anything more than we are.
I *am* sexist. I believe that there are distinct, insurmountable differences between men and women. I believe these differences make us who we are, and to deny the existence of these differences is to deny our humanity.
That is why I married a woman and not a man. I will never be happy spending the rest of my life with a man, because I want a woman and not a man for a companion. I think this is because I am a man, and one of the characteristics of man is to desire a woman for a companion. (Luckily, the converse is true for women.)
These differences are more than just physical. They are also mental and emotional. They are not learned or forced. They are a fundamental part of their being.
That is why there are not many women in some fields, and that is why there are not many men in other fields. And amazingly, that is also why there are fields that seem evenly split between men and women.
This has nothing to do with "our oppressive white male dominated society" or whatever you lumpheads call it, and has everything to do with people doing what they like because they want to. The reason why there are not so many women in CS is because men tend to want to do CS more than women.
To tell you the truth, I am perfectly happy locking myself in a room to program for hours on end and read technical documentation and other people's code.
I don't think my wife will ever enjoy it as much as I, despite her high intelligence and reasoning abilities. I mean, she picked up HTML in an afternoon, but she has no desire to use it.
Now, here's the disclaimer. I don't believe one is better than the other. I don't think CS is the ultimate field that only the best people in the world can be allowed in.
And now for something that boggles my mind. "Feminists" try to take women out of their realm and place them in masculine roles saying they are better men than men. It would be really weird to see a group of men calling themselves "masculinists" dressing up like women and trying to be better women than women, yet we are comfortable with seeing a bunch of "feminists" that dress and behave like men. Just something to think about.
I love using PostgreSQL. It is great, stable, easy to use, and the feature set is wonderfully large.
It also has the same feeling that Linux did in its earlier days. PostgreSQL is unstoppable, and will one day be the only database worth using just like Linux is going to be the only Unix kernel worth using one day.
You can see how it is growing exponentially, and there is nothing that can stop it. It feels great to get on board because you know things are only going to get better.
As far as MySQL goes, I have nothing against it. I grew up on Sybase and Oracle systems, so picking up PostgreSQL was easy as pie. I still haven't had enough motivation or time to pick up MySQL idiosyncracies. And I just don't see a future with MySQL or any other database like I see with PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL just has that magical feeling about it that is pretty rare for any piece of software. It just feels good using it. It just feels right.
Where do you live that there is actual pollution like this? I lived for several years in Seoul, Korea, which is no small town (~ 20 million) and I found that the pollution had little effect on anyone. Sometimes people would wake up with a little cough or a runny nose, but that was it.
And the earth does a damn fine job of processing billions of tons of dead animals and plant life, as well as the refuse that these animals create. The animals don't have to scoop up after themselves or use animal out houses.
We are able to dump raw sewage into the ocean and have it turn into fresh ocean water. We are able to take a dump in a forest and have it turn into a tree. Maybe the earth is really a giant trash recycle bin, and we should treat it with respect by using it like that. If we go around and clean up all the crap, we might actually destroy it!
Your chemicals that are purported to have such a harmful affect on the environment are not as dangerous as you think.
DDT got a lot of bad rap in the newspapers, but there isn't solid science yet to prove that it is dangerous to the environment. It was banned purely for political reasons that had nothing to do with science and everything to do with sensationalism.
And as far as cancer-causing agents? I think this is hilarious. The "scientific" community takes rats that are genetically predisposed to cancer, even in a clean environment, and then feed them enormous amounts of these chemicals. When one or two of them get cancer, it is declared as a carcinogen.
The environmental movement has nothing to do with hard facts or real science. They are motivitated by the same thing that motivates most people out there: sensationalism and "feelings".
And you claim that environmentalists rely on scientific observations. Balogna. The only observation they pay attention to is the observation of their bank accounts, and the effect of their dumb-headed propaganda on the masses.
The environmental movement in America is best described as "Communism in drag". All they want to do is disrupt American industry, our right to eat, drink, wear, and use the things we want, and our right to drive whatever car we would like. They are all about limiting freedom and expanding government. They are never about increasing individual rights.
True environmentalists realize that taking away rights from people is not the way to go about preserving the environment. The best way is to operate within the bounds of law and common sense and buy land and turn it into a preserve. Another good way is to do responsible research and show the facts to the companies, and have them cooperate willingly rather than at the opoint of a gun.
This myth about companies being unwilling to clean up their act is hogwash. The presidents of these companies are people like you and I. They want to see the world as clean as the next guy. They aren't willing to spend millions of dollars on an environmental fad that has no solid background, just like you aren't willing to buy snake oil.
This is something that will blow the students away. A lot of you have heard this several times, but it is at the heart of the Microsoft vs. Torvalds debate.
Is it ethical to write software that must remain free?
Is it ethical to write software that cannot be copied in any way, and has limits put on its use?
Is it ethical for government to regulate the import/export/creation/use of software?
Should software be copyrighted at all?
The ethics of software is much more interesting than the legality.
How about being responsible with your words, buddy.
