Except the software out of Redmond lets you map a WebDAV share as a drive, and then turn on "Offline Files" for it... thereby offering exactly what iDisk is, except free and without the fanfare Apple gives it. Sure; OS X technically has the capability, as iDisk proves, Apple just doesn't let you use it on an arbitrary WebDAV share, only on.Mac WebDAV shares. Even Microsoft doesn't pull crap like that on its users.
Yes yes, but I was referring to other MS junkware excretions like messenger running by default and IE being integrated in a sleazy way. Sure, the Finder needs networking optimization and sometimes cacks for a while when losing track of a share (nowhere near as bad as stated at the start of this thread), and fixing it is way overdue, while on a MS-oriented network, Windows wins. Still, OS X works great with third party networking apps and the good ol' way, via the command line, so I hardly notice unless I'm on a box that doesn't have the requisite freeware installed. Sleazy commercialization is a different set of comparisons, however. MS embraces and extends and squeezes out others; Apple just cripples one niche-but-desireable feature out of the box. The other junkware they happen to install stock, BTW, is MS Office trialware.
given the choice between a mediocre Windows box that can use a network and Finder, I'll take the Windows box for my next computer. I'm sick of OS X getting worse every year.
WTF? it hasn't gotten worse, but one notable feature remained unfixed, while the rest of the OS has seen huge optimization leaps over the years. Meanwhile, the typical home user Windows experience = reinstall every year or endure halving of performance--if you don't get zombied in the meantime. I've troubleshot plenty of 98/ME/2K/XP networking glitches, enough to not trust it any more than OS X.
OS X still doesn't even have feature parity with 8-year-old System 9.
Actually, the Close button used to be on the other side of the window. Remember? Far away from the others so you wouldn't click it by accident while trying to Zoom?
Hear, hear! But then, save your wrist and use the keyboard. Oh, wait, there is no keyboard command for 'zoom window,' so I have to jump hoops to assign one on every OS X machine I work on. Shame shame, Apple, as resizing windows is designed to be a common action.
But forget the interface consistency, what about the blatant bugs? How about the crappy network support, so that if I have the audacity to open my iBook somewhere other than "the network its used to" it literally freezes Finder for minutes at a time. Then you go to open something on your (offline) iDisk, and you're frozen for another minute.
I have a bitter, bile-tasting feeling about Finder network performance and iDisk. Why should a BSD style machine have crappy ftp performance in the base GUI? Then there's refusing to offer a LAN or roll-yer-own iDisk option, yet sticking it in my face at various points in the OS, which amounts to junkware similar to something out of Redmond.
The normal behavior of the resize(+) button is to make the window just large enough to view all of the content in the window. Clicking that button again would resize the window to its original size.
In programs where the display of the content depends on the size of the window, that button resizes the window between two sizes that the user can set.
Yes, and to add to this: Where the content doesn't have a set size, such as in a web browser, the zoom (resize) button actually maximizes the window to fill the screen. This is confusing to Windows users, as it is very context dependent and an attempt to direct the use of the window. Some developers don't seem to grasp this, either, and so there is occasional deviance from this very useful feature.
Windows users complain about the window not maximizing because they don't get the notion of overlapping and interleaved (between apps) windows; I go nuts using windows because for once I would just like a window to snap-to-content.
Perhaps we disagree on what it means to be "free" or "fair". Nobody held a gun to the customers' heads and forced them to buy media subject to the levy. These people are not starving, or forced out into the streets, because they gotta have CD-Rs. They evaluated the availability of the product and its price, and decided they wanted to buy it. If they didn't think the exchange was fair, I don't think it's reasonable that they would have done it.
I think we do disagree on the definition. For a market to be functionally "free" then customers have to be extremely well-informed about their choices. Regulated markets try to pick up the slack (well, in theory). Unfortunately, customers are not well-informed (nor even rational, but that's kind of a different discussion).
Yes, no one was holding a gun, to use your metaphor. However, there is an element of fraud or obscurity. So: be mugged, or be conned? While this isn't life or death, what are the choices for those who wish to back up their purchased music in a form that can be played in the car? Few, if they're even aware of them. When the market strongly channels customers into a particular decision, and they are unaware of the nature of that decision, how much actual "freedom" do they have? Free markets require consent, and consent requires knowledge.
I agree that consumers ought to be compensated for this (and I suggested an alternative way to accomplish that in my earlier comment), but consider that there were other consumers that incurred costs due to the levy, but would probably not be eligible to participate in refunds. For example, a small recording label may have weighed the costs of CD-R distribution versus professional CD duplication, and found that for their quantities, professional duplication was slightly cheaper than CD-Rs, due to this levy. Should they be compensated as a result? If not, isn't that unfair? What about someone that looked at the prices for CD-Rs, and decided they were slightly too expensive (due to the levy) and went out and bought original CDs instead. Should they be compensated? How much would be fair in that case?
I actually don't think consumers should be compensated at this point. I think they should be informed (good labelling being a prerequisite for freeing a market) and opting-out of the levy made easier, or more accurate. I was/am one of those unfairly levied, as I did a large amount of archiving of original audio and data, but not enough to warrant applying for an exemption (once I found out about it). My response was to swallow my bile, eventually read and embrace the copyright act wholeheartedly, and commence a campaign of 'personal use' that included some downloading but much personal sharing of music with friends. I may have actually caught up with my payment of the levy, but I doubt it, as I back up all the kids' CD's, archive data, mail out photo cd's, and distribute original work. Yet, now I feel somewhat protective of my personal use rights, as I pay indie artists directly and copy from friends for heavily promoted artists.
My informed relationship to CD purchases now approaches that of a free market. That of my customers and students doesn't--until I inform them of their personal use rights, and the levy that enables it.
The consumer made a free market exchange here. They thought the price was fair for the product, and they paid for it.
We're talking Canada here, right? Most of us are overwhelmed by US media, and thus US legal terminology and attitudes. We generally haven't even heard of the levy. And, since it's 21 cents per disc, the lowest price available for CD-R's is inflated to false levels, so the market bears what the retailers can give, because there is no other reasonable choice. They only think the prices are fair because that's all they can get. The market is NOT free in that sense.
Consumers get "reimbursed" by virtue of (hopefully) lower prices in the near future, until the surplus is exhausted.
I don't necessarily think that customers should be reimbursed either, but that a fund for indie artists etc. would be wiser. I think that's as likely, though, as fair pricing when the market is trained to unfair pricing already.
Seriously? Everyone I know thinks DS9 is the best Trek series ever made.
Oh, I watched it religiously, but many ST fans I know put it one notch above Voyager (which I didn't hate, though TV was pretty dry for SF at that time).
Yes, it gets much better. Around Season 3 it starts to hint at getting better, and each season thereafter gets progressively better. Even being a big fan myself a lot of those season 1 and 2 episodes are difficult to watch.
Too true. Basically, I think it got better because they started really going with the larger story arc; season 1 and 2 are more episodic.
What I liked best about DS9 was that it had some grit to it: the only part of the ST franchise that dealt with things like money, aliens who were more than europeans with funny foreheads, ongoing resistance to occupation, and an unwilling prophet. For the first time the ferengi were more than a comic foil, and despite the typical ST smarmy-ness, some of the acting was pretty good.
If I could venture a theory, I would say that heavily serialized shows just aren't everyone's cup of tea, because they require committment.
Watching a SF show like BSG, Firefly, Babylon 5, the new hit Heroes, or even the reviled Deep Space 9 requires a good understanding of a large backstory in order to truly appreciate it. Episodic shows like Star Trek (original or NG) is fine for dipping in and out of the make-believe, and so are easier for casual watching.
The more complex the plot arc, the more work required to make meaning as a viewer.
That's exactly why I like those shows: an audacious plot. The hook is the Big Picture. The rewards are a huge amount of nuance inside each episode.
This sounds like a natural fit with the original vision of the World Soundscape Project, especially since these are ambient field recordings. Too bad they ran short of funding and the momentum faded, I think they would have taken it somewhere like this. I like the fact that they're hoping to showcase changing soundscapes over time. It would be great if the GE community can contribute. If this stuff interests you, check out the literature on acoustic ecology.
People would justify this with all kinds of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, but at the end of the day we'd be no different from the old southern whipmasters going out of their way to justify an unjustifiable act.
Slaveholders are enslaved by their own necessary delusions, and their minds and hearts twisted by the rough tightness of those bonds. Pity all in such a hell-on-earth! May their descendents heal quickly.
Yes, and on top of that, quite a few of the people who worked with Hitler were found very usefull in that cold war.
In a sly but perhaps not-so-moral move, the USA scooped as much of the Nazi scientific and intelligence system as it could, in Operation Paperclip.
...the fact that the Islamic revolution turned against the USA also is exactly because the USA was seen as those who had kept the shaw [sic] in power and supported the oppression that it brought.
You forget, or didn't know, that the democratically elected and popular leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq, was overthrown in a coup by the USA ( and the UK) through Operation Ajax. This CIA operation had little to do with truth, justice, or the American Way, but oil, money, and geopolitical dominance. Because of propaganda, americans don't know this, but those in the region do. The Shah was an evil prick in comparison to Mossadeq; people suffered.
This is all public record. It isn't just the support for the Shah, it was the attack on a functioning democracy that was so galling. It backfired: Mosaddeq came back under the Shah, because people took to the streets, and things got as complicated as any Persian plot. The current anti-americanism in the region is the predictable result of meddling like this, but do you think the US electorate knows anything of it? How would Americans feel if Chinese and Vietnamese intelligence agencies orchestrated a coup in Washington? That's what you're up against in Iran.
Hey, extreme dogma isn't off the hook. Islam is tearing itself apart, too. You seem to think there's only one source to blame. I do revise my sloppy statement: it isn't the military that produces radicalism, but its use, so I blame the planners for making things much worse. Making unnecessary enemies to build a clandestine empire is anti-american; General Eisenhower would agree.
I do know about the history of various radical crazies, and have read their books, have seen the dead and the terror, have crouched under curfew, have even argued with some.
Radical christianity may like having an enemy, but doesn't produce suicide bombers. Occupation does, however. Until fairly recently, suicide bombers were almost all targeting occupiers (perceived or real) as a desperate strategy. Expect that, were the roles reversed, dispossessed delusional radicals in muslim-occupied Atlanta would be strapping on the dynamite, mujaheddin in all but name.
Without the global spread of USA's (& the former soviet) military presence and backing of nasty regimes, terrorism would be weak and localized, and a concern for elite police, not aircraft carriers. Sunni and Shia would focus on killing each other (the endless cycle of x1 vs. x2, where x = religious dogma). Give them a global occupier and a bigger enemy than each other, and they form a global resistance.
Hitler was initially supported by many americans, including the Bush family and General Motors. Fascism was seen as friendly until it got out of control, and go look up Operation Paper Clip. WWII was full of much more history and cross-intrigue than your highly propagandized view of it. Pol Pot (Khmer Rouge) was arguably a direct result of clandestine american bombing "back into the stone age"--and a stone age mentality resulted. Stalin was an ally, and then the resulting cold war was a consequence of a struggle for global dominance, not justice. The modern versions of these monsters usually get American support at some stage, viz. S. Hussein.
When things go bad, the world doesn't come running to the USA so much as the USA intercedes, often after things have been contrived to go bad. Really, you need to do better research.
I fail to see how having a base in Arabia saves any Jews, instead of inciting hatred. Perhaps you can tidily unravel the mess that is the post-colonial middle east for us in a slashdot posting...
And yes, I believe that a trillion annual dollars applied to diplomacy, propaganda, and education would be far more effective and efficient than bombing. Most international diplomats and scholars would agree. Why is that more scary than an excess of armaments and an enormous standing army aimed offshore?
Typically, et al is referring specifically to people and is misused quite often. In this case, is it misused because the corporations named are not people, or does the "personhood" granted by their corporation make this gramatically correct?
Please re-read: et al strives to refer to shareholders. And fails, I guess.
"me too" to your thoughts on enforcement through aggression. It simply doesn't work anymore, if it ever did. Guerrilla warfare is far too effective to rule with an iron fist.
I rather think that it isn't so much a failed strategy due to changing political circumstances as a failure to read essential human nature (i.e. put the shoe on the other foot). If you came and ruined my life and my family's, and left me with few options, a demented revenge fever is predictable. Where there are strong ideologies (like extreme religion), the revenge justification gets caught up in noble goals.
My main point is that that is the intention. The iron fist needs something to grasp.
"We should have bombed Iran back into the stone ages"
That aggressive right-to-might belief is a fundamental strategic error, and used as a ruse to centralize power by increasing insecurity, and thus reduce the need for false flag operations.
When you invade other countries, hell, when you put over 700 military bases in foreign countries, establish an international influence-pervert-abduct-torture network, establish a global disinformation campaign, spend more money on the rule of force than the rest of the world combined, work with tyrants, and work hand-in-hand with industry to shift capital and control away from sovereignty everywhere, well, people will be pissed off.
When you try to crush the few extreme radicals that this naturally results in, by killing lots of civilians and destroying infrastructure (and thus ways of life), hey presto, many many more radicals with nothing left to lose. The US military is a radical-producing machine.
When you put a military base on holy land of a competing militant religion and use it to create more displaced refugees--oh look, suicide bombers.
Yes, I'm saying that spending a trillion dollars annually on international education/propaganda and diplomacy rather than military aggression would have resulted in greater security for the USA (but fewer riches for the shareholders of lockheed-martin and halliburton et al). Too late now, though, you got the enemies you were looking for, and it will take a generation to make peace.
The biggest conspiracy theorists are the spies. They actually make a decent living hatching ridiculous conspiracy theories (oooh, the Canadian Mint is run by aliens using their advanced nanotech to prepare for invasion). That way their masters get to spy on pinko commie agitators everywhere, like environmentalists and democracy advocates (ooh look, the Raging Grannies are inciting insurrection, let's tap their phones, send in the moles).
The law is supposed to represent the will of its subjects. If the letter of the law is being violated by the majority, it is an illegitimate law and should be repealed.
Sure, but not always. Sometimes laws that are regularly broken but not always enforced are good to have as a fallback. Assault, for instance: no need to call the cops over every little scuffle. The will of the law's subjects is usually very complex, and the line of illegality can be fuzzy.
Actually, it's more directed towards anything uniquely, or at least characteristically French. Since the metric system is much more widely used than in just France. So, Metric gets a pass on being classified as one of those "French things" to be mocked. No, we mock the metric system as one of those "European things", which operates on a different scale altogether - fewer cheese-eating surrender-monkey references, for one.
Ah well, wit is wasted on the young, and America chooses to be perennially young. I was referring, of course, to the origins of the metric system.
Has to be, since I'm pretty sure Niven's ring didn't have a width/radius ratio of 10, since that would have made the ringworld 930 million miles wide, a veritable ringtube where the ends would be frozen and uninhabitable. I don't have the book handy, but I'm pretty sure the ring was actually fairly narrow, perhaps only a few thousand miles wide on a ring over five hundred million miles around.
Niven's Ringworld is one million miles across the ribbon, the rim walls holding in the atmosphere are 1000 miles high, and its circumference is 600 million miles around. For those who use a more sensible and thus cowardly* base 10 measurement system: 1,609,344 km wide, rim walls 1,609 km high, and 965,606,400 km in circumference. That yields a radius (AU) of 153,681,031 km. The radius/width ratio is thus about 154:1, so your instincts are correct, even if the calculation is a bit off.
Added bonus: the surface area works out to 1.6×10^15 sq.km--about 3 million Earths; wrap your head around that! Halo's 10,000 km diameter is relatively tiny.
(* Profuse apologies: impugning the valour of anything French, including metrics, on american-run sites is, seemingly, de rigueur.)
They don't feel this grade-schoolish desire to completely dominate everything, they just want to make a profit and they will do so with only 1% of the market. Apple will only "fail" if they use Microsoft's definition of success (complete monopoly). Apple's definition of success is to walk into a market and immediately make a profit, and they will do that.
Consider that it's likely that they want to be Sony, not MS--or rather, have been trying to become what Sony should've been.
Let's see:
Jobs admires their products and studied their business model
walkman--> ipod
entertainment hub computing
laptops to envy
consumer/pro product lines
partly earned rep for quality
sleekness
aiming for upper end of market
brand premium
and now, content distribution
In each of these cases, you can see Apple following Sony's lead, but trying to do it right. While Sony is a behemoth with a zillion products, Apple is picking away at the high-profile successes that Sony has had, and one-upping. It will be interesting to see if Apple gets back into optics, and tackles the camera market.
It's worth noting that Mac OS 9, which had no security whatsoever, had almost no (or none? The point is I've never come across one) viruses or worms. Users were just more vigilant, and the operating system's transparency (the degree to which the way the system worked was obvious to the end user) meant end users had a better idea of the consequences of their actions.
OS 9 had fewer than a hundred likely infections, not including Word macros (more of a carrier risk, as currently, than damage). All were pretty rare. There was an autostart worm and earlier systems were plagued by a few common viruses, but the freeware Disinfectant handled them easily. They didn't cause much damage, though I did get a deal on an infected machine once because the owners didn't identify the problem.
Mostly, though, OS 9 was network secure because it just didn't offer any network services unless you fiddled to open them up; nearly anything more than basic Appletalk or TCP/IP involved installing and configuring something. It's transparent to the user because there's nothing much to hide. OS 9 is secure by default because the services just aren't there to exploit.
i'm in this rock band. we are, as one local journalist stated, "startlingly unsuccessful". so, we record and release a compact disc. it's a run of 500 and we sell, maybe, ten (thanks mom!) and lose a tonne of money. this is not an unusual scenario.
but the kicker is this: we pay the levy on the blank cd's we use for our release. this means that some major-label canadian artist (ms. levign perhaps) is actually making money off of my band's record while my band is losing money.
That should save you $105 on your purchase of 500 blanks (yes, $0.21 on ea.!!), and after the $60 application fee for the zero-rating and the $112.00 annual AFM dues plus the $115 initiation fee, you'll have saved -$182...oh.
I was archiving field recordings on blank media, and paying a levy. At some point, I just broke down and started downloading mp3's so that I didn't feel so ripped off.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes yes, but I was referring to other MS junkware excretions like messenger running by default and IE being integrated in a sleazy way. Sure, the Finder needs networking optimization and sometimes cacks for a while when losing track of a share (nowhere near as bad as stated at the start of this thread), and fixing it is way overdue, while on a MS-oriented network, Windows wins. Still, OS X works great with third party networking apps and the good ol' way, via the command line, so I hardly notice unless I'm on a box that doesn't have the requisite freeware installed. Sleazy commercialization is a different set of comparisons, however. MS embraces and extends and squeezes out others; Apple just cripples one niche-but-desireable feature out of the box. The other junkware they happen to install stock, BTW, is MS Office trialware.
given the choice between a mediocre Windows box that can use a network and Finder, I'll take the Windows box for my next computer. I'm sick of OS X getting worse every year.WTF? it hasn't gotten worse, but one notable feature remained unfixed, while the rest of the OS has seen huge optimization leaps over the years. Meanwhile, the typical home user Windows experience = reinstall every year or endure halving of performance--if you don't get zombied in the meantime. I've troubleshot plenty of 98/ME/2K/XP networking glitches, enough to not trust it any more than OS X.
OS X still doesn't even have feature parity with 8-year-old System 9.Hear, hear! But then, save your wrist and use the keyboard. Oh, wait, there is no keyboard command for 'zoom window,' so I have to jump hoops to assign one on every OS X machine I work on. Shame shame, Apple, as resizing windows is designed to be a common action.
But forget the interface consistency, what about the blatant bugs? How about the crappy network support, so that if I have the audacity to open my iBook somewhere other than "the network its used to" it literally freezes Finder for minutes at a time. Then you go to open something on your (offline) iDisk, and you're frozen for another minute.I have a bitter, bile-tasting feeling about Finder network performance and iDisk. Why should a BSD style machine have crappy ftp performance in the base GUI? Then there's refusing to offer a LAN or roll-yer-own iDisk option, yet sticking it in my face at various points in the OS, which amounts to junkware similar to something out of Redmond.
In programs where the display of the content depends on the size of the window, that button resizes the window between two sizes that the user can set.
Yes, and to add to this: Where the content doesn't have a set size, such as in a web browser, the zoom (resize) button actually maximizes the window to fill the screen. This is confusing to Windows users, as it is very context dependent and an attempt to direct the use of the window. Some developers don't seem to grasp this, either, and so there is occasional deviance from this very useful feature.
Windows users complain about the window not maximizing because they don't get the notion of overlapping and interleaved (between apps) windows; I go nuts using windows because for once I would just like a window to snap-to-content.
I think we do disagree on the definition. For a market to be functionally "free" then customers have to be extremely well-informed about their choices. Regulated markets try to pick up the slack (well, in theory). Unfortunately, customers are not well-informed (nor even rational, but that's kind of a different discussion).
Yes, no one was holding a gun, to use your metaphor. However, there is an element of fraud or obscurity. So: be mugged, or be conned? While this isn't life or death, what are the choices for those who wish to back up their purchased music in a form that can be played in the car? Few, if they're even aware of them. When the market strongly channels customers into a particular decision, and they are unaware of the nature of that decision, how much actual "freedom" do they have? Free markets require consent, and consent requires knowledge.
I agree that consumers ought to be compensated for this (and I suggested an alternative way to accomplish that in my earlier comment), but consider that there were other consumers that incurred costs due to the levy, but would probably not be eligible to participate in refunds. For example, a small recording label may have weighed the costs of CD-R distribution versus professional CD duplication, and found that for their quantities, professional duplication was slightly cheaper than CD-Rs, due to this levy. Should they be compensated as a result? If not, isn't that unfair? What about someone that looked at the prices for CD-Rs, and decided they were slightly too expensive (due to the levy) and went out and bought original CDs instead. Should they be compensated? How much would be fair in that case?I actually don't think consumers should be compensated at this point. I think they should be informed (good labelling being a prerequisite for freeing a market) and opting-out of the levy made easier, or more accurate. I was/am one of those unfairly levied, as I did a large amount of archiving of original audio and data, but not enough to warrant applying for an exemption (once I found out about it). My response was to swallow my bile, eventually read and embrace the copyright act wholeheartedly, and commence a campaign of 'personal use' that included some downloading but much personal sharing of music with friends. I may have actually caught up with my payment of the levy, but I doubt it, as I back up all the kids' CD's, archive data, mail out photo cd's, and distribute original work. Yet, now I feel somewhat protective of my personal use rights, as I pay indie artists directly and copy from friends for heavily promoted artists.
My informed relationship to CD purchases now approaches that of a free market. That of my customers and students doesn't--until I inform them of their personal use rights, and the levy that enables it.
We're talking Canada here, right? Most of us are overwhelmed by US media, and thus US legal terminology and attitudes. We generally haven't even heard of the levy. And, since it's 21 cents per disc, the lowest price available for CD-R's is inflated to false levels, so the market bears what the retailers can give, because there is no other reasonable choice. They only think the prices are fair because that's all they can get. The market is NOT free in that sense.
Consumers get "reimbursed" by virtue of (hopefully) lower prices in the near future, until the surplus is exhausted.I don't necessarily think that customers should be reimbursed either, but that a fund for indie artists etc. would be wiser. I think that's as likely, though, as fair pricing when the market is trained to unfair pricing already.
Seriously? Everyone I know thinks DS9 is the best Trek series ever made.
Oh, I watched it religiously, but many ST fans I know put it one notch above Voyager (which I didn't hate, though TV was pretty dry for SF at that time).
Too true. Basically, I think it got better because they started really going with the larger story arc; season 1 and 2 are more episodic.
What I liked best about DS9 was that it had some grit to it: the only part of the ST franchise that dealt with things like money, aliens who were more than europeans with funny foreheads, ongoing resistance to occupation, and an unwilling prophet. For the first time the ferengi were more than a comic foil, and despite the typical ST smarmy-ness, some of the acting was pretty good.
If I could venture a theory, I would say that heavily serialized shows just aren't everyone's cup of tea, because they require committment.
Watching a SF show like BSG, Firefly, Babylon 5, the new hit Heroes, or even the reviled Deep Space 9 requires a good understanding of a large backstory in order to truly appreciate it. Episodic shows like Star Trek (original or NG) is fine for dipping in and out of the make-believe, and so are easier for casual watching.
The more complex the plot arc, the more work required to make meaning as a viewer.
That's exactly why I like those shows: an audacious plot. The hook is the Big Picture. The rewards are a huge amount of nuance inside each episode.
This sounds like a natural fit with the original vision of the World Soundscape Project, especially since these are ambient field recordings. Too bad they ran short of funding and the momentum faded, I think they would have taken it somewhere like this. I like the fact that they're hoping to showcase changing soundscapes over time. It would be great if the GE community can contribute. If this stuff interests you, check out the literature on acoustic ecology.
Slaveholders are enslaved by their own necessary delusions, and their minds and hearts twisted by the rough tightness of those bonds. Pity all in such a hell-on-earth! May their descendents heal quickly.
In a sly but perhaps not-so-moral move, the USA scooped as much of the Nazi scientific and intelligence system as it could, in Operation Paperclip.
...the fact that the Islamic revolution turned against the USA also is exactly because the USA was seen as those who had kept the shaw [sic] in power and supported the oppression that it brought.You forget, or didn't know, that the democratically elected and popular leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq, was overthrown in a coup by the USA ( and the UK) through Operation Ajax. This CIA operation had little to do with truth, justice, or the American Way, but oil, money, and geopolitical dominance. Because of propaganda, americans don't know this, but those in the region do. The Shah was an evil prick in comparison to Mossadeq; people suffered.
This is all public record. It isn't just the support for the Shah, it was the attack on a functioning democracy that was so galling. It backfired: Mosaddeq came back under the Shah, because people took to the streets, and things got as complicated as any Persian plot. The current anti-americanism in the region is the predictable result of meddling like this, but do you think the US electorate knows anything of it? How would Americans feel if Chinese and Vietnamese intelligence agencies orchestrated a coup in Washington? That's what you're up against in Iran.
Hey, extreme dogma isn't off the hook. Islam is tearing itself apart, too. You seem to think there's only one source to blame. I do revise my sloppy statement: it isn't the military that produces radicalism, but its use, so I blame the planners for making things much worse. Making unnecessary enemies to build a clandestine empire is anti-american; General Eisenhower would agree.
I do know about the history of various radical crazies, and have read their books, have seen the dead and the terror, have crouched under curfew, have even argued with some.
Radical christianity may like having an enemy, but doesn't produce suicide bombers. Occupation does, however. Until fairly recently, suicide bombers were almost all targeting occupiers (perceived or real) as a desperate strategy. Expect that, were the roles reversed, dispossessed delusional radicals in muslim-occupied Atlanta would be strapping on the dynamite, mujaheddin in all but name.
Without the global spread of USA's (& the former soviet) military presence and backing of nasty regimes, terrorism would be weak and localized, and a concern for elