" Abdullah al-Muhajir is being held in relation to having possibly planned a bombing attack. Glad i could help you."
His name is Padilla; read the court documents. Using his Islamic aka doesn't make him any more guilty, nor any less deserving of his rights as an American citizen. I suspect that the reason you like using his aka is because it makes you feel better about the government's ridiculously illegal attitude about the whole thing.
Secondly, all suspects are being held in relation to having possibly commited or attempting to commit a crime; hence the title "suspect", from the word: suspected. Being suspected of a crime is in no way an indication of guilt; in fact, it is just the opposite. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt by a jury of your peers.
Thirdly, Senators on the Senate Intelligence Commitee who have seen the sealed report detailed the "evidence" against Mr Padilla have commented publicly that the evidence is very weak. As one put it, (paraphrasing) 'I'm all for locking up the bad guys, but you've got to have evidence.'
Fouthly, unlike John Ashcroft's doomsday-sounding press counference, which talked of stopping a terrorist plot in progress, the Bush administration, through the deputy secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, said that there was no bomb, there was no target, there was no plan outside of some "loose talk". Jose Padilla is accused of travelling to foreign countries (oh no, not that), possibly meeting with some Al Qaeda opperatives (good Lord, not that freedom of association thing again), and possibly doing some research online about so-called "dirty bombs". Hell, I looked online for information about dirty bombs after seeing this horrifying announcement mentioning radiation, mass death, and mass destruction. What did I find? That probably every death caused by a "dirty bomb" would be caused by the explosion; not radiation exposure. Experts commenting on the prospect of a dirty bomb's radiological effects said basically that those exposed to the radiation of a dirty bomb would have more to fear from smoking than they would from the radiation. In other words, the radiation would be at such low doses as to cause little more than minor radiation poisoning.
This is why I've been screaming about Jose Padilla since his announced arrest as a "material witness" back in May of last year. The real question is, how many other American citizens are being secretly held by either the DOJ or the DOD.
No matter. Do you really print things in color that often? If so, do you find it's worth the absolutely astounding per-page cost of an inkjet to do this once-in-a-blue moon printing? Funny thing is, I thought the same thing as you until I got my first laser. Now, I can't imagine the last time I felt the need to print anything with color in it. For the few things that do have color, like maps on mapquest, greyscale works just as well at a fraction of the cost.
If you're printing out family photo albums in color, kinkos would probably be a much more time and cost effective solution. Otherwise, you're wasting money and time on a slow printer with a high per-page cost.
No, but I can beat it with an HP Laserjet 4MP. Had it for more than a year with no costs aside from the intial cost (about $75) other than paper. Prints faster than any inkjet I've ever seen, with much sharper text while taking up less room than most inkjets.
To review: faster, cheaper, smaller, no midnight trips to Staples, no cost concerns about printing out the source code for a project I'm working on. Yes... yes I'll take the laser, thank you.
3000 targets destroyed in less than a week and you're complaining about 1 possible mistake? Don't you think this is perhaps just a little bit beyond reasonable expectations?
The problem is the myth of the all-powerful Americans which has been perpetuated throughout much of the world, especially poorer countries. It's the idea that America can do whatever it wants whenever it wants; that it is essentially omnipotent. For example, in 1993, 5 million Somalis killed 18 US Army rangers. 5 Million managed to kill 18 men. They celebrated. Why? They had killed the "all-powerful" Americans.(1) Anyway, when civilians die, or a friendly fire incident happens, or a building is destroyed by accident, everyone immediately jumps on the case of the Americans, as if this were done by intent, because American can do whatever it wants, meaning anything it does was done because it wanted it done. With all the police action we take care of in the world (because the UN is unable or unwilling to), it's absolutely astounding that we manage to make the few mistakes we do.
As for individual mistakes, most are due to simple human error, directly or indirectly, while a small number are due to the negligence of an individual. No technology is perfect, not even America's. Why? It's created by imperfect human beings. We're not all-power, nor are we invincible. We're simply human beings who are in a very good position to do a lot of good in the world who are trying to make the best of things. You want an apology? I can't recall a single mistake made by the military that wasn't immediately apologized for, but here it is: we're sorry. If we could be perfect and rid Iraq of Saddam without harming a single person, we would. But we're not all-powerful, and people die in wars. Our people are dying in this war.
We do what we do to try and make the world a better place, and sometimes things don't work out the way we'd like them to. We're getting better at things, though. If you need proof of this, look at World War II. In the invasion of Normandy alone, there were more than 30,000 casualties. That's for one battle. In Kosovo, there were 500 civilian casualties. A remarkable improvement. Now, here we are in Iraq, and people are going nuts over probably less than 30 civlians dead. 1 innocent death is too many, but war is likened to "hell" for good reason. More careful you say? We agree. This is why we spend billions developing bombs that hit their target within a few feet, when the same result (in terms of military success) could be achieved at a lower cost by simply carpet bombing everything. The fact is that we care greatly about the lives of the innocent, and we ought to be held to a high standard. But please, don't try to hold us to an impossible standard - perfection.
(1)as a side note, I'd have had no problem with the US military carpet bombing Mogadishu after this incident. Fortunately, our military has more restraint than I do, although I still think we ought to track down all 5 million of those who attacked our troops and summarily execute them as unlawful combatants, as per the Geneva Conventions. (no uniforms or insignias)
If you're reading this, now is the time to revolt. You've reached the "no-man's land" of your government forcing you to pay it in order to think. That you have no money is a sign that your government wishes you to be intellectually bankrupt as well. Ignorant citizens are the easiest to oppress.
Translate - 2 a : to turn into one's own or another language b : to transfer or turn from one set of symbols into another
Coalition - 2 : a temporary alliance of distinct parties, persons, or states for joint action
Occupation - 3 a : the act or process of taking possession of a place or area : SEIZURE b : the holding and control of an area by a foreign military force c : the military force occupying a country or the policies carried out by it
Translation is the act of changing the words, not the content. They may think US, UK, and Aussie forces are occupiers, but translation should never change the content or intent of the person speaking. It's no better than changing "we're going to bring food to you all" to "we're going to bring death to you all". If they're going to cover a press conference in a unbiased way, they need to translate in an unbiased way as well. If they wish to function as a propaganda machine for Saddam Hussein, that's fine to, but don't try and pass them off as 'unbiased' or even decent journalists.
No media outlet is without some bias and/or slant, but fudging a translation is a blatant lie.
You obviously haven't heard their translations of press conferences. When Rumsfeld says "coalition forces", it's translated on al-Jazeera as "occupation forces". Everyone is going to have their individual slant on how things are, but when you mangle a translation in that way, it shows intent. I find that disturbing.
And I'm amazed at the forgetfulness of the average person. Laws such as the 1974 Privacy Act were in response to the massive, intrusive, unconstitutional acts of the FBI during the 1950s and 1960s. The kind of surveillance we're now seeing were done surreptitiously by the FBI in attempts to sabotage the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-war movement during Vietnam.
We live in the freest country on Earth? Does this have something to do with that whole, war is peace, slavery is freedom thing? Just what other countries are you comparing the US to when you say this? Have you visited other countries?
If you want to sit back while your entire life is reduced to nothing more than data in a database, that's fine, but I believe that a human being is more than just data. I believe I have an intrinsic right to human dignity - something which is taken away when my entire life becomes an entry in some damned database to be searched through, scrutinized, colated, etc. My government has absolutely no right to catalog and judge every moment of my life, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my children grow up in a nation where they have to watch what they say and do, lest they be mistaken for a "threat".
If you think it's anti-American to question the tactics and policies of the government, then you know not the first thing about what it is to be an American. I believe you'll find the regimes in China, Iraq, Iran, or North Korea more to your liking, as those who question the government there are shot. I question my government's actions and plans because I recognize that it is a servant of the people. As such, I have a right and a duty to question anything I see as degrading the service provided to me and my fellow citizens by our government. If you don't like it, move; I really don't give a damn.
Just for a change, I think we need to rename a couple of things. Specifically, I think we need to rename the "Homeland Security Dept" to: "The Fuck-the-Average-Citizen Dept".
I'm not sure if that'll catch on, but it certainly would make me feel as though my government were attempting honesty for a change.
Oh, how we yearn for the times around 1974, which you'll all remember is the year that the Privacy Act was made law.
I too enjoyed Voyager very much. While it had some episodes dealing with time travel and such that didn't work very well, it had many time travel episodes that did work well. I found the character development to be absolutely extraordinary, and I continue to be amazed as I watch how the crew grew into a family over the 7 years the show ran. A crew of renegades, criminals, and uptight Starfleet types managed to pull together and grow to a point where any one of them would give their life for the others. Personally, I could have stood to see it go on another 2 or three seasons. Endgame, in my view, was a gimmicky end that left far too many questions unanswered. The show, the crew, and the fans deserved more.
In terms of the Borg, they've been ruined time and time again in Star Trek, movie and show alike. What began as the perfect enemy, a force of nature if you will, was turned into little more than collection of LANs brought together by a subspace wireless WAN, controlled by a single individual who somehow rose to power in the collective. Its unfortunate that such a truly ingenious design was so completely destroyed, but it wasn't accomplished soley within Voyager. I suppose at some point, something had to be done to make the Borg somehow less powerful though. One cube nearly assimilated Earth a number of times. What would 20 have done?
Species 8472 is another point which many ST fans dislike. Personally, I liked them a lot in their first few episodes. Up until the point where they were building that Starfleet recreation, they were doing quite well. They were powerful, adaptive, could annihilate entire planets at once, and destroyed Borg cubes like childrens' toys. Their only weakness was on the bio warfare end of things. The whole Earth recreation episode just made everything a bit too cheery and nice; as if things always work out for the best in the end.
Overall, I think the series was very captivating. It had its share of plot holes, dead episodes, and other assorted issues, but it also introduced us to the next generation of Starfleet personnel. We were given a glimpse into the future of Star Trek with this younger, smarter crew whose captain was more intelligent and strong than just about anyone before her. Personally, I liked Kate Mulgrew as the captain. I think she brought a very strong, yet compassionate personality to the role of captain; a depth of character not seen before in the Star Trek world. I liked Tom Paris, who grew from a troubled child into a responsible, dependable family man. I liked Tuvok, who did more for teaching us about the Vulcan race than Spock could have done in 20,000 seasons of TOS. I liked how they went to their tricorders when in unfamiliar surroundings instead of feeling around and staring at everything like an idiot. I liked the fact that they had to deal with real problems on that ship, including depression, starvation, death up front and personal, and human interpersonal relationships. While Kirk ran around trying to bang every blue-skinned quasi-female he came across, Janeway and Chakotay dealt with a near constant sexual tension between them; something that could never come to be. I liked how Neelix was annoying. Why? Because he annoyed everyone, which made for some humerous situations. I found Tuvok's dialogs with Neelix to be hilarious at times. Sure Neelix annoyed me, but he really annoyed Tuvok, a vulcan. How the hell annoying do you have to be to annoy a Vulcan?
So while many have judged Voyager's episodes as bad, or even unwatchable, I found the series as a whole to be far better than any that had come before it. You could plug a season 2 TNG crew in a season 7 episode and notice little difference. Try plugging a season 2 Voyager crew into a Season 7 episode. The doctor? The captain? Kes? Tom Paris? Neelix? Chakotay? Harry Kim? They were all completely and totally different people by season 7. The hardline captain, the frustrated commander, the renegade pilot, the naive and scared ops officer, the undeveloped and rude doctor; they wouldn't stan
" I'd like to use freenet, but I can't. I can't risk the possibility, however remote, of having child porn cached on my computer."
Chances are, if there were any child porn or other materials considered illegal in your locality, they wouldn't be whole files. From what I understand with Freenet, you're only hosting bits and pieces of files. Therefore, it's not as though you could browse through your data store and see pictures and movies you find offensive. Chances are, you would see little more than garbled 'junk' completely unidentifiable. It's part of how Freenet works.
The idea is that the only way to see anything on Freenet is to look through the Freenet interface itself. You're not supposed to know what you're storing, who's asking for it, who you're sending it to (as in final destination), and you're not supposed to know where you're getting stuff from. Basically, the idea is that no one knows where anything else is actually coming from or going to because every data request looks like another hand-off.
If I understand it correctly (and I may be wrong, please correct me if this is the case), when you're downloading a freesite on Freenet, and one of the items on this site is a picture, the picture is stored in pieces. Your node checks its data store to see if any parts of the picture are stored there (to save time and bandwidth), and if it can't find it, sends out a request for the pieces it doesn't have. The trick is, the request it sends spreads a bit like a virus. Node A, you, sends out a request for data to nodes B and C. B and C don't have it in their data store, so they send out a request identical to the one you sent them to nodes D, E, F, and G. This continues up to a certain number of nodes deep, with the number of nodes deep depends on how each node is set up. If node E has the data in its data store, it sends it to node B, which then sends it to node A. Node A doesn't know where the data originated, node B doesn't know that node A is the final destination, nor does it know that the data came from E's data store, and node E doesn't know where the data ended up. That's the beauty of the blinded system, a compromised host doesn't know much of anything. Compromising half the network means you might manage to track the flow of half the network's traffic, but you still couldn't say with any certainty which node, or computer, is storing what data. Just because node B can respond to the request doesn't mean it has the data stored locally. And just because B asked E for the data, doesn't mean that the guy operating B is looking for that data, nor does it mean that data is necessarily stored on his computer.
If that makes any sense, I hope it helps. If I'm misunderstanding how the network operates, please correct me.
Opteron is AMD's first real entry into the server market. AthlonMP was never truly meant for anything other than workstations or very low level entry servers. Itanium is Intel's offering for very strong, high performance servers. Their Xeon chip is the high-end workstation to mid-range server chip. All indications are that AMD will be targetting low to mid range servers with the Opteron.
Intel's point is that they don't believe anything other than high-end servers will use 64-bit chips effectively. AMD's point is that anyone can use whatever they like. A dual Opteron with 2MB L2 will most likely be targetted against dual Xeon machines. AMD will try to offer a better price point and the ability to run 64-bit applications to potential customers in their attempt to win partners. The launch of the Opteron had best go off MUCH better than the launch of the AthlonMP if AMD hopes to make it in the server business. Already weary of new products, big businesses will be looking for any excuse not to go with an Opteron. Even Intel has trouble convincing long-time customers to invest in new products, as evidenced by their dismal Itanium 1 launch. If the chipset and board problems we saw in the Tyan AthlonMPs creep up in any of the Opteron boards, AMD's cash cow will be seen in the business community as little more than the 'roo meat at McD's. That, potentially, could end up being the nail in AMD's coffin.
They have a lot riding on this launch, so let's all hope it goes off without a hitch. If it does, I think Xeon processors will be collecting dust within a year's time while Opterons slowly replace what's currently in the workplace. In very, very few circumstances will a company look at Opterons as an alternative for Itaniums. In terms of performance? Who knows; we haven't see benchmarks on production Opterons yet. If it's everything we're told it is, it may very well outperform the Itanium 2s vis-a-vis.
The nice thing about Opteron is that it's main competitor will be the P4 Xeon processor, which will soon start showing signs of age. The P4 was designed for high clock speeds, but it can only go so far. When Clawhammer is released this Winter, AMD will truly have a more rounded product line. For the time being, all they have is the Athlon, which seems like a big mistake to me.
AMD's future existence depends very much on the performance of the Opteron and Clawhammer with 32-bit applications, in a 32-bit environment. The best case scenario for AMD would be if M$'s next major OS release were 64-bit only. Unfortunately, this seems highly unlikely, but AMD can dream, can't they?
"Yes, sir, that new system with the latest Windows will be $12,000 if you go with Intel and the Itanium, or $699 if you go with AMD and the Athlon64. Yes, sir, it is pretty funny; I agree."
"NASA Engineers said they could use U.S. Spy satillites to check the damage on Columbia, like Sept 11, they did nothing to try and prevent before with having knowledge of what was to come."
Sure, except for two things. Number one, they didn't believe there was any reason for concern. Do you have any idea how many people come up with possible problems during any given mission? The engineers at NASA are trained to think worst case scenario at all times so they can plan accordingly. As such, the mission control personnel are trained to decide which are valid concerns and which are remote. In this case, they were incorrect. News flash: humans are sometimes wrong.
Secondly, assuming they knew for a fact that the tiles were badly damaged. What did you want them to do about it? They had no provisions for in-space repairs, as the tiles have to be specially fit into place and you can only carry but so many spare parts on the shuttle. There wasn't enough fuel to reach the ISS, nor did they have any way to dock with it, as it requires specialized docking equipment. As well, there is no other way to get the astronaughts down from space since there are no emergency escape vehicles. It takes months to prepare for a shuttle launch, which is far too much time for another shuttle to go up and rescue them. Obviously, they couldn't stay in space forever, so they had to get back home somehow.
In essence, NASA didn't believe there was going to be a major problem with the shuttle's re-entry, and they couldn't do much about it even if they did. Looking at how bad the damage was with a satellite would have given them a better idea of the odds of survival, but it wouldn't have changed their course of actions. Each launch is carefully planned out, and even very minor deviation from that plan requires some incredibly creative thinking (ie Apollo 13).
While it is a shame that we've lost two shuttles and two crews in space, it is also a part of the journey we must accept. John F Kennedy once said that we go into space because it is hard. Hard means that it takes a lot of planning, a lot of knowhow, the best equipment mankind has ever built, and the whole thing can still go wrong. To not continue the space program is to admit defeat and to say that anything hard is beyond our ability. To not continue the space program is the absolute last thing Columbia's crew would want. To not continue the space program would disgrace the memory of all those who've given their lives in the persuit of great human achievment.
Back for more? I'll make a simple point for now...
"The problem with that argument is that it has also been the law of the land, since the earliest days of this republic, that prisoners of war are not criminal suspects, but fall in a different category."
By your logic, drug dealers, our enemies in the war on drugs, have no legal rights and may be executed without trial. Therefore, any police officer has the right to execute anyone believed to be involved in any way, shape, or form with drug activities, seeing as they're the enemy in a war who are in the United States to cause harm to Americans.
And as always, Ex Parte Quirin established the lawfulness of military tribunals to try those accused as spies or saboteurs. Never does it say they may be held indefinitely without trial, hearing, or counsel. Obviously the judge in this case agrees with me, as Padilla has twice been granted a lawyer. The government you are defending continues to defy both law and the orders of a judge. Should they continue to do so, I'm afraid the judge has it within his authority to order Federal Marshals to take the prison where Padilla is being held, by force is necessary, and to bring Padilla to a location under the control of the local authorities.
I can think of nothing I'd like to see more (including the capture of Bin Laden), than to see Federal Marshalls taking Padilla out of that hellhole while his ex captures stand idly by with their hands on their heads. At that point, Bush may choose to stand by and take it, or he may choose to make himself a despot. You can well imagine the reaction of the American people to learn that soldiers, under the orders of Bush, have opened fire on civilian law enforcement officials.
Slashdot Mirror
" Abdullah al-Muhajir is being held in relation to having possibly planned a bombing attack. Glad i could help you."
His name is Padilla; read the court documents. Using his Islamic aka doesn't make him any more guilty, nor any less deserving of his rights as an American citizen. I suspect that the reason you like using his aka is because it makes you feel better about the government's ridiculously illegal attitude about the whole thing.
Secondly, all suspects are being held in relation to having possibly commited or attempting to commit a crime; hence the title "suspect", from the word: suspected. Being suspected of a crime is in no way an indication of guilt; in fact, it is just the opposite. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt by a jury of your peers.
Thirdly, Senators on the Senate Intelligence Commitee who have seen the sealed report detailed the "evidence" against Mr Padilla have commented publicly that the evidence is very weak. As one put it, (paraphrasing) 'I'm all for locking up the bad guys, but you've got to have evidence.'
Fouthly, unlike John Ashcroft's doomsday-sounding press counference, which talked of stopping a terrorist plot in progress, the Bush administration, through the deputy secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, said that there was no bomb, there was no target, there was no plan outside of some "loose talk". Jose Padilla is accused of travelling to foreign countries (oh no, not that), possibly meeting with some Al Qaeda opperatives (good Lord, not that freedom of association thing again), and possibly doing some research online about so-called "dirty bombs". Hell, I looked online for information about dirty bombs after seeing this horrifying announcement mentioning radiation, mass death, and mass destruction. What did I find? That probably every death caused by a "dirty bomb" would be caused by the explosion; not radiation exposure. Experts commenting on the prospect of a dirty bomb's radiological effects said basically that those exposed to the radiation of a dirty bomb would have more to fear from smoking than they would from the radiation. In other words, the radiation would be at such low doses as to cause little more than minor radiation poisoning.
Glad I could help you
" I wonder if Americans are more afraid of terrorism or of government actions."
As an American citizen, John Ashcroft provokes more apprehension in me than Osama Bin Laden. What does that tell you?
Why, you ask? Simple. Both are actively trying to strike at the heart of this nation's greatness; one is succeeding.
This is why I've been screaming about Jose Padilla since his announced arrest as a "material witness" back in May of last year. The real question is, how many other American citizens are being secretly held by either the DOJ or the DOD.
This is just plain sick.
You've obviously never experienced the horrific pain-in-a-box that was Red Hat 5.3 :)
"Initial firewire support, rudimental hyperthreading and SMP, sendmail and ftp updates. Where have you been people all these years?"
Not rebooting our servers every 2 weeks.
Hands.
Hands should be made illegal.
Especially "idle hands", as they "do the devil's work" (ie sharing files).
Remember kids, it's good to share, until you become a teenager, at which point sharing is illegal and will result in prison time.
From this point forward, the only lawful act shall be giving money to companies working for or affiliated with the RIAA.
"Yes, but this happens only after Intel announces their new 1024GB memory, which has only 6 bits per byte.."
Which has a 33,000 mile bus, increasing the latency to 400ms...
" until they equip the US Army in white Stormtrooper outfits"
;)
Would this mean that Tommy Franks should put on a dark black outfit with a menacing helmet after having a sizable portion of his skull removed?
Or would you prefer to see Colin Powell take the role of Vader?
The above mentioned "sacked poster" has been picked up by the Daily Mirror, whose 'news' staff has doubled in the recent days.
"no color"
No matter. Do you really print things in color that often? If so, do you find it's worth the absolutely astounding per-page cost of an inkjet to do this once-in-a-blue moon printing? Funny thing is, I thought the same thing as you until I got my first laser. Now, I can't imagine the last time I felt the need to print anything with color in it. For the few things that do have color, like maps on mapquest, greyscale works just as well at a fraction of the cost.
If you're printing out family photo albums in color, kinkos would probably be a much more time and cost effective solution. Otherwise, you're wasting money and time on a slow printer with a high per-page cost.
BZZZZTT. Sorry. Please try again.
"Does the slashdot crowd have a new size benchmark for small sizes?""
We... don't like to talk about it. Oh... oh you mean the memory thing...
"Can't beat it with a stick. "
No, but I can beat it with an HP Laserjet 4MP. Had it for more than a year with no costs aside from the intial cost (about $75) other than paper. Prints faster than any inkjet I've ever seen, with much sharper text while taking up less room than most inkjets.
To review: faster, cheaper, smaller, no midnight trips to Staples, no cost concerns about printing out the source code for a project I'm working on. Yes... yes I'll take the laser, thank you.
3000 targets destroyed in less than a week and you're complaining about 1 possible mistake? Don't you think this is perhaps just a little bit beyond reasonable expectations?
The problem is the myth of the all-powerful Americans which has been perpetuated throughout much of the world, especially poorer countries. It's the idea that America can do whatever it wants whenever it wants; that it is essentially omnipotent. For example, in 1993, 5 million Somalis killed 18 US Army rangers. 5 Million managed to kill 18 men. They celebrated. Why? They had killed the "all-powerful" Americans.(1) Anyway, when civilians die, or a friendly fire incident happens, or a building is destroyed by accident, everyone immediately jumps on the case of the Americans, as if this were done by intent, because American can do whatever it wants, meaning anything it does was done because it wanted it done. With all the police action we take care of in the world (because the UN is unable or unwilling to), it's absolutely astounding that we manage to make the few mistakes we do.
As for individual mistakes, most are due to simple human error, directly or indirectly, while a small number are due to the negligence of an individual. No technology is perfect, not even America's. Why? It's created by imperfect human beings. We're not all-power, nor are we invincible. We're simply human beings who are in a very good position to do a lot of good in the world who are trying to make the best of things. You want an apology? I can't recall a single mistake made by the military that wasn't immediately apologized for, but here it is: we're sorry. If we could be perfect and rid Iraq of Saddam without harming a single person, we would. But we're not all-powerful, and people die in wars. Our people are dying in this war.
We do what we do to try and make the world a better place, and sometimes things don't work out the way we'd like them to. We're getting better at things, though. If you need proof of this, look at World War II. In the invasion of Normandy alone, there were more than 30,000 casualties. That's for one battle. In Kosovo, there were 500 civilian casualties. A remarkable improvement. Now, here we are in Iraq, and people are going nuts over probably less than 30 civlians dead. 1 innocent death is too many, but war is likened to "hell" for good reason. More careful you say? We agree. This is why we spend billions developing bombs that hit their target within a few feet, when the same result (in terms of military success) could be achieved at a lower cost by simply carpet bombing everything. The fact is that we care greatly about the lives of the innocent, and we ought to be held to a high standard. But please, don't try to hold us to an impossible standard - perfection.
(1)as a side note, I'd have had no problem with the US military carpet bombing Mogadishu after this incident. Fortunately, our military has more restraint than I do, although I still think we ought to track down all 5 million of those who attacked our troops and summarily execute them as unlawful combatants, as per the Geneva Conventions. (no uniforms or insignias)
"Sorry, didn't you get the memo? That has been repealed by the Axiom Review Board and replaced with "because the customer is a probably a criminal"."
In the fast-moving modern world, you're already out of date.
Memo dated today: "because the customer is a always a criminal"
If you're reading this, now is the time to revolt. You've reached the "no-man's land" of your government forcing you to pay it in order to think. That you have no money is a sign that your government wishes you to be intellectually bankrupt as well. Ignorant citizens are the easiest to oppress.
Let me try this another way:
Your government gone bad.
Burn it.
Make good one.
From m-w.com:
Translation is the act of changing the words, not the content. They may think US, UK, and Aussie forces are occupiers, but translation should never change the content or intent of the person speaking. It's no better than changing "we're going to bring food to you all" to "we're going to bring death to you all". If they're going to cover a press conference in a unbiased way, they need to translate in an unbiased way as well. If they wish to function as a propaganda machine for Saddam Hussein, that's fine to, but don't try and pass them off as 'unbiased' or even decent journalists.
No media outlet is without some bias and/or slant, but fudging a translation is a blatant lie.
You obviously haven't heard their translations of press conferences. When Rumsfeld says "coalition forces", it's translated on al-Jazeera as "occupation forces". Everyone is going to have their individual slant on how things are, but when you mangle a translation in that way, it shows intent. I find that disturbing.
And I'm amazed at the forgetfulness of the average person. Laws such as the 1974 Privacy Act were in response to the massive, intrusive, unconstitutional acts of the FBI during the 1950s and 1960s. The kind of surveillance we're now seeing were done surreptitiously by the FBI in attempts to sabotage the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-war movement during Vietnam.
We live in the freest country on Earth? Does this have something to do with that whole, war is peace, slavery is freedom thing? Just what other countries are you comparing the US to when you say this? Have you visited other countries?
If you want to sit back while your entire life is reduced to nothing more than data in a database, that's fine, but I believe that a human being is more than just data. I believe I have an intrinsic right to human dignity - something which is taken away when my entire life becomes an entry in some damned database to be searched through, scrutinized, colated, etc. My government has absolutely no right to catalog and judge every moment of my life, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my children grow up in a nation where they have to watch what they say and do, lest they be mistaken for a "threat".
If you think it's anti-American to question the tactics and policies of the government, then you know not the first thing about what it is to be an American. I believe you'll find the regimes in China, Iraq, Iran, or North Korea more to your liking, as those who question the government there are shot. I question my government's actions and plans because I recognize that it is a servant of the people. As such, I have a right and a duty to question anything I see as degrading the service provided to me and my fellow citizens by our government. If you don't like it, move; I really don't give a damn.
Just for a change, I think we need to rename a couple of things. Specifically, I think we need to rename the "Homeland Security Dept" to: "The Fuck-the-Average-Citizen Dept".
I'm not sure if that'll catch on, but it certainly would make me feel as though my government were attempting honesty for a change.
Oh, how we yearn for the times around 1974, which you'll all remember is the year that the Privacy Act was made law.
I too enjoyed Voyager very much. While it had some episodes dealing with time travel and such that didn't work very well, it had many time travel episodes that did work well. I found the character development to be absolutely extraordinary, and I continue to be amazed as I watch how the crew grew into a family over the 7 years the show ran. A crew of renegades, criminals, and uptight Starfleet types managed to pull together and grow to a point where any one of them would give their life for the others. Personally, I could have stood to see it go on another 2 or three seasons. Endgame, in my view, was a gimmicky end that left far too many questions unanswered. The show, the crew, and the fans deserved more.
In terms of the Borg, they've been ruined time and time again in Star Trek, movie and show alike. What began as the perfect enemy, a force of nature if you will, was turned into little more than collection of LANs brought together by a subspace wireless WAN, controlled by a single individual who somehow rose to power in the collective. Its unfortunate that such a truly ingenious design was so completely destroyed, but it wasn't accomplished soley within Voyager. I suppose at some point, something had to be done to make the Borg somehow less powerful though. One cube nearly assimilated Earth a number of times. What would 20 have done?
Species 8472 is another point which many ST fans dislike. Personally, I liked them a lot in their first few episodes. Up until the point where they were building that Starfleet recreation, they were doing quite well. They were powerful, adaptive, could annihilate entire planets at once, and destroyed Borg cubes like childrens' toys. Their only weakness was on the bio warfare end of things. The whole Earth recreation episode just made everything a bit too cheery and nice; as if things always work out for the best in the end.
Overall, I think the series was very captivating. It had its share of plot holes, dead episodes, and other assorted issues, but it also introduced us to the next generation of Starfleet personnel. We were given a glimpse into the future of Star Trek with this younger, smarter crew whose captain was more intelligent and strong than just about anyone before her. Personally, I liked Kate Mulgrew as the captain. I think she brought a very strong, yet compassionate personality to the role of captain; a depth of character not seen before in the Star Trek world. I liked Tom Paris, who grew from a troubled child into a responsible, dependable family man. I liked Tuvok, who did more for teaching us about the Vulcan race than Spock could have done in 20,000 seasons of TOS. I liked how they went to their tricorders when in unfamiliar surroundings instead of feeling around and staring at everything like an idiot. I liked the fact that they had to deal with real problems on that ship, including depression, starvation, death up front and personal, and human interpersonal relationships. While Kirk ran around trying to bang every blue-skinned quasi-female he came across, Janeway and Chakotay dealt with a near constant sexual tension between them; something that could never come to be. I liked how Neelix was annoying. Why? Because he annoyed everyone, which made for some humerous situations. I found Tuvok's dialogs with Neelix to be hilarious at times. Sure Neelix annoyed me, but he really annoyed Tuvok, a vulcan. How the hell annoying do you have to be to annoy a Vulcan?
So while many have judged Voyager's episodes as bad, or even unwatchable, I found the series as a whole to be far better than any that had come before it. You could plug a season 2 TNG crew in a season 7 episode and notice little difference. Try plugging a season 2 Voyager crew into a Season 7 episode. The doctor? The captain? Kes? Tom Paris? Neelix? Chakotay? Harry Kim? They were all completely and totally different people by season 7. The hardline captain, the frustrated commander, the renegade pilot, the naive and scared ops officer, the undeveloped and rude doctor; they wouldn't stan
" I'd like to use freenet, but I can't. I can't risk the possibility, however remote, of having child porn cached on my computer."
Chances are, if there were any child porn or other materials considered illegal in your locality, they wouldn't be whole files. From what I understand with Freenet, you're only hosting bits and pieces of files. Therefore, it's not as though you could browse through your data store and see pictures and movies you find offensive. Chances are, you would see little more than garbled 'junk' completely unidentifiable. It's part of how Freenet works.
The idea is that the only way to see anything on Freenet is to look through the Freenet interface itself. You're not supposed to know what you're storing, who's asking for it, who you're sending it to (as in final destination), and you're not supposed to know where you're getting stuff from. Basically, the idea is that no one knows where anything else is actually coming from or going to because every data request looks like another hand-off.
If I understand it correctly (and I may be wrong, please correct me if this is the case), when you're downloading a freesite on Freenet, and one of the items on this site is a picture, the picture is stored in pieces. Your node checks its data store to see if any parts of the picture are stored there (to save time and bandwidth), and if it can't find it, sends out a request for the pieces it doesn't have. The trick is, the request it sends spreads a bit like a virus. Node A, you, sends out a request for data to nodes B and C. B and C don't have it in their data store, so they send out a request identical to the one you sent them to nodes D, E, F, and G. This continues up to a certain number of nodes deep, with the number of nodes deep depends on how each node is set up. If node E has the data in its data store, it sends it to node B, which then sends it to node A. Node A doesn't know where the data originated, node B doesn't know that node A is the final destination, nor does it know that the data came from E's data store, and node E doesn't know where the data ended up. That's the beauty of the blinded system, a compromised host doesn't know much of anything. Compromising half the network means you might manage to track the flow of half the network's traffic, but you still couldn't say with any certainty which node, or computer, is storing what data. Just because node B can respond to the request doesn't mean it has the data stored locally. And just because B asked E for the data, doesn't mean that the guy operating B is looking for that data, nor does it mean that data is necessarily stored on his computer.
If that makes any sense, I hope it helps. If I'm misunderstanding how the network operates, please correct me.
Opteron is AMD's first real entry into the server market. AthlonMP was never truly meant for anything other than workstations or very low level entry servers. Itanium is Intel's offering for very strong, high performance servers. Their Xeon chip is the high-end workstation to mid-range server chip. All indications are that AMD will be targetting low to mid range servers with the Opteron.
Intel's point is that they don't believe anything other than high-end servers will use 64-bit chips effectively. AMD's point is that anyone can use whatever they like. A dual Opteron with 2MB L2 will most likely be targetted against dual Xeon machines. AMD will try to offer a better price point and the ability to run 64-bit applications to potential customers in their attempt to win partners. The launch of the Opteron had best go off MUCH better than the launch of the AthlonMP if AMD hopes to make it in the server business. Already weary of new products, big businesses will be looking for any excuse not to go with an Opteron. Even Intel has trouble convincing long-time customers to invest in new products, as evidenced by their dismal Itanium 1 launch. If the chipset and board problems we saw in the Tyan AthlonMPs creep up in any of the Opteron boards, AMD's cash cow will be seen in the business community as little more than the 'roo meat at McD's. That, potentially, could end up being the nail in AMD's coffin.
They have a lot riding on this launch, so let's all hope it goes off without a hitch. If it does, I think Xeon processors will be collecting dust within a year's time while Opterons slowly replace what's currently in the workplace. In very, very few circumstances will a company look at Opterons as an alternative for Itaniums. In terms of performance? Who knows; we haven't see benchmarks on production Opterons yet. If it's everything we're told it is, it may very well outperform the Itanium 2s vis-a-vis.
The nice thing about Opteron is that it's main competitor will be the P4 Xeon processor, which will soon start showing signs of age. The P4 was designed for high clock speeds, but it can only go so far. When Clawhammer is released this Winter, AMD will truly have a more rounded product line. For the time being, all they have is the Athlon, which seems like a big mistake to me.
AMD's future existence depends very much on the performance of the Opteron and Clawhammer with 32-bit applications, in a 32-bit environment. The best case scenario for AMD would be if M$'s next major OS release were 64-bit only. Unfortunately, this seems highly unlikely, but AMD can dream, can't they?
"Yes, sir, that new system with the latest Windows will be $12,000 if you go with Intel and the Itanium, or $699 if you go with AMD and the Athlon64. Yes, sir, it is pretty funny; I agree."
"NASA Engineers said they could use U.S. Spy satillites to check the damage on Columbia, like Sept 11, they did nothing to try and prevent before with having knowledge of what was to come."
Sure, except for two things. Number one, they didn't believe there was any reason for concern. Do you have any idea how many people come up with possible problems during any given mission? The engineers at NASA are trained to think worst case scenario at all times so they can plan accordingly. As such, the mission control personnel are trained to decide which are valid concerns and which are remote. In this case, they were incorrect. News flash: humans are sometimes wrong.
Secondly, assuming they knew for a fact that the tiles were badly damaged. What did you want them to do about it? They had no provisions for in-space repairs, as the tiles have to be specially fit into place and you can only carry but so many spare parts on the shuttle. There wasn't enough fuel to reach the ISS, nor did they have any way to dock with it, as it requires specialized docking equipment. As well, there is no other way to get the astronaughts down from space since there are no emergency escape vehicles. It takes months to prepare for a shuttle launch, which is far too much time for another shuttle to go up and rescue them. Obviously, they couldn't stay in space forever, so they had to get back home somehow.
In essence, NASA didn't believe there was going to be a major problem with the shuttle's re-entry, and they couldn't do much about it even if they did. Looking at how bad the damage was with a satellite would have given them a better idea of the odds of survival, but it wouldn't have changed their course of actions. Each launch is carefully planned out, and even very minor deviation from that plan requires some incredibly creative thinking (ie Apollo 13).
While it is a shame that we've lost two shuttles and two crews in space, it is also a part of the journey we must accept. John F Kennedy once said that we go into space because it is hard. Hard means that it takes a lot of planning, a lot of knowhow, the best equipment mankind has ever built, and the whole thing can still go wrong. To not continue the space program is to admit defeat and to say that anything hard is beyond our ability. To not continue the space program is the absolute last thing Columbia's crew would want. To not continue the space program would disgrace the memory of all those who've given their lives in the persuit of great human achievment.
I look forward to seeing the shuttle fly again.
Back for more? I'll make a simple point for now...
"The problem with that argument is that it has also been the law of the land, since the earliest days of this republic, that prisoners of war are not criminal suspects, but fall in a different category."
By your logic, drug dealers, our enemies in the war on drugs, have no legal rights and may be executed without trial. Therefore, any police officer has the right to execute anyone believed to be involved in any way, shape, or form with drug activities, seeing as they're the enemy in a war who are in the United States to cause harm to Americans.
And as always, Ex Parte Quirin established the lawfulness of military tribunals to try those accused as spies or saboteurs. Never does it say they may be held indefinitely without trial, hearing, or counsel. Obviously the judge in this case agrees with me, as Padilla has twice been granted a lawyer. The government you are defending continues to defy both law and the orders of a judge. Should they continue to do so, I'm afraid the judge has it within his authority to order Federal Marshals to take the prison where Padilla is being held, by force is necessary, and to bring Padilla to a location under the control of the local authorities.
I can think of nothing I'd like to see more (including the capture of Bin Laden), than to see Federal Marshalls taking Padilla out of that hellhole while his ex captures stand idly by with their hands on their heads. At that point, Bush may choose to stand by and take it, or he may choose to make himself a despot. You can well imagine the reaction of the American people to learn that soldiers, under the orders of Bush, have opened fire on civilian law enforcement officials.