The Japanese people were innocent victims? I'm sorry, there is nothing innocent about supporting a regime trying to conquer the world with military might, rape, and plunder. There is nothing innocent about anyone who went along with that regime and supported their cause.
The true innocent victims were the American sailors who were bombed in Pearl Harbor by the same people we were discussing peace treaties with.
I can't wait to see what revisionist history has to say about this conflict in Iraq.
"The Evil President Bush massacred thousands of innocent Iraqi troops as he ordered his bully army to force their way through an otherwise peaceful and friendly country."
anime will NEVER become mainstream. As much as I would love to see it happen, I KNOW that the american culture is too pompous and ignorant to let it happen.
<sarcasm>That's right. And this internet thing will NEVER become popular. No one will EVER use a personal computer. And as for this new technology called "calculus", it's NEVER going to be accepted by the masses.</sarcasm>
As for me, I'm going to keep using linux, watching Anime, and using GPG to sign my email messages. The rest of the world be damned. They can catch up if they want, but I'm not going to wait for them.
I mean, do you wait for something to become mainstream before you jump on the bandwagon? Then why are you complaining that it is not mainstream?
Oh, yeah, we went to Japan, and said "If you don't start wearing blue jeans and eating hamburgers, we're going to murder your children and rape your wives!" We went to Germany and said, "Because you stupid Krauts lost, we are going to torture you with shopping malls and action movies!" And we turned around to China and say, "Soon, your daughters will be our slaves because we will conquer you with the might of our FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS!"
Or did we just luck out with Japan? I guess we also lucked out with Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Italy, the UK, France, Spain, Eastern Europe, Russia, and far more countries you will never know about. I guess we are still lucking out with Vietnam, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, and yes, even Cuba. I guess our policies of "kill the bad guys, let the others vote, and leave unless they want you to stay" just doesn't work, does it?
What could be more tactful than that? We see a dictator, building up weapons that can harm us. We realize that there won't be a peaceful resolution to this, so we're going to have to disarm him forcefully. Sooner is better than later because if we wait too long, he might actually get the weapons that can really hurt us. And while we're at it, it's not a bad idea to upset the entire history of the country by setting the people free and letting them create their own government. So we go in, and ruin thousands of years of culture by banishing slavery, "murdering" treacherous people who oppose freedom, and encouraging people to think about their own future rather than place it in the hands of a dictator. When things become stable, we slowly pull out, and let the government, elected by the people, take over. We get a more peaceful world, they get a peaceful government, and everyone is happy. But at what cost? I can't see any negative effects, other than the disruption of their culture as they move away from being slaves who live in hovels into full-fledged equal citizens in their country.
Now there is one more intersting point. Why do McDonalds and Burger Kings and shopping malls dot the landscape of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK, France, Germany, and any country that is free? Why do they wear blue jeans, drive big cars that produce that dangerous chemical CO2, and try to earn as much money as they can?
The answer: It is not because we force them to adopt it. It is because it is actually a better way of living than anything else. We seem to like it, because we choose to live in it. They seem to like it because they adopt it. Nobody is forcing anyone here. They do it because they want to.
Our "empire", if you could call it that, is an empire of FREEDOM. We give people freedom, knowing that it will only make us and them more powerful, rich, and happy.
Our founding fathers saw the day when people would come to us and ask us to set up their governments. Our founding fathers knew that we would be a "shining city on a hill". Now that we are, are you complaining because everyone in the world wants what we have, and we are more than willing to share it with them? Are you complaining because they are richer and happier and freeer than they ever have been since the beginning of their history?
Or are you complaining because freedom really does work, even for poor peasants and backwards countries like Japan once was? Are you really complaining because your "ideals" (ie, communism or socialism) are really a horrible nightmarish world, where no one is safe, and no one is rich, and freedom is the only answer to cure all of the world's ills?
But the reality of the situation is that a soldier does what he is told, and the people giving the orders aren't necessarily as ethical as those carrying them out.
Where the hell do you get this pathetic thinking from? The attitude of the leaders trickles down to the lower levels. The military literally reflects the attitudes of the top generals, the president, and his advisors.
Ask anyone in the military. You will see slight differences in the behavior of each unit that precisely reflect the leadership of that unit.
You want to know why the Iraqis are putting pregnant women in car bombs? It's because the people in the military are just as brutal, sick, and demented as Saddam is. They largely reflect their leadership.
When you see a private run for cover with a child in his arms, he is doing that because he knows that is what his sergeant and lieutenant would do. The sergeant and lieutenant would do the same because they are told to do that by the captains and colonels. The captains and colonels do that because that is the ethics taught to them by the generals. The generals teach those ethics because that is what the president wants them to do.
Your stupid argument that the little guy is good but the top brass is bad is idiotic. The little guy reflects the behavior and morals of the top brass and commander in chief.
In fact, the true hero of this entire conflict is President Bush. He sticks to his morals. He did what is right despite public opinion polls and opposing pressure. He refuses to bend his ideals to satisfy a few people for a few days. He refuses to go back on his word. He is bringing dignity and freedom to a country that has been ravaged for twenty years. What is in this for him? What is he going to take home at the end of the day? The answer is nothing. In fact, he stands to lose a lot more than you imagine. How would you like to know that you were directly responsible for young men and women being tortured and brutally killed? Yet, despite this, he pushes on, not because it is easy, but because it is right.
He is doing all this, sacrificing his political career, sacrificing his peace of mind, all to bring freedom to a couple of people in a faraway land that nobody seems to care about. He does this to ensure that our children will grow up without planes crashing into their office buildings, and without worrying about being burned alive by savage terrorists.
It's people like you that make Saddam Hussein think he stands a chance, and give aid and comfort to the enemy. If you would've stood with your president from the beginning, Saddam would've left long ago, and we would've ended the torture that is the daily lives of the Iraqi people years ago.
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You are mistaken -- there have been several successful coups in the history of Korea, and in no case did the North attempt to invade. See, the principal reason of a coup is because the military feels the government is not doing its job, and so they see that overthrowing the government will serve the people better than protecting it.
That being said, they do not need a coup. They need to invade North Korea, free their brethren, and eradicate this constant threat that they have lived under for too long. Nothing will help their freedom more than being free from the threat of immediate invasion.
South Korea is 23 times as powerful as North Korea, economically. There is no reason why they should continue to treat North Korea as an equal, and there is no reason why they should not raise an army that would threaten China herself to insure their peace. Nothing besides war itself does anything more to prevent war than the threat of total annihilation to your enemies. That is what kept us alive for the past century, and that is what will keep them alive and insure their freedom forever.
The best example of anonymous, free speech are the Federalist papers, published by several of our Founding Fathers under the pseudonym "Publius".
Without that influential publication, we would probably not have survived as a nation, as our strong federal government would never have been formed.
Today, we require free speech -- the freedom to say what we want, in the medium we want to say it, whenever and however we like to say it -- under whatever name we want to use.
Just like guns protect our right to our property, our family, and our way of life when threatened, using pseudonyms allow us to protect our right to free speech when it is threatened. Take it away, and we might as well invite Saddam to be our president, as no one will dare sacrifice their name and reputation for dissenting thought and speech.
Caught between the political (and often physical) warfare between freedom and communism, most Koreans have learned that to stay alive, you have to be sheep-like and go with whoever is in charge. This unfortunately has held true for the great majority of the world for the great majority of the time. You can only name a few societies -- and those in recent history only -- where someone is allowed to speak out for his rights, and to challenge government and their legitimacy, without fear of any repercussion from the government.
There has been the Korean "Founding Father" types -- but they have all been martyred by the Japanese. Then there were the political advocates who wanted more freedom -- unfortunately, they were contemporaries of some of the most ruthless communist movements, and distinguishing the two is difficult. Being a communist in that day and age was suicide, because the government had to crack down to prevent revolutions and the slaughter of entire villages.
We in America are truly blessed. We revolted against the British, and our Founding Fathers lived to tell the story. You can imagine how different we would be as a people if they didn't survive. Imagine how different we would be if we had lost to the British, the Nazis, the Japanese, or the Russians.
As to the future of Korea, there are those who are coming out of the woodwork, standing up for real freedom and less government intrusion. There are those advocating limited government and the powerful individual. It won't happen overnight, but there is a way for them to gain a peaceful, free society. Unlike some other countries in the area, they do believe that there is a right and a wrong, and giving your life for the right is noble, even when those around you say otherwise. I think this is another reason why Christianity has prospered in Korea.
One of the steps to get them to real freedom will have to be the abandonment of the universal registration and identification system. It serves no purpose, other than to allow someone to steal your identity, or allow corrupt government officials to track you down.
It is a right of the people to speak anonymously, especially when what they say is liable to get them hurt or killed. Didn't the federalist papers get published by an anonymous writer who used a pseudonym? Why should the Korean people not be allowed to publish anonymous comments on the message boards of their servant, the government?
I would suspect that the police would have to go through the normal means of obtaining a warrant before they could grab the data from the GPS system in the car. This would be no different that the police getting a warrant to rifle through a guy's home looking for evidence to convict him. It's just that a GPS system gives much more accurate data than a few hairs or a spot of blood could, in terms of location and time.
If the government is able to have access to this data without a warrant, that would be unconstitutional, and might be a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Even the patriot act doesn't allow that.
I second that. The book is very well written -- I would argue that it is probably the best written book I had during the entire four years I was there.
However, before you dive into Griffith's, you'll really have to brush up on Calculus and Differential Equations, as well as a variety of mathematics that you probably won't see unless you are going to grad school in math. The best book for this is "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" by Mary Boas.
This book was used for the "weed-out" class in the sophomore year at the University of Washington Physics department. The reason was that if you couldn't keep up with the math, and if you couldn't make sense of it all, than you really couldn't cut it as a physicist. It was the class where 100 people show up the first quarter, and 15 show up the next (because the other 85 lost interest or failed). Those 15 graduated with reasonably good grades.
If you complete Boas's book, and you can understand the math behind Griffith's book, then you are well on to your way to grad school in physics, if you desire it. Just brush up in a few other areas (EM, thermo, GR, etc...), and you might be ready for the GRE.
Anyway, it'll be interesting having another "real" physicist around here who actually understands what the Uncertainty Principle really means and where it comes from and its effect on the universe, rather than these posers who have no idea that a fourier transform applies to QM at all.
You are approaching the point where the information you'll get from others won't apply to you, because you are pioneering new territory with your company's technology.
You have a website that has its needs. I can't imagine what kind of application you are using, how much memory it needs, whether it is processor intensive or disk intensive, or both. Depending on how your website works, there are a variety of solutions available. One solution to one problem might actually cause more problems for you if applied inappropriately.
It might make a lot of sense to consolidate the database onto an advanced server -- with 2 procs, RAID SCSI drives, and a fair amount of memory. It might make a lot of sense to get cheaper boxes with more memory and only one processor to run the web servers. Perhaps you can mount them all off of one giant NFS file server, and have the data that the web servers need held in a cache on the web server. It might make a lot of sense to go talk to IBM and Sun and see what they have to offer as well. It might also make a lot of sense to redesign the way your web application works to reduce the load.
But no one can tell you the right way to do it, because your situation is unique. No one can even give you a good estimate of cost. Your best bet if you are truly lost is to hire someone to analyze your code, your servers, and your needs, and come up with a plan. Those guys cost a bit of money, and finding a good one is near impossible. You're better off at studying up on what your website really needs and experimenting with possible solutions.
This is where you start to realize why web people can earn up to 6 digits. We don't just design web sites or program applications. We have to make sure they scale as well.
I've lived in South Korea for more than three years. My wife is a Korean. Let me explain why these MMORPGs are so popular.
When a kid comes home from school, he doesn't go straight home. He has to go to after school classes. Sometimes, he has some spare time, and he spends these few hours in the game rooms. Today, that means he is spending his time in a "PC Bang" which literally means a "PC Room". A decade ago it was a video game room.
What are these places? They are a small part in a building with anywhere from 10 to 50 complete PC systems. It costs about a buck an hour, depending on the quality of the system, and the cost of living of the neighborhood, so it is pretty cheap.
The games that are available are pretty much what's available here, with quite a few home-brew one. Starcraft and Diablo are pretty popular. However, the most popular games are the ones where you interact with other people online. Since these rooms have excellent internet connections, these games run flawlessly, compared to your average AOL user.
The most popular game for a long time was a Korean-made one that was pretty much like Ultima Online, but far more cheesier. It was something like "Land of the Wind" -- in Korean, "Param ae Nara" -- or something like that.
Why do these games get so popular? Because the kids have nothing better to do, and they certainly don't want to spend the time doing homework. You got to admit, if you had a couple hours every day you had to kill, and you had limited options and a couple of bucks, you would waste it on something like Everquest or Ultima Online if it were available. That's what I did when I was waiting for a train or an airplane when I was there.
First, you are wrong on many levels.
Just because someone buys the machine and doesn't use CnR doesn't mean they have pirated and installed windows on it. First off, where are they going to obtain a copy of windows? Do you really think they are downloading and burning their own copy of windows?
If they do install windows, most likely they will install a version that they have already bought and paid for and have handy.
If they don't, then they are probably not using the machine at all, or they are satisfied with the one or two free apps they got. (probably email and mozilla).
Or, perhaps, just perhaps, they bought the machine and installed a different distribution on it. As one poster mentioned, it doesn't take much to turn it into a debian machine. As any linux guy knows, it doesn't take much to turn it into any linux distribution.
Don't accuse people of piracy you don't know, and you certainly don't have evidence of. You sound like Bill Gates when you do. Remember, people are innocent until proven guilty in this country, unlike certain other countries.
Another issue that you don't have to worry about is what to do when your project becomes popular.
When you have many users, they will help you with the code, with testing, and with documentation. All you have to do is organize them.
When you have many users, finding hosts and mirrors will not be a problem. Someone among them will be willing to put up a mirror, or host it all outright. All you have to do is ask.
When you have many users, even raising funds to finance bandwidth isn't too big of a concern. Ask for grants from companies that use your software. Ask for donations from the members. I'm sure that rather than give you money, they will be more willing to give you bandwidth, but in those cases where money is necessary, you will be able to get it. Remember the Blender project.
This is why the open source model kicks butt versus the closed source model -- open source projects are truly scaleable in all senses of the word.
You don't outgrow SourceForge. Look at some of the projects hosted there - ViM, Python, several Kernel patches, and much more. Some of the projects there are open-source behemoths, with millions of users.
SourceForge wants to host the big projects. They want millions of people to view the advertisement banners, and they want to get plugged by the best projects out there. You can imagine what they could do to boost sales if they could say, "You know that ultra-popular huge open source project X? We host it. We can host your software as well."
And if you are worried about bandwidth -- that's not even a concern. With mirrors being added a couple a year, bandwidth isn't a concern, and it never will be.
I've installed LFS before. LFS is just the instructions on how to install Linux from scratch (hence the name, Linux From Scratch). They supply a few pieces of software conveniently in one place so you don't have to spend hours finding it on your own and figuring out what version goes with what. It is just enough to get an OS that works, but not enough to do much except put more software on it.
BLFS is a collection of instructions for installing various bits of popular software like Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, and more.
I would like to point out that LFS is not Gentoo. LFS is literally Linux From Scratch. There are no installation scripts. There are no system management tools. There is no pretty interface, or simple instructions. It is a book, not a piece of software.
You literally go through each piece of software and configure, compile, and install it. It is pretty cool because they describe what each piece of software is for, and you can see how one piece builds on another. You'll certainly never look at your system the same again, because you'll know what each bit does.
I wouldn't suggest trying LFS unless you are interested in what exactly goes on under the hood, or you are building your own distro from scratch.
I am confused. You seem to be talking about physicists and mathematicians, not computer science professors. What area of computer science has actually been pushed forward by scientists recently? Perhaps you can name some examples, because I am at a loss. While they had a monopoly on computer systems, they were able to have a monopoly on innovation, but now that just isn't true.
All the innovation I see come from people who actually write code instead of talking about it. Many of these people have no formal education at all. Look at Slashdot. Is that not an innovation worth mentioning? What computer scientist prompted this?
Computer Science is an odd field because anyone who can code can make significant contributions. It really doesn't take a formal education or a rigorous graduate study program to produce highly innovative programmers. All it takes is an idea and the time to write it out in code.
Banging on a tree is a good method to get the insect inhabitants out. It works marvelously for termites and ants. Don't believe me? Try it sometime on a bees nest.
The problem is that banging on a tree with your head results in concussion and death. It is a horrible way to make a living, unless you are a woodpecker with the appropriate structure to do this day in and day out for their entire lives.
And how does the bird grip the tree? The woodpecker has special claws that allow it to grasp the tree vertically.
There are many more traits of the woodpecker that had to develop simultaneously for it to be able to eat insects in the tree. I guess if you are willing to believe that life can be created from nothing, then you are willing to believe all the traits could be developed in one generation.
I admit, I don't, I can't, know everything. No one can. Life is just too short, and the universe is just too big.
However, knowing what I know, evolution makes no sense. Knowing what I know about woodpeckers -- just one species among millions -- means that evolution was statistically impossible.
Knowing what I know about humanity and the human mind -- how can something so powerful and so wonderful have evolved in a natural world based on savage laws? Why didn't we evolve into cold-hearted, blood-thirsty, fanged and clawed armored monsters? I could admit that maybe a race like the Klingons have evolved, but definitely not humans.
Also the burden of proof probably would not matter to you. If I told you which book to read that would prove evolution to you, would you read it? Have you ever read anything about evolution that was not written by a religous person?
<sarcasm>You caught me! I am really an ignorant fool. I have never studied the issue of evolution, nor have I read any part of any book on the subject! Yes, I only read the Bible all day long, and that is my source for all of my knowledge.</sarcasm>
Have you ever read anything written by a religious person at all? Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, Moses really did part the sea, that Christ really was resurrected, and that this whole God thing is real?
Speak for yourself, I do not think I am nothing, I will continue to try to create something that will last forever.
You misunderstand the consequences of your own beliefs. You cannot create something that lasts forever -- the big crunch, remember? You can certainly try though, but you are wasting your time.
If you believe you evolved from nothing, and if you believe that evolution is ongoing, then you are nothing and can never be anything. At most, you are a microbe compared to what is going to happen in a few more million years in our human evolution. The memory of you after a million years will be the same as the memory of that microbe that died several million years ago. Nothing. From nothing, to nothing. Everything you do, even if you are Bill Gates or George Bush, means nothing.
Because we are designed to die, and we are designed to suffer in this world. That is the way life works. We are born, we live, and then we die.
The machine of our body does exactly what it is supposed to do.
You might imagine a God who created everything in a perfect state; so do I. That happened several thousand years ago and we call it the paradise of the Garden of Eden. But you might imagine a God that prohibits any evil, because of his goodness. I am not so naive. I know that this life is a special time in our immortal existence. This is the time when we are tried and tested, when we live by faith in God alone, and when we should prove our ability to live with God forever. How can we be tested in a perfect world? How can we be tempted to do evil unless there is evil in the world?
Reading through the first pages of Richard Dawkins book I found his perspective close-minded and insulting. He concludes that finding a watch on the road cannot mean it had a creator and a designer, because it cannot mean that. His evidence of proving Darwinism is Darwinism itself.
I read another post and refernce about speciation. It is interesting that the best they can do is demonstrate that some children are infertile, and some grandchildren are infertile. They rely on cross-breeding and polyploids. If these mechanisms were used to evolve into the current world, then that would mean there were a greater number of species before than after, and the number of genomes in our bodies would certainly be much larger. There are a few mentions of some cases of speciation potentially beginning, but no mentions of speciation occuring. In short, my original claim. All the scientists, despite their intelligence and effort, have yet to uncover even one case of speciation, despite the millions of species on this planet, and the hundred years time to study it. They merely have to demonstrate speciation to prove that evolution is possible. Proving that it actually occured is another story altogether.
1) Stop funding or depending on state education. The government has no interest in seeing intelligent, well-educated people vote, so they do all they can to prevent intelligent people from becoming educated. However, private educational systems need to raise community leaders in order to attract more students, so they have a vested interest in raising people who are well-educated and intelligent.
Knowledge = Power. Do you think those fatheads in DC really want you to have all of their hard-earned power? That's why they do everything they can to prevent education from happening. And remember, what makes America great is our distrust of our government.
2) Realize your vote and voice does indeed count. See, when you say something, other people hear it. And if what you say has any truth to it, it will ring in their ears. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrows, but eventually, they will realize that what you were saying is right. If you disagree with someone, stand up and say, "Hey, I disagree!" If you want something to get done, you say, "Hey, I want something to get done!"
If you shut up and don't vote, then your voice and vote doesn't count. Pretty simple concept, huh?
3) Learn the system! Get out a copy of the constitution and study it. Get educated on the issues, and not just current ones. Let history be your guide. Instead of trying to topple the system, take a lesson from Aikido and use the system in your best interests. Government in a free society is still about 'selfish' people getting stuff done that they want done. Just make sure it is what YOU want and not what THEY want.
Another interesting thing about republics is that it works best when you have lots of people with strong opinions go at it with each other. All the people that refuse to participate, and who ultimately don't care or know enough to care, don't count.
So get off your butt, do some reading, support a candidate, and start flapping your gums!
I guarantee you that every election in America is held by those who want to have it. All the rest don't count. If a majority don't care about our future, that's their problem. I am making sure my views get expressed, and my issues get passed, are you?
I am a strict creationist. I believe that God created the heavens and the earth, exactly as described in the scriptures. I don't believe that one species can evolve into another. It has not yet been demonstrated, nor will it ever. No one can explain the evolution of the woodpecker. No one can explain the evolution of man. Why? Because there is always a step or two that just doesn't make sense. Why did a bird start banging its head against wood? Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright? No one can sufficiently explain this, because there is no explanation. I mean, there has been over a century of countless scientists, all very intelligent, and none of them can describe how the evolution of any creature has occured. Not even the simplest of microbes!
And the burden of proof is on them, not me. I say this because if you discovered a watch in the desert, you would assume it was created by someone, not that it was made from random motions of particles in the desert. Aren't even the simplest organisms far more complex than even the most complicated machines we can build? If the motion of sand cannot create a watch, how can any random motion create a living organism, let alone the hosts of living organisms that inhabit and have inhabited this world? How can you deny the intelligence of the creations? If you cannot deny the intelligence, then you cannot deny that they were created by an intelligent being. And seeing as how the intelligence exhibited in these organisms far surpass our own, this being must be the God described in scripture.
That doesn't affect my ability to study or understand how the living creations of God behave on this earth. In fact, it actually extends my understanding, because I am really looking at a machine built with far greater technology than I can even imagine, with far greater precision than I can ever master, with far greater intelligence than I can surmise.
See, it used to be that biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and all scientists, were all exploring the beauty, simplicity, and intelligence of this beautiful world built by God himself. It used to be that mathematicians would delve deep into the mind of God, seeking to pierce the veil of His great understanding. It used to be that physicists would study each intricacy of nature, trying to discover the rules that God uses to govern the entire universe. It used to be that biologists were reverse-engineering the most marvelous feats of engineering in existence.
Every small discover was like a small image of the face of God. Perhaps together, they could piece together God Himself, drawing closer to His level by understanding Him more.
But now we are just studying bags of sand and water, and patterns that lead us nowhere, and rules that mean nothing.
We used to be miniature gods, no, Gods in training, seeking to become like the great God himself by mastering our minds and understanding our univserse. We used to believe that we were literally offspring of God. Now we are lost souls, studying science to erase those panging doubts that creep into our minds, that tell us nothing is worth anything, and all is in vain. We believe that we are nothing, never were anything, and never can become anything more than we are.
Which doctor would you rather have?
I'm going to say it.
I *am* sexist. I believe that there are distinct, insurmountable differences between men and women. I believe these differences make us who we are, and to deny the existence of these differences is to deny our humanity.
That is why I married a woman and not a man. I will never be happy spending the rest of my life with a man, because I want a woman and not a man for a companion. I think this is because I am a man, and one of the characteristics of man is to desire a woman for a companion. (Luckily, the converse is true for women.)
These differences are more than just physical. They are also mental and emotional. They are not learned or forced. They are a fundamental part of their being.
That is why there are not many women in some fields, and that is why there are not many men in other fields. And amazingly, that is also why there are fields that seem evenly split between men and women.
This has nothing to do with "our oppressive white male dominated society" or whatever you lumpheads call it, and has everything to do with people doing what they like because they want to. The reason why there are not so many women in CS is because men tend to want to do CS more than women.
To tell you the truth, I am perfectly happy locking myself in a room to program for hours on end and read technical documentation and other people's code.
I don't think my wife will ever enjoy it as much as I, despite her high intelligence and reasoning abilities. I mean, she picked up HTML in an afternoon, but she has no desire to use it.
Now, here's the disclaimer. I don't believe one is better than the other. I don't think CS is the ultimate field that only the best people in the world can be allowed in.
And now for something that boggles my mind. "Feminists" try to take women out of their realm and place them in masculine roles saying they are better men than men. It would be really weird to see a group of men calling themselves "masculinists" dressing up like women and trying to be better women than women, yet we are comfortable with seeing a bunch of "feminists" that dress and behave like men. Just something to think about.
I love using PostgreSQL. It is great, stable, easy to use, and the feature set is wonderfully large.
It also has the same feeling that Linux did in its earlier days. PostgreSQL is unstoppable, and will one day be the only database worth using just like Linux is going to be the only Unix kernel worth using one day.
You can see how it is growing exponentially, and there is nothing that can stop it. It feels great to get on board because you know things are only going to get better.
As far as MySQL goes, I have nothing against it. I grew up on Sybase and Oracle systems, so picking up PostgreSQL was easy as pie. I still haven't had enough motivation or time to pick up MySQL idiosyncracies. And I just don't see a future with MySQL or any other database like I see with PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL just has that magical feeling about it that is pretty rare for any piece of software. It just feels good using it. It just feels right.
Where do you live that there is actual pollution like this? I lived for several years in Seoul, Korea, which is no small town (~ 20 million) and I found that the pollution had little effect on anyone. Sometimes people would wake up with a little cough or a runny nose, but that was it.
And the earth does a damn fine job of processing billions of tons of dead animals and plant life, as well as the refuse that these animals create. The animals don't have to scoop up after themselves or use animal out houses.
We are able to dump raw sewage into the ocean and have it turn into fresh ocean water. We are able to take a dump in a forest and have it turn into a tree. Maybe the earth is really a giant trash recycle bin, and we should treat it with respect by using it like that. If we go around and clean up all the crap, we might actually destroy it!
Your chemicals that are purported to have such a harmful affect on the environment are not as dangerous as you think.
DDT got a lot of bad rap in the newspapers, but there isn't solid science yet to prove that it is dangerous to the environment. It was banned purely for political reasons that had nothing to do with science and everything to do with sensationalism.
And as far as cancer-causing agents? I think this is hilarious. The "scientific" community takes rats that are genetically predisposed to cancer, even in a clean environment, and then feed them enormous amounts of these chemicals. When one or two of them get cancer, it is declared as a carcinogen.
The environmental movement has nothing to do with hard facts or real science. They are motivitated by the same thing that motivates most people out there: sensationalism and "feelings".
And you claim that environmentalists rely on scientific observations. Balogna. The only observation they pay attention to is the observation of their bank accounts, and the effect of their dumb-headed propaganda on the masses.
The environmental movement in America is best described as "Communism in drag". All they want to do is disrupt American industry, our right to eat, drink, wear, and use the things we want, and our right to drive whatever car we would like. They are all about limiting freedom and expanding government. They are never about increasing individual rights.
True environmentalists realize that taking away rights from people is not the way to go about preserving the environment. The best way is to operate within the bounds of law and common sense and buy land and turn it into a preserve. Another good way is to do responsible research and show the facts to the companies, and have them cooperate willingly rather than at the opoint of a gun.
This myth about companies being unwilling to clean up their act is hogwash. The presidents of these companies are people like you and I. They want to see the world as clean as the next guy. They aren't willing to spend millions of dollars on an environmental fad that has no solid background, just like you aren't willing to buy snake oil.
This is something that will blow the students away. A lot of you have heard this several times, but it is at the heart of the Microsoft vs. Torvalds debate.
Is it ethical to write software that must remain free?
Is it ethical to write software that cannot be copied in any way, and has limits put on its use?
Is it ethical for government to regulate the import/export/creation/use of software?
Should software be copyrighted at all?
The ethics of software is much more interesting than the legality.
How about being responsible with your words, buddy.
The Japanese people were innocent victims? I'm sorry, there is nothing innocent about supporting a regime trying to conquer the world with military might, rape, and plunder. There is nothing innocent about anyone who went along with that regime and supported their cause.
The true innocent victims were the American sailors who were bombed in Pearl Harbor by the same people we were discussing peace treaties with.
I can't wait to see what revisionist history has to say about this conflict in Iraq.
"The Evil President Bush massacred thousands of innocent Iraqi troops as he ordered his bully army to force their way through an otherwise peaceful and friendly country."
<sarcasm>That's right. And this internet thing will NEVER become popular. No one will EVER use a personal computer. And as for this new technology called "calculus", it's NEVER going to be accepted by the masses.</sarcasm>
As for me, I'm going to keep using linux, watching Anime, and using GPG to sign my email messages. The rest of the world be damned. They can catch up if they want, but I'm not going to wait for them.
I mean, do you wait for something to become mainstream before you jump on the bandwagon? Then why are you complaining that it is not mainstream?
Oh, yeah, we went to Japan, and said "If you don't start wearing blue jeans and eating hamburgers, we're going to murder your children and rape your wives!" We went to Germany and said, "Because you stupid Krauts lost, we are going to torture you with shopping malls and action movies!" And we turned around to China and say, "Soon, your daughters will be our slaves because we will conquer you with the might of our FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS!"
Or did we just luck out with Japan? I guess we also lucked out with Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Italy, the UK, France, Spain, Eastern Europe, Russia, and far more countries you will never know about. I guess we are still lucking out with Vietnam, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, and yes, even Cuba. I guess our policies of "kill the bad guys, let the others vote, and leave unless they want you to stay" just doesn't work, does it?
What could be more tactful than that? We see a dictator, building up weapons that can harm us. We realize that there won't be a peaceful resolution to this, so we're going to have to disarm him forcefully. Sooner is better than later because if we wait too long, he might actually get the weapons that can really hurt us. And while we're at it, it's not a bad idea to upset the entire history of the country by setting the people free and letting them create their own government. So we go in, and ruin thousands of years of culture by banishing slavery, "murdering" treacherous people who oppose freedom, and encouraging people to think about their own future rather than place it in the hands of a dictator. When things become stable, we slowly pull out, and let the government, elected by the people, take over. We get a more peaceful world, they get a peaceful government, and everyone is happy. But at what cost? I can't see any negative effects, other than the disruption of their culture as they move away from being slaves who live in hovels into full-fledged equal citizens in their country.
Now there is one more intersting point. Why do McDonalds and Burger Kings and shopping malls dot the landscape of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK, France, Germany, and any country that is free? Why do they wear blue jeans, drive big cars that produce that dangerous chemical CO2, and try to earn as much money as they can?
The answer: It is not because we force them to adopt it. It is because it is actually a better way of living than anything else. We seem to like it, because we choose to live in it. They seem to like it because they adopt it. Nobody is forcing anyone here. They do it because they want to.
Our "empire", if you could call it that, is an empire of FREEDOM. We give people freedom, knowing that it will only make us and them more powerful, rich, and happy.
Our founding fathers saw the day when people would come to us and ask us to set up their governments. Our founding fathers knew that we would be a "shining city on a hill". Now that we are, are you complaining because everyone in the world wants what we have, and we are more than willing to share it with them? Are you complaining because they are richer and happier and freeer than they ever have been since the beginning of their history?
Or are you complaining because freedom really does work, even for poor peasants and backwards countries like Japan once was? Are you really complaining because your "ideals" (ie, communism or socialism) are really a horrible nightmarish world, where no one is safe, and no one is rich, and freedom is the only answer to cure all of the world's ills?
Where the hell do you get this pathetic thinking from? The attitude of the leaders trickles down to the lower levels. The military literally reflects the attitudes of the top generals, the president, and his advisors.
Ask anyone in the military. You will see slight differences in the behavior of each unit that precisely reflect the leadership of that unit.
You want to know why the Iraqis are putting pregnant women in car bombs? It's because the people in the military are just as brutal, sick, and demented as Saddam is. They largely reflect their leadership.
When you see a private run for cover with a child in his arms, he is doing that because he knows that is what his sergeant and lieutenant would do. The sergeant and lieutenant would do the same because they are told to do that by the captains and colonels. The captains and colonels do that because that is the ethics taught to them by the generals. The generals teach those ethics because that is what the president wants them to do.
Your stupid argument that the little guy is good but the top brass is bad is idiotic. The little guy reflects the behavior and morals of the top brass and commander in chief.
In fact, the true hero of this entire conflict is President Bush. He sticks to his morals. He did what is right despite public opinion polls and opposing pressure. He refuses to bend his ideals to satisfy a few people for a few days. He refuses to go back on his word. He is bringing dignity and freedom to a country that has been ravaged for twenty years. What is in this for him? What is he going to take home at the end of the day? The answer is nothing. In fact, he stands to lose a lot more than you imagine. How would you like to know that you were directly responsible for young men and women being tortured and brutally killed? Yet, despite this, he pushes on, not because it is easy, but because it is right.
He is doing all this, sacrificing his political career, sacrificing his peace of mind, all to bring freedom to a couple of people in a faraway land that nobody seems to care about. He does this to ensure that our children will grow up without planes crashing into their office buildings, and without worrying about being burned alive by savage terrorists.
It's people like you that make Saddam Hussein think he stands a chance, and give aid and comfort to the enemy. If you would've stood with your president from the beginning, Saddam would've left long ago, and we would've ended the torture that is the daily lives of the Iraqi people years ago.