I disagree. For one thing, there are many strategy sites online with good advice. (Example: PokerTips.org). For another, its better to learn how to play based on good fundamentals: Math and reading people by their bets. Learning how to read physical tells is useful but far overrated. If you have good fundamentals, then you will be a better player and exploit tells more efficiently.
And finally, i'd say that you learn more against good competition. And the best competition these days is on the internet, for the simple reason that anyone in the world can play there, whereas, your hometown is limited to who is physically nearbly. I'll agree that play money tables are worthless and may even harm your game starting out. It's better to start off at the low limits.
2. Second piece of advice, never play for money online. Just don't. Don't do it.
I think this is silly. IF it's legal for you to play in your country/state, i say go for it. online you'll find better games (more fish) and it's also faster, more convenient, and you can leave anytime. Whereas, if you go to a live game you'd feel silly leaving after 5 minutes if there are no good games, the rooms are smoky, sometimes far from home, etc.
Also, you can find games with limits as low as $.01-$.02 online, so you can actually play "just for fun" without worrying about losing money. You could lose everything and just be out a few bucks. The truth is that there ARE good players online and there are also BAD players online. Whatever youre playing for you'll find it.
As for addiction, you should be careful about that but, as with anything fun, one must exercise self-control. If you find it becoming an unhealthy hobby, then just quit. Luckily, poker as not as addictive as "gambling" for a few reasons; it's a "game of skill", so if you lose, you're going to keep losing and quit; it's more social, since it is a multiplayer game; theres a lot of thinking involved, it's not a "passive" experience; I'd say that playing poker isn't really much more addictive than say, playing video games.. but YMMV.
While it's possible to beat blackjack, the truth is that it is much harder to beat than poker and the risk is much greater.
In poker, you play against the other players at the table; if you have weak competition, it's easy to win. In a No-Limit game, it's not uncommon to "double up" and finish a game with many times what you started.
In blackjack, you play against the house. You have a slight edge by counting cards, but nowadays the house usually has a six-deck shoe that only gets dealt halfway through or less. In reality, the house could eliminate your advantage altogether by shuffling more, but they don't because alot of card counters end up making mistakes and losing lots of money. Even a single mistake could cost you your whole advantage, and usually you have to put up a large amount to win a small amount (say, $10,000 to win $500 an hour). Then, if you get caught counting, you get kicked out of the casino.
Really, poker is much easier to beat than blackjack.
There are no taxes on businesses - All taxes are passed on to their customers. Telecoms just are kind enough to itemize it.
It depends on the elasticity of demand. When demand is elastic, the producer bears most of the burden of the tax; when demand is inelastic, the consumer bears most of the burden. Phone service, i would guess, is inelastic.
that's the point.. Sure, they could expand the cache, add more execution units to the superscalar core, add new instructions.. but these things are difficult, costly, and time-consuming to design. it's easier for them to just slap two old cores onto a die and call it a day.
The P4 is already complicated as hell and they are really facing diminishing returns wrt new optimizations.. however, this is an easy and cheap way to leverage the fact that they can put more transistors on a single chip.
Dual-core CPUs will *only* work with multithreaded code, not just "run best" with multithreaded code.
Depends on the implementation. The processor could split up a workload to two cores if it is not multithreaded but there are few dependencies. For example, the two [execution] cores could share an issue queue and a reorder buffer/commit unit. It might, at the same time, have hardware to handle two instruction streams (multithreading). HT is proof that you can do both of these tasks. So, yes, a dual-core could theoretically handle both single-thread and multi-threaded code (running best on MT of course)
When I say incomplete synchronization, i was not talking about clocks. i simply mean that there is not full forwarding between the two cores, as you might find between two execution units in a single core.. thus, if there is a dependency somewhere, you may have to stall one core until you get the result instead of forwarding. You might also imagine that each core has its own L1 cache, while sharing an L2, etc. etc. That is why a dual 4-way is not as efficient as a single 8-way.
It really depends on how the dual core is implemented. Since i don't work at intel I won't claim to know how they chose to approach it. However, I did want to point out that the two cores are not necessarily completely independent of each other, although that is one possible way to do it. (which is not much better than MP). In any case, the 8-way single core is never slower than the dual 4-way cores, because of HyperThreading.. (this is excepting any inefficiencies in HT).
Transistors are getting smaller and the chipmakers can fit more and more onto a chip.. However, it is much cheaper (less design time) to simply run two cores with some "glue" hardware than to design a new core that is 8-way superscalar instead of 4 (for example).
One way to look at dual-core is to view it as a dual-processor (MP) system with a very low communications cost, since both cores are on the same die. The disadvantage is similar; since the two units are not perfectly synchronized, such a system runs best with multithreaded code. A single-core CPU with the same number of transistors will run faster, while the dual-core is not quite "double the speed" of one of its cores.
One of the most popular variations [of Rock, Paper, Scissors] is called "Cat, Microwave, Tinfoil". Cat beats tinfoil by ripping it up, tinfoil beats microwave by starting a fire, and microwave beats cat by cooking it. This version was created because, to the creators of Cat Microwave Tinfoil, it doesn't make sense that paper beats rock by covering it (as it doesn't damage the rock, while on the other hand it can destroy the paper by tearing it).
[from Wikipedia]
It is acknowledged among the SEO (Search engine optimization) community that PageRank, while still in effect, is being greatly de-emphasized by google in calculating the final score. (A page's relevance is PageRank * Non-PageRank-Factors) The problem was that blogs were getting extremely high pageranks due to their interlinking convention, and other sites were getting high pageranks by creating a bunch of fake links to them. And although people rarely discussed it, there was the problem of the "rich get richer" syndrome, where people would link to pages that were high on the results, increasing the score of those pages. It is very difficult for new websites to get recognized because of this problem. So as a result google has increased the importance of anchor text relative to pagerank. (It has decreased the relevance of blogs but it's hard to say if it's helped with the other problems)
I noticed your web site says little about education issues.
What proposals do you have for improving the quality of public schools, and how do you plan on financing these programs? Do you support or oppose affirmative action, and what proposals (if any) do you have for attracting minority students to california universities? What priority does education have on your agenda and what impact will this have on your budget?
Poker is primarily an odds game, that is to say it is all math. There are three places where a decision has to be made. The first decision is, "Should I pay to see the next card?" This is called Drawing. The second decision is, "I have a decent hand, but my opponent raised me. Is he bluffing?". The third decision is, "Should I try to bluff?".
Odds come into play everywhere. When you are Drawing, you must have the correct odds or else you will lose money in the long run. That is to say, if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your straight on the next card, you must have at least 3:1 odds to Draw. (The pot must have $3 for every $1 you pay). There is also the concept of "implied odds" - predicting how much will be in the pot at the end of the hand and not just at the present.
When deciding whether or not to bluff, you must know the odds of your bluff succeeding, and add that to the odds of you hitting your out on the next card. At that point the calculation becomes the same pot-odds calculation described above. This involves some reading of your opponent; you have to know how often he will call, and how often the bluff will be sucessful. Luckily, computers can be pretty good at modeling and seeing patterns, probably much better than humans. It seems that Neural nets and other well-developed AI techniques would be very good at modeling these behaviors and predicting future ones. Calling bluffs will require the same type of knowledge.
Some have asked how it's possible to read patterns on the internet. Some people don't really have patterns in their game, they just call everything. These people will lose because they put too much money in the pot, they don't have the odds for the bets and calls they're making. Mostly, decent players have patterns in how they bet, for example they will bet when they only have 4 out of 5 flush cards. (A Semi-bluff). Computers have an advantage here because they can introduce a random element that humans cannot reproduce.
The recent winner of the World Series of Poker, Chris Moneymaker, had never played in a live game until the WSOP, he had only played internet games. This probably gave him good fundamentals in reading people based on their bets, and good math fundamentals.
Some have also questioned the wiseness of playing internet poker, since it is just "gambling". Well I'll tell you a little secret, poker isn't really gambling, poker is a skill game and especially with so many bad players out there who think it is just luck, hoping they'll get lucky, it's easy to win money. That's why the same players consistently win thousands of dollars online. For more information on poker strategy and reviews of online casinos, see this site: PokerTips.org
Poker is not a card game, it's a people game (aka don't play the cards, play the people). It's all about bluffing and reading other people's bluffs. I'm baffled that people even bother playing poker on the internet. Even with webcams the game wouldn't be the same at all.
While it's true that poker involves reading people, it is primarily a game of calculating odds and using them to your advantage. For example: if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your flush on the next card, then you should only pay to see the next card if there are $4 in the pot for every $1 you must pay. Etc. This gets more complicated with bluffing.
It's also easy to read people on the internet. People still bluff and call with patterns that reveal their hand, and observant players can take advantage of this. That's why the same players always win at the high-stakes table. That's why, in the recent World Series of Poker, the winner was an internet player who had never played a live game before
For more information on internet poker, please see PokerTips.org . This is a great site that has lots of strategy information and reviews of online casinos so you know which ones you can trust.
SCO has issued a letter saying SCO Linux customers won't be sued.
Sideshow Bob: The following neighbourhood residents will not be killed by me: Ned Flanders, Maude Flanders, Homer Simpson, Marge Simpson, Lisa Simpson, that little baby Simpson...that is all.
[Homer runs up to Bart's room]
Homer: Woo-hoo! Did you hear that Bart?
Heh--oh...
I can't feel too sorry for the FreeCraft people. Open source projects need to think of more creative and original names instead of just ripping off someone else's name and making a "clever" modification
No doubt there will be many posts on how there are bad programmers who got in "just for the money" and not for the love of computers and now they are getting what they deserve. I believe this is unfair because there are a lot of people who aren't really brilliant at anything and may not have any strong interests, but they are trying hard to make a living. It's also unfair because money is a factor for everyone, whether you love computers or not.
But I also think there are more interesting classes of people who have been affected by the bust -- the good programmers, the brilliant thinkers, the guys with a thousand ideas, the ones who love computing. The people who got into CS believing that they wouldn't have to deal with the usual silly competitions about what college you went to or how well your professors liked you -- believing that the only thing that mattered was how good your ideas are. The people who, in the 90's could easily start a multi-million dollar company but now have to settle for a mundane, overworked, thankless and low-paying teaching/research job, and that is if they are lucky. They might settle for this job simply because they get to do interesting research, but who wants to deal with harder and harder grad school admissions and then educational politics? Not many that I know.
The bust is also affecting the mid-level players. Reflecting on the exuberance of the boom days, managers are turning toward credentialism to measure their applicants. While this is arguably a good thing for the industry, nobody I know wants to be judged by what college he went to, how well they interview, or other silly metrics. There is also a move to squeeze more out of individual programmers (believe it or not) because budgets are lower. And with fewer possibilities to get capital for your own venture, college students are looking at a future as a programmer, which is looking less like a professional job and more like mental labor. Some might call the dropouts dumb, but if one is entering such a profession, he ought to examine his own decisions first.
Regarding "the whole government is corrupt". They're also elected. Lots of people question the 2000 election. I don't. But no matter what, you can't deny the will of the people, over time (see 2002). If they are corrupt, then that means that all of America is corrupt. Osamas people are the result of a lifetime of living through propaganda. And even if you think FOXNews is conservative, Americans do NOT live through propaganda. If we bomb Iraq, we are TRYING to minimize civilian casualties. We're spending millions on precision laser-guided weapons in the midst of economic hard times, but Saddam is placing his missile launchers in mosques and schools and hospitals. Again, a world of difference.
- in magical happy-world, don't kill Iraq."
I'm talking real-world.
- In this world, let him kill himself"
Won't happen. (prove it will.) Waiting for him to die won't work either. By all accounts his sons are even more brutal than he. And in the meantime, millions of Iraqis suffer, and he gets nuclear weapons. Next.
kill Iraq, not terror. It's just finishing up a game that's been delayed.
= war
Ninjas. Seriously, they RULE.
I wouldn't be against a targeted assassination. If we could pull it off:)
Has Sadam really gassed "his own people"? Well, who are "his own people"?
Fine. He's gassed Iraqis -- therefore he is extremely unfit to control Iraq -- so let's take him out.
Now let's talk about Sadam. "Sadam is evil" blah, is it Sadam or the entire Iraqi government? Does Sadam even exist? There are reports that say nobody has seen the "real Sadam" in years, publically. He could be dead already. What reason would a government have to tell its people that their leader, of whom they have several doubles, is dead?
Yes, the allusion I am making is not merely imagined. Unless you are thinking of one I have not thought of, in which case you are wrong.
yes, Saddam is alive. Dan Rather interviewed him last week. If he's not alive, SOMEONE is doing all of this crap, and needs to be stopped
Arguably a problem, but not directly relevant to the issue of Iraq. Certainly doesn't make the Administration "terrorists"
-Our WMD, Our refusal to comply with regulations we insist other nations follow, Our developement of weapons which could only be used to attack in the interest of "defence"
Difference is that we are a democracy, and we trust democracies to have destructive weapons, but not people like Saddam who take over other countries for their wealth. The Saddams of the world are a threat to the notion of sovereignty as we know it. We're not exactly threatening to invade France or Britain if they don't disarm. Also, Saddam HAS USED WMD against his own civilians and Iranians. George W. Bush has not. The difference is extremely important.
-9/11 didn't prove anything about foreign governments
Wrong. It proved we should have taken out the Taliban long ago. Terrorists can't exist in some mythical limbo. They need state support, if only to ensure that they have somewhere to live and gather and raise money.
You choose the defenceless one, 'cause that one you know you can hit.
Are you implying that because the president and terrorists both employ strategy that they are moral equivalents? That's extremely misguided. Terrorists are wrong because they kill innocent people, on purpose, so others will listen to them. In the war on Iraq, we may kill innocents, but only by accident, and only when pursuing human freedom or defending ourselves. There is a huge moral difference
his _ADMITTED_ attacks against american freedoms are out-of-line and bring up serious questions about whether he is fit for office
He may have gone too far in defense of the homeland, but it is nothing like a police state-- it is not some concerted effort to consolidate his power by eliminating his enemies. It was a legitimate response invoked by the legitimate fears of an American people recently struck by a horrific attack on innocents. His motives were to control terrorism. If that is over the line, the Court can check his power, and the people can elect legislators to roll back the changes. You can't say that Bush is evil -- Congress passed those laws. Your position is only tenable if you contend that the entire GOVERNMENT is evil, every last person who voted for it. We Americans were willing to temporarily sacrifice freedoms to ensure we didn't get hit again. This was evident when the Republicans took the Senate in 2002. It was worth it. However, None of this has anything to do with iraq.
I have not said that war with Iraq is bad. _This_ war is bad.
Why is that? It seems illogical. If war is good, we should do it now, to prevent Saddam from building more WMD. In fact, we should have done it a year ago, before the UN. The longer we wait, the more American soldiers he will kill. The more he will be able to prolong conflict and make us kill Iraqi soldiers. And what would you propose instead? The challenge is unanswered.
Did Rumsfield suddenly realize that giving WMD's to Sadaam was a bad thing, maybe even immoral?
You joke, but it is possible. September 11th changed the way a lot of us think, the Adminstration not excluded. And George W. Bush never supported Saddam.
It really doesn't matter what this is "about". If this is about stopping terrorism, but we also liberate millions of Iraqis by accident, liberation still occurs. I don't care if we're invading Iraq for their turnip crop. Facts are facts. The Iraqis would be better off with anyone but Saddam -- even a makeshift republic that we have to piece together. Fortunately, President Bush has committed to democracy in Iraq, in the form of a very public speech which has been covered by all the major media outlets, even though i did link to the press release. (If you're afraid a transcript might somehow be biased, feel free to look it up in the NYT)
And you didn't answer my question. What SHOULD we do, if not war? Let the people suffer? Let Iraq pose a threat to the world? You wake up. There is real suffering in the world. We have the power to stop it.
I hope more users become frustrated by the blathering no nothings who post their anti-war/anti-american messages without considering all that has been done already to avoid a war. Thanks for helping to prove that not everyone out there is blind to the facts or crazed with misdirected anger towards our country.
Might I say a few words about Anti-Americanism? As the son of immigrants I am acutely aware of the state of the Union compared to the other intellectual and political wastelands on the planet. My parents moved here precisely because here the voters have a true voice in government, here we can determine the direction of our government and the future of our children. Here we can work towards our own futures.
For those out there who think that President Bush is "corrupt" or "bloodthirsty", my friends, you do not know the meanings of those words. You have no experience with truly corrupt leaders. I only need a few minutes of the tales of The Old Country to realize how lucky I am, and for that I wake up everyday and thank God (metaphorically, since i'm atheist).
Government is faulty, as Madison pointed out: In government are the weaknesses of men -- if men were angels, then no government would be necessary. So I believe that our leaders may sometimes act contrary to the public interest or otherwise selflishly. But I also believe that you have more opportunity here than anywhere else in the world to avoid that kind of thing.
I also believe that, when it comes to the important things, our leaders aren't selling us out. They are defending the national honor and the national freedom. No President has engendered such strong emotions in me as President Bush, because he is a man who truly loves his country and cares for its people. And that is evident in the politically suicidal position he has taken on Iraq -- a path which can only win him more enemies, but he has undertaken for the sake of the future of our children.
We moved here because this is a country in which people are free to voice their opinions and we encourage criticism and debate. But do not be mistaken. There is a difference between constructive criticism and whining. I love criticism and self-improvement, but there is nothing I find more pathetic than the whining, nauseated, anti-American, anti-Bush, I'm-angry-Democrats-didn't-do-it-first tirades of so many people lucky to live in America or Europe. Because I truly believe that America is successful not because we whine, but because we find solutions. We solve our problems, and we don't have problems with optimal solutions. And that is why I issued this challenge today. I am of open mind enough to take your solutions seriously -- provided that you are willing to make them. Don't whine. Tell us what you would do.
Thanks for your support, pauldy. I don't mind if know-nothings post their anti-American messages. I just wish people would stop modding down my anti-anti-American messages. This is the third time now I've posted something in favor of the war and been modded down. I have a feeling that if these moderations were not so widespread, then there would be more "sane voices" on slashdot.
Perhaps it is because people with facts and logic to support their positions need not fight with the tools of censorship. But pro-democracy voices on slashdot need not fret. If we see unfairly moderated posts, we will mod them back up. We don't need to reciprocate by playing their censorship games.
We can fight with words and ideas; and, from the looks of this thread, they cannot fight back. All they have are vulgarity, name-calling, President Bush insults, and mod points. That is nothing compared to the truth.
I post not because I wish to be given credit for stating facts (which I feel are obvious). I post because there are people out there with a good heart and a sense of morality but perhaps are not informed enough to assemble their knowledge into one coherent course of action that they can advocate. Certainly, people are busy with jobs, school, and family. They may be limited to what they've heard from a usually intelligent friend or professor. And thus the possibility of misinformation.
Don't let the abusive moderators or swearers intimidate you or depress you. Just say what is on your mind, and people will listen, even if they aren't as noisy as the people who are wrong. They are out there, reading.
And I can't think of another way to insist that there is a simple question that you ought to answer. That is, what SHOULD we do if Bush is wrong? If you think that using the word "fucking" over and over somehow gives you more legitimacy, you're wrong. And i'm only "ignoring" what you said to the extent that I am looking for an answer to my question. What SHOULD we do? What COULD we do that you wouldn't consider "terroristic"? Why don't you answer MY question?
As for censoring, it is very real. I am sure there are plenty of moderators who aren't on this power trip. But there are just enough to ruin the system. And as for the "off-topicness", i am giving the people what they want. All the highly modded posts are about the war, or only about the "battery" in the context of the righteousness of war. You can throw insults all you want-- but you still haven't answered the question. Is it perhaps because you haven't got an answer?
Now for the terrorism accusation. It's just petty name-calling when reduced to "Bush is a terrorist" (or my favorite, "Bush=Hitler"). But the sheer uninformedness of equating war and terrorism in a moral sense is astoundingly stupid. If you can't see the difference between intentionally blowing up children to get the "infidels" out of the "holy land" and a military that tries its hardest using weapons designed for the purpose of minimizing civilian casualties while trying to save them from a murderous, genocidal, bent-on-domination tyrant, then you are out of your mind. ("Murderous" refers to one who kills innocent people, not by accident, but on purpose. "Genocidal" refers to one who intentionally kills people based on their ethnicity -- as opposed to, say, WMD programs, history of use of WMD, or to protect the free world from terrorism. "bent-on-domination" refers to one who has repeatedly launched wars of aggression for the purpose of taking their oil wealth. "tyrant" refers to one who governs, say, by murdering his enemies, instead of through the process of election) If you've got such little moral judgment that you honestly and truly think that Bush and Osama bin Laden are "equals" then you need to seriously reassess your values. If you think that, since Bush only won by a few hundred votes in Florida, he is a "tyrant" comparable to Saddam, who has your tongue cut out on national TV for insulting him, then you're more than uninformed-- you're foolish. I've answered your question which ignored mine. But you chose to respond to my post. So now you answer my question -- or simply admit that you have no answer.
The fact is, if we all got together as nations and set up, ratified, enforced, and evolved a system of international law,
Saddam has had 12 years to deal with 16 resolutions. We've given him the letter of the law. He's ignored it. Now it's time to enforce the law. There is nothing unilateral about it.
Bush has gone out of his way, delaying for a whole year, trying to persuade the UN. In this process he is unecessarily prolonging the suffering of the Iraqi people, endangering US troops by giving Saddam unnecessary warning, and compromising intelligence sources and methods. All for the sake of multilateralism. This is the most multilateralist president in the history of the United States. No war was ever deliberated over for so long, with so much credence and legitimacy granted to world opinion by a country defending itself against a war (of terrorism) and enforcing international law (resolutions 1 through 16). Clinton certainly didn't ask for UN approval to bomb Iraq in '98, and essentially went into Bosnia and Kosovo with much UN fretting and opposition. Yet nowadays the agreement is that Clinton waited TOO LONG to do those things; or did them without enough force.
Tell that to the families that have lost mothers, fathers, children, aunts, and uncles to US foriegn policy. Tell the hundreds of Americans who still have family in Iraq that "history" doesn't matter. Has the US ever made a public apology or offered real long term support to make up for past crimes?
Very well-- lets listen to those Iraqi families. Almost every last Iraqi exile will tell you that we must remove Saddam. That is how we begin to repay the Iraqis. That is how we apologize. We don't do it by leaving him there to kill millions more. You've proved my point for me.
Back this up with real proof. I'm sure the US has proof, but in the interest of maintaining an edge in spying, the president probably decided not to reveal the information.
The burden of proof isn't on me. I'll give you some links to get you started- but this murdering, torturing, genocidal, chemical-weapons using madman has given the world plenty of proof of what he's done. the burden of proof is on those who would protect him-- on YOU. Here's the links:
OneTwoThree
That is on the WTC alone. Saddam OPENLY pays families of suicide bombers. Here's one on Salman Pak:
Four
I could go on forever. Clearly it is you who has not done enough reading. I've fulfilled a burden that wasn't even mine. Now you think we should protect a madman. You present your evidence.
If he was convincing, wouldn't the European nations given their support?
Actually, they all do, with the exception of France and Germany, who are trying to dominate Europe. And instead of just listening to other people, why don't you analyze the facts? If those guys are right, prove it. Don't just base your opinion on their authority. That is no more valid than me basing my opinion on George W. Bush's opinion alone. Chirac, by the way, is the only major world leader to be personal friends with Saddam, dating back to the days when he helped sell Saddam two nuclear reactors. He's also being investigated for corruption, and is only not being prosecuted because of immunity afforded by his office. The argument at the UN isn't about Iraq. They all know he is in violation of the terms of the resolution. This is about constraining US power.
The best way to win the war is to win the hearts and minds of Muslims and have them turn Saddam and Bin Laden in themselves
How about starting by promoting democracy in the region, giving the people political power and economic hope? How about removing these dictators bent on regional domination through WMD, who brutalize their populations and then conveniently blame the US and Jews to deflect criticism from themselves? How about stopping the torture and genocide practiced by Saddam? But you're not really interested in the people, if you were you'd advocate saving them from this monster. Why don't YOU read something instead of telling other people that you're more well-read than them in "philosophy" and "history". And although I asked that we keep this debate civil, every respondent has taken a cheap shot at President Bush. I can't take you guys seriously unless you show that you're interested in whether war is right or wrong-- instead of whether you're more well-read, sophisticated, and "subtle" than the President.
Exactly. That's why we must do the right thing now. Getting rid of this tyrant who is a threat to his people and the world
Point 1: The UNSCOM inspectors did uncover and destroy liquid Anthrax and other nasty things during their first inspections. This was in the mid '90's, after the Gulf War. The bio agents that they had had a shelf life of 3 years. The UNSCOM inpectors themselves claim that they managed to find and deal with 95% of Iraq's chem and bio stockpiles.
Wrong, the inspectors had no idea about the extent of Iraqs bioweapons until the defection of
Hussein Kamel, saddam's son-in-law and head of the weapons program.
Point Two: Hussein did not "kick out" the inspectors in 1998. They we told that they should get out before Desert Fox began. Their safety could not be guaranteed vis a vis the bombs that were about to drop. Iraq (and the U.N.) we also pretty upset that the U.S. was using the inspection data to develop air strike packages.
Wrong again. Saddam told the inspectors that they were no longer welcome and stopped cooperating with them. The inspectors reported this to the UN/US, at which point Clinton decided to start the bombs. Or do you think he just did that for fun?
WRT to Iraq and terrorism, has Saddam Hussein supported international terrorists? Yes, probably. So does Saudi Arabia (at fairly high levels, too.)
Saudi arabia has also started cooperating with us on terrorism after 9/11. The princes have already decided that after the Iraq war they will be moving towards democratic reform. I think we should make it clear that we expect them to cooperate fully, and punish them if they try and screw us. On the other hand Saddam has been openly screwing us. Like you said, two wrongs don't make a right. Even if we need Saudi support now to get rid of Saddam, we still ought to get rid of saddam.
You question the links to terrorism, but not all of them. It was Iraqis who tried to assassinate former Pres. Bush. Saddam OPENLY pays suicide bombers. Yes, there are some terrorists operating out of Kurdish areas; but al Zarqawi is/was in Baghdad. Salman Pak is under Saddam's control (near baghdad.) And yes, Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi agent
Yousef carried an Iraqi passport, and prior to Iraq's Gulf War invasion of Kuwait, Kuwaiti government documents identified Yousef as an Iraqi secret agent (Iraq doctored the documents and eliminated the reference).
Sorry, you've been misinformed. I agree we should crack down on al Qaeda, help afghanistan. None of that has anything to do with Iraq. You point out that Saddam won't do anything now. That changes if the US military leaves (and they can't stay there indefinitely). It also changes when he develops a nuclear weapon, which he WILL do, given enough time. Intelligence estimates anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. Of course our nuclear intelligence is well known for underestimating our enemies. (See N. Korea, Pakistan). He is openly trying to acquire parts for nukes on the black market (see: aluminum tubes) And I guess you would just let the people of Iraq suffer in the meantime.
You'd be surprised by how the Iraqis *won't* appreciate their 'liberation'.
That is a flat-out lie. The Iraqis would love to get rid of Saddam. He has made their lives torture, in many cases literally. He's killed millions of his own people. They'd love to be rid of them. It's easy for you to say otherwise sitting behind a computer in a first-world country. I'd like to see your evidence. And no, a march in Iraq isn't proof. When you live in Iraq, they make you do certain things. If you don't, the security services come and threaten you and your family.
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1. Do not, do not, do not, learn to play online
I disagree. For one thing, there are many strategy sites online with good advice. (Example: PokerTips.org). For another, its better to learn how to play based on good fundamentals: Math and reading people by their bets. Learning how to read physical tells is useful but far overrated. If you have good fundamentals, then you will be a better player and exploit tells more efficiently.
And finally, i'd say that you learn more against good competition. And the best competition these days is on the internet, for the simple reason that anyone in the world can play there, whereas, your hometown is limited to who is physically nearbly. I'll agree that play money tables are worthless and may even harm your game starting out. It's better to start off at the low limits.
2. Second piece of advice, never play for money online. Just don't. Don't do it.
I think this is silly. IF it's legal for you to play in your country/state, i say go for it. online you'll find better games (more fish) and it's also faster, more convenient, and you can leave anytime. Whereas, if you go to a live game you'd feel silly leaving after 5 minutes if there are no good games, the rooms are smoky, sometimes far from home, etc.
Also, you can find games with limits as low as $.01-$.02 online, so you can actually play "just for fun" without worrying about losing money. You could lose everything and just be out a few bucks. The truth is that there ARE good players online and there are also BAD players online. Whatever youre playing for you'll find it.
As for addiction, you should be careful about that but, as with anything fun, one must exercise self-control. If you find it becoming an unhealthy hobby, then just quit. Luckily, poker as not as addictive as "gambling" for a few reasons; it's a "game of skill", so if you lose, you're going to keep losing and quit; it's more social, since it is a multiplayer game; theres a lot of thinking involved, it's not a "passive" experience; I'd say that playing poker isn't really much more addictive than say, playing video games.. but YMMV.
While it's possible to beat blackjack, the truth is that it is much harder to beat than poker and the risk is much greater.
In poker, you play against the other players at the table; if you have weak competition, it's easy to win. In a No-Limit game, it's not uncommon to "double up" and finish a game with many times what you started.
In blackjack, you play against the house. You have a slight edge by counting cards, but nowadays the house usually has a six-deck shoe that only gets dealt halfway through or less. In reality, the house could eliminate your advantage altogether by shuffling more, but they don't because alot of card counters end up making mistakes and losing lots of money. Even a single mistake could cost you your whole advantage, and usually you have to put up a large amount to win a small amount (say, $10,000 to win $500 an hour). Then, if you get caught counting, you get kicked out of the casino.
Really, poker is much easier to beat than blackjack.
It depends on the elasticity of demand. When demand is elastic, the producer bears most of the burden of the tax; when demand is inelastic, the consumer bears most of the burden. Phone service, i would guess, is inelastic.
that's the point.. Sure, they could expand the cache, add more execution units to the superscalar core, add new instructions.. but these things are difficult, costly, and time-consuming to design. it's easier for them to just slap two old cores onto a die and call it a day.
The P4 is already complicated as hell and they are really facing diminishing returns wrt new optimizations.. however, this is an easy and cheap way to leverage the fact that they can put more transistors on a single chip.
Dual-core CPUs will *only* work with multithreaded code, not just "run best" with multithreaded code.
Depends on the implementation. The processor could split up a workload to two cores if it is not multithreaded but there are few dependencies. For example, the two [execution] cores could share an issue queue and a reorder buffer/commit unit. It might, at the same time, have hardware to handle two instruction streams (multithreading). HT is proof that you can do both of these tasks. So, yes, a dual-core could theoretically handle both single-thread and multi-threaded code (running best on MT of course)
When I say incomplete synchronization, i was not talking about clocks. i simply mean that there is not full forwarding between the two cores, as you might find between two execution units in a single core.. thus, if there is a dependency somewhere, you may have to stall one core until you get the result instead of forwarding. You might also imagine that each core has its own L1 cache, while sharing an L2, etc. etc. That is why a dual 4-way is not as efficient as a single 8-way.
It really depends on how the dual core is implemented. Since i don't work at intel I won't claim to know how they chose to approach it. However, I did want to point out that the two cores are not necessarily completely independent of each other, although that is one possible way to do it. (which is not much better than MP). In any case, the 8-way single core is never slower than the dual 4-way cores, because of HyperThreading.. (this is excepting any inefficiencies in HT).
Transistors are getting smaller and the chipmakers can fit more and more onto a chip.. However, it is much cheaper (less design time) to simply run two cores with some "glue" hardware than to design a new core that is 8-way superscalar instead of 4 (for example).
One way to look at dual-core is to view it as a dual-processor (MP) system with a very low communications cost, since both cores are on the same die. The disadvantage is similar; since the two units are not perfectly synchronized, such a system runs best with multithreaded code. A single-core CPU with the same number of transistors will run faster, while the dual-core is not quite "double the speed" of one of its cores.
One of the most popular variations [of Rock, Paper, Scissors] is called "Cat, Microwave, Tinfoil". Cat beats tinfoil by ripping it up, tinfoil beats microwave by starting a fire, and microwave beats cat by cooking it. This version was created because, to the creators of Cat Microwave Tinfoil, it doesn't make sense that paper beats rock by covering it (as it doesn't damage the rock, while on the other hand it can destroy the paper by tearing it). [from Wikipedia]
$5 * 27 million = $135 million. Not $1.3 billion
It is acknowledged among the SEO (Search engine optimization) community that PageRank, while still in effect, is being greatly de-emphasized by google in calculating the final score. (A page's relevance is PageRank * Non-PageRank-Factors) The problem was that blogs were getting extremely high pageranks due to their interlinking convention, and other sites were getting high pageranks by creating a bunch of fake links to them. And although people rarely discussed it, there was the problem of the "rich get richer" syndrome, where people would link to pages that were high on the results, increasing the score of those pages. It is very difficult for new websites to get recognized because of this problem. So as a result google has increased the importance of anchor text relative to pagerank. (It has decreased the relevance of blogs but it's hard to say if it's helped with the other problems)
I noticed your web site says little about education issues. What proposals do you have for improving the quality of public schools, and how do you plan on financing these programs? Do you support or oppose affirmative action, and what proposals (if any) do you have for attracting minority students to california universities? What priority does education have on your agenda and what impact will this have on your budget?
Poker is primarily an odds game, that is to say it is all math. There are three places where a decision has to be made. The first decision is, "Should I pay to see the next card?" This is called Drawing. The second decision is, "I have a decent hand, but my opponent raised me. Is he bluffing?". The third decision is, "Should I try to bluff?".
Odds come into play everywhere. When you are Drawing, you must have the correct odds or else you will lose money in the long run. That is to say, if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your straight on the next card, you must have at least 3:1 odds to Draw. (The pot must have $3 for every $1 you pay). There is also the concept of "implied odds" - predicting how much will be in the pot at the end of the hand and not just at the present.
When deciding whether or not to bluff, you must know the odds of your bluff succeeding, and add that to the odds of you hitting your out on the next card. At that point the calculation becomes the same pot-odds calculation described above. This involves some reading of your opponent; you have to know how often he will call, and how often the bluff will be sucessful. Luckily, computers can be pretty good at modeling and seeing patterns, probably much better than humans. It seems that Neural nets and other well-developed AI techniques would be very good at modeling these behaviors and predicting future ones. Calling bluffs will require the same type of knowledge.
Some have asked how it's possible to read patterns on the internet. Some people don't really have patterns in their game, they just call everything. These people will lose because they put too much money in the pot, they don't have the odds for the bets and calls they're making. Mostly, decent players have patterns in how they bet, for example they will bet when they only have 4 out of 5 flush cards. (A Semi-bluff). Computers have an advantage here because they can introduce a random element that humans cannot reproduce.
The recent winner of the World Series of Poker, Chris Moneymaker, had never played in a live game until the WSOP, he had only played internet games. This probably gave him good fundamentals in reading people based on their bets, and good math fundamentals.
Some have also questioned the wiseness of playing internet poker, since it is just "gambling". Well I'll tell you a little secret, poker isn't really gambling, poker is a skill game and especially with so many bad players out there who think it is just luck, hoping they'll get lucky, it's easy to win money. That's why the same players consistently win thousands of dollars online. For more information on poker strategy and reviews of online casinos, see this site: PokerTips.org
Poker is not a card game, it's a people game (aka don't play the cards, play the people). It's all about bluffing and reading other people's bluffs. I'm baffled that people even bother playing poker on the internet. Even with webcams the game wouldn't be the same at all.
While it's true that poker involves reading people, it is primarily a game of calculating odds and using them to your advantage. For example: if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your flush on the next card, then you should only pay to see the next card if there are $4 in the pot for every $1 you must pay. Etc. This gets more complicated with bluffing.
It's also easy to read people on the internet. People still bluff and call with patterns that reveal their hand, and observant players can take advantage of this. That's why the same players always win at the high-stakes table. That's why, in the recent World Series of Poker, the winner was an internet player who had never played a live game before
For more information on internet poker, please see PokerTips.org . This is a great site that has lots of strategy information and reviews of online casinos so you know which ones you can trust.
Sideshow Bob: The following neighbourhood residents will not be killed by me: Ned Flanders, Maude Flanders, Homer Simpson, Marge Simpson, Lisa Simpson, that little baby Simpson...that is all.
[Homer runs up to Bart's room]
Homer: Woo-hoo! Did you hear that Bart? Heh--oh...
I can't feel too sorry for the FreeCraft people. Open source projects need to think of more creative and original names instead of just ripping off someone else's name and making a "clever" modification
It's more like this:
1. ???
2. Profit!
3. Get investigated by SEC
No doubt there will be many posts on how there are bad programmers who got in "just for the money" and not for the love of computers and now they are getting what they deserve. I believe this is unfair because there are a lot of people who aren't really brilliant at anything and may not have any strong interests, but they are trying hard to make a living. It's also unfair because money is a factor for everyone, whether you love computers or not.
But I also think there are more interesting classes of people who have been affected by the bust -- the good programmers, the brilliant thinkers, the guys with a thousand ideas, the ones who love computing. The people who got into CS believing that they wouldn't have to deal with the usual silly competitions about what college you went to or how well your professors liked you -- believing that the only thing that mattered was how good your ideas are. The people who, in the 90's could easily start a multi-million dollar company but now have to settle for a mundane, overworked, thankless and low-paying teaching/research job, and that is if they are lucky. They might settle for this job simply because they get to do interesting research, but who wants to deal with harder and harder grad school admissions and then educational politics? Not many that I know.
The bust is also affecting the mid-level players. Reflecting on the exuberance of the boom days, managers are turning toward credentialism to measure their applicants. While this is arguably a good thing for the industry, nobody I know wants to be judged by what college he went to, how well they interview, or other silly metrics. There is also a move to squeeze more out of individual programmers (believe it or not) because budgets are lower. And with fewer possibilities to get capital for your own venture, college students are looking at a future as a programmer, which is looking less like a professional job and more like mental labor. Some might call the dropouts dumb, but if one is entering such a profession, he ought to examine his own decisions first.
Regarding "the whole government is corrupt". They're also elected. Lots of people question the 2000 election. I don't. But no matter what, you can't deny the will of the people, over time (see 2002). If they are corrupt, then that means that all of America is corrupt. Osamas people are the result of a lifetime of living through propaganda. And even if you think FOXNews is conservative, Americans do NOT live through propaganda. If we bomb Iraq, we are TRYING to minimize civilian casualties. We're spending millions on precision laser-guided weapons in the midst of economic hard times, but Saddam is placing his missile launchers in mosques and schools and hospitals. Again, a world of difference.
- in magical happy-world, don't kill Iraq."
I'm talking real-world.
- In this world, let him kill himself"
Won't happen. (prove it will.) Waiting for him to die won't work either. By all accounts his sons are even more brutal than he. And in the meantime, millions of Iraqis suffer, and he gets nuclear weapons. Next.
kill Iraq, not terror. It's just finishing up a game that's been delayed.
= war
Ninjas. Seriously, they RULE.
I wouldn't be against a targeted assassination. If we could pull it off
Has Sadam really gassed "his own people"? Well, who are "his own people"?
Fine. He's gassed Iraqis -- therefore he is extremely unfit to control Iraq -- so let's take him out.
Now let's talk about Sadam. "Sadam is evil" blah, is it Sadam or the entire Iraqi government? Does Sadam even exist? There are reports that say nobody has seen the "real Sadam" in years, publically. He could be dead already. What reason would a government have to tell its people that their leader, of whom they have several doubles, is dead?
Yes, the allusion I am making is not merely imagined. Unless you are thinking of one I have not thought of, in which case you are wrong.
yes, Saddam is alive. Dan Rather interviewed him last week. If he's not alive, SOMEONE is doing all of this crap, and needs to be stopped
-Rights of US Citizens.
Arguably a problem, but not directly relevant to the issue of Iraq. Certainly doesn't make the Administration "terrorists"
-Our WMD, Our refusal to comply with regulations we insist other nations follow, Our developement of weapons which could only be used to attack in the interest of "defence"
Difference is that we are a democracy, and we trust democracies to have destructive weapons, but not people like Saddam who take over other countries for their wealth. The Saddams of the world are a threat to the notion of sovereignty as we know it. We're not exactly threatening to invade France or Britain if they don't disarm. Also, Saddam HAS USED WMD against his own civilians and Iranians. George W. Bush has not. The difference is extremely important.
-9/11 didn't prove anything about foreign governments
Wrong. It proved we should have taken out the Taliban long ago. Terrorists can't exist in some mythical limbo. They need state support, if only to ensure that they have somewhere to live and gather and raise money.
You choose the defenceless one, 'cause that one you know you can hit.
Are you implying that because the president and terrorists both employ strategy that they are moral equivalents? That's extremely misguided. Terrorists are wrong because they kill innocent people, on purpose, so others will listen to them. In the war on Iraq, we may kill innocents, but only by accident, and only when pursuing human freedom or defending ourselves. There is a huge moral difference
his _ADMITTED_ attacks against american freedoms are out-of-line and bring up serious questions about whether he is fit for office
He may have gone too far in defense of the homeland, but it is nothing like a police state-- it is not some concerted effort to consolidate his power by eliminating his enemies. It was a legitimate response invoked by the legitimate fears of an American people recently struck by a horrific attack on innocents. His motives were to control terrorism. If that is over the line, the Court can check his power, and the people can elect legislators to roll back the changes. You can't say that Bush is evil -- Congress passed those laws. Your position is only tenable if you contend that the entire GOVERNMENT is evil, every last person who voted for it. We Americans were willing to temporarily sacrifice freedoms to ensure we didn't get hit again. This was evident when the Republicans took the Senate in 2002. It was worth it. However, None of this has anything to do with iraq.
I have not said that war with Iraq is bad. _This_ war is bad.
Why is that? It seems illogical. If war is good, we should do it now, to prevent Saddam from building more WMD. In fact, we should have done it a year ago, before the UN. The longer we wait, the more American soldiers he will kill. The more he will be able to prolong conflict and make us kill Iraqi soldiers. And what would you propose instead? The challenge is unanswered.
Did Rumsfield suddenly realize that giving WMD's to Sadaam was a bad thing, maybe even immoral?
You joke, but it is possible. September 11th changed the way a lot of us think, the Adminstration not excluded. And George W. Bush never supported Saddam.
It really doesn't matter what this is "about". If this is about stopping terrorism, but we also liberate millions of Iraqis by accident, liberation still occurs. I don't care if we're invading Iraq for their turnip crop. Facts are facts. The Iraqis would be better off with anyone but Saddam -- even a makeshift republic that we have to piece together. Fortunately, President Bush has committed to democracy in Iraq, in the form of a very public speech which has been covered by all the major media outlets, even though i did link to the press release. (If you're afraid a transcript might somehow be biased, feel free to look it up in the NYT)
And you didn't answer my question. What SHOULD we do, if not war? Let the people suffer? Let Iraq pose a threat to the world? You wake up. There is real suffering in the world. We have the power to stop it.
I hope more users become frustrated by the blathering no nothings who post their anti-war/anti-american messages without considering all that has been done already to avoid a war. Thanks for helping to prove that not everyone out there is blind to the facts or crazed with misdirected anger towards our country.
Might I say a few words about Anti-Americanism? As the son of immigrants I am acutely aware of the state of the Union compared to the other intellectual and political wastelands on the planet. My parents moved here precisely because here the voters have a true voice in government, here we can determine the direction of our government and the future of our children. Here we can work towards our own futures.
For those out there who think that President Bush is "corrupt" or "bloodthirsty", my friends, you do not know the meanings of those words. You have no experience with truly corrupt leaders. I only need a few minutes of the tales of The Old Country to realize how lucky I am, and for that I wake up everyday and thank God (metaphorically, since i'm atheist).
Government is faulty, as Madison pointed out: In government are the weaknesses of men -- if men were angels, then no government would be necessary. So I believe that our leaders may sometimes act contrary to the public interest or otherwise selflishly. But I also believe that you have more opportunity here than anywhere else in the world to avoid that kind of thing.
I also believe that, when it comes to the important things, our leaders aren't selling us out. They are defending the national honor and the national freedom. No President has engendered such strong emotions in me as President Bush, because he is a man who truly loves his country and cares for its people. And that is evident in the politically suicidal position he has taken on Iraq -- a path which can only win him more enemies, but he has undertaken for the sake of the future of our children.
We moved here because this is a country in which people are free to voice their opinions and we encourage criticism and debate. But do not be mistaken. There is a difference between constructive criticism and whining. I love criticism and self-improvement, but there is nothing I find more pathetic than the whining, nauseated, anti-American, anti-Bush, I'm-angry-Democrats-didn't-do-it-first tirades of so many people lucky to live in America or Europe. Because I truly believe that America is successful not because we whine, but because we find solutions. We solve our problems, and we don't have problems with optimal solutions. And that is why I issued this challenge today. I am of open mind enough to take your solutions seriously -- provided that you are willing to make them. Don't whine. Tell us what you would do.
Thanks for your support, pauldy. I don't mind if know-nothings post their anti-American messages. I just wish people would stop modding down my anti-anti-American messages. This is the third time now I've posted something in favor of the war and been modded down. I have a feeling that if these moderations were not so widespread, then there would be more "sane voices" on slashdot.
Perhaps it is because people with facts and logic to support their positions need not fight with the tools of censorship. But pro-democracy voices on slashdot need not fret. If we see unfairly moderated posts, we will mod them back up. We don't need to reciprocate by playing their censorship games.
We can fight with words and ideas; and, from the looks of this thread, they cannot fight back. All they have are vulgarity, name-calling, President Bush insults, and mod points. That is nothing compared to the truth.
I post not because I wish to be given credit for stating facts (which I feel are obvious). I post because there are people out there with a good heart and a sense of morality but perhaps are not informed enough to assemble their knowledge into one coherent course of action that they can advocate. Certainly, people are busy with jobs, school, and family. They may be limited to what they've heard from a usually intelligent friend or professor. And thus the possibility of misinformation.
Don't let the abusive moderators or swearers intimidate you or depress you. Just say what is on your mind, and people will listen, even if they aren't as noisy as the people who are wrong. They are out there, reading.
And I can't think of another way to insist that there is a simple question that you ought to answer. That is, what SHOULD we do if Bush is wrong? If you think that using the word "fucking" over and over somehow gives you more legitimacy, you're wrong. And i'm only "ignoring" what you said to the extent that I am looking for an answer to my question. What SHOULD we do? What COULD we do that you wouldn't consider "terroristic"? Why don't you answer MY question?
As for censoring, it is very real. I am sure there are plenty of moderators who aren't on this power trip. But there are just enough to ruin the system. And as for the "off-topicness", i am giving the people what they want. All the highly modded posts are about the war, or only about the "battery" in the context of the righteousness of war. You can throw insults all you want-- but you still haven't answered the question. Is it perhaps because you haven't got an answer?
Now for the terrorism accusation. It's just petty name-calling when reduced to "Bush is a terrorist" (or my favorite, "Bush=Hitler"). But the sheer uninformedness of equating war and terrorism in a moral sense is astoundingly stupid. If you can't see the difference between intentionally blowing up children to get the "infidels" out of the "holy land" and a military that tries its hardest using weapons designed for the purpose of minimizing civilian casualties while trying to save them from a murderous, genocidal, bent-on-domination tyrant, then you are out of your mind. ("Murderous" refers to one who kills innocent people, not by accident, but on purpose. "Genocidal" refers to one who intentionally kills people based on their ethnicity -- as opposed to, say, WMD programs, history of use of WMD, or to protect the free world from terrorism. "bent-on-domination" refers to one who has repeatedly launched wars of aggression for the purpose of taking their oil wealth. "tyrant" refers to one who governs, say, by murdering his enemies, instead of through the process of election) If you've got such little moral judgment that you honestly and truly think that Bush and Osama bin Laden are "equals" then you need to seriously reassess your values. If you think that, since Bush only won by a few hundred votes in Florida, he is a "tyrant" comparable to Saddam, who has your tongue cut out on national TV for insulting him, then you're more than uninformed-- you're foolish. I've answered your question which ignored mine. But you chose to respond to my post. So now you answer my question -- or simply admit that you have no answer.
The fact is, if we all got together as nations and set up, ratified, enforced, and evolved a system of international law,
Saddam has had 12 years to deal with 16 resolutions. We've given him the letter of the law. He's ignored it. Now it's time to enforce the law. There is nothing unilateral about it.
Bush has gone out of his way, delaying for a whole year, trying to persuade the UN. In this process he is unecessarily prolonging the suffering of the Iraqi people, endangering US troops by giving Saddam unnecessary warning, and compromising intelligence sources and methods. All for the sake of multilateralism. This is the most multilateralist president in the history of the United States. No war was ever deliberated over for so long, with so much credence and legitimacy granted to world opinion by a country defending itself against a war (of terrorism) and enforcing international law (resolutions 1 through 16). Clinton certainly didn't ask for UN approval to bomb Iraq in '98, and essentially went into Bosnia and Kosovo with much UN fretting and opposition. Yet nowadays the agreement is that Clinton waited TOO LONG to do those things; or did them without enough force.
Tell that to the families that have lost mothers, fathers, children, aunts, and uncles to US foriegn policy. Tell the hundreds of Americans who still have family in Iraq that "history" doesn't matter. Has the US ever made a public apology or offered real long term support to make up for past crimes?
Very well-- lets listen to those Iraqi families. Almost every last Iraqi exile will tell you that we must remove Saddam. That is how we begin to repay the Iraqis. That is how we apologize. We don't do it by leaving him there to kill millions more. You've proved my point for me.
Back this up with real proof. I'm sure the US has proof, but in the interest of maintaining an edge in spying, the president probably decided not to reveal the information.
The burden of proof isn't on me. I'll give you some links to get you started- but this murdering, torturing, genocidal, chemical-weapons using madman has given the world plenty of proof of what he's done. the burden of proof is on those who would protect him-- on YOU. Here's the links: One Two Three That is on the WTC alone. Saddam OPENLY pays families of suicide bombers. Here's one on Salman Pak: Four I could go on forever. Clearly it is you who has not done enough reading. I've fulfilled a burden that wasn't even mine. Now you think we should protect a madman. You present your evidence.
If he was convincing, wouldn't the European nations given their support?
Actually, they all do, with the exception of France and Germany, who are trying to dominate Europe. And instead of just listening to other people, why don't you analyze the facts? If those guys are right, prove it. Don't just base your opinion on their authority. That is no more valid than me basing my opinion on George W. Bush's opinion alone. Chirac, by the way, is the only major world leader to be personal friends with Saddam, dating back to the days when he helped sell Saddam two nuclear reactors. He's also being investigated for corruption, and is only not being prosecuted because of immunity afforded by his office. The argument at the UN isn't about Iraq. They all know he is in violation of the terms of the resolution. This is about constraining US power.
The best way to win the war is to win the hearts and minds of Muslims and have them turn Saddam and Bin Laden in themselves
How about starting by promoting democracy in the region, giving the people political power and economic hope? How about removing these dictators bent on regional domination through WMD, who brutalize their populations and then conveniently blame the US and Jews to deflect criticism from themselves? How about stopping the torture and genocide practiced by Saddam? But you're not really interested in the people, if you were you'd advocate saving them from this monster. Why don't YOU read something instead of telling other people that you're more well-read than them in "philosophy" and "history". And although I asked that we keep this debate civil, every respondent has taken a cheap shot at President Bush. I can't take you guys seriously unless you show that you're interested in whether war is right or wrong-- instead of whether you're more well-read, sophisticated, and "subtle" than the President.
Because two wrongs don't make a right.
Exactly. That's why we must do the right thing now. Getting rid of this tyrant who is a threat to his people and the world
Point 1: The UNSCOM inspectors did uncover and destroy liquid Anthrax and other nasty things during their first inspections. This was in the mid '90's, after the Gulf War. The bio agents that they had had a shelf life of 3 years. The UNSCOM inpectors themselves claim that they managed to find and deal with 95% of Iraq's chem and bio stockpiles.
Wrong, the inspectors had no idea about the extent of Iraqs bioweapons until the defection of Hussein Kamel, saddam's son-in-law and head of the weapons program.
Point Two: Hussein did not "kick out" the inspectors in 1998. They we told that they should get out before Desert Fox began. Their safety could not be guaranteed vis a vis the bombs that were about to drop. Iraq (and the U.N.) we also pretty upset that the U.S. was using the inspection data to develop air strike packages.
Wrong again. Saddam told the inspectors that they were no longer welcome and stopped cooperating with them. The inspectors reported this to the UN/US, at which point Clinton decided to start the bombs. Or do you think he just did that for fun?
WRT to Iraq and terrorism, has Saddam Hussein supported international terrorists? Yes, probably. So does Saudi Arabia (at fairly high levels, too.)
Saudi arabia has also started cooperating with us on terrorism after 9/11. The princes have already decided that after the Iraq war they will be moving towards democratic reform. I think we should make it clear that we expect them to cooperate fully, and punish them if they try and screw us. On the other hand Saddam has been openly screwing us. Like you said, two wrongs don't make a right. Even if we need Saudi support now to get rid of Saddam, we still ought to get rid of saddam.
You question the links to terrorism, but not all of them. It was Iraqis who tried to assassinate former Pres. Bush. Saddam OPENLY pays suicide bombers. Yes, there are some terrorists operating out of Kurdish areas; but al Zarqawi is/was in Baghdad. Salman Pak is under Saddam's control (near baghdad.) And yes, Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi agent
Sorry, you've been misinformed. I agree we should crack down on al Qaeda, help afghanistan. None of that has anything to do with Iraq. You point out that Saddam won't do anything now. That changes if the US military leaves (and they can't stay there indefinitely). It also changes when he develops a nuclear weapon, which he WILL do, given enough time. Intelligence estimates anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. Of course our nuclear intelligence is well known for underestimating our enemies. (See N. Korea, Pakistan). He is openly trying to acquire parts for nukes on the black market (see: aluminum tubes) And I guess you would just let the people of Iraq suffer in the meantime.
You'd be surprised by how the Iraqis *won't* appreciate their 'liberation'.
That is a flat-out lie. The Iraqis would love to get rid of Saddam. He has made their lives torture, in many cases literally. He's killed millions of his own people. They'd love to be rid of them. It's easy for you to say otherwise sitting behind a computer in a first-world country. I'd like to see your evidence. And no, a march in Iraq isn't proof. When you live in Iraq, they make you do certain things. If you don't, the security services come and threaten you and your family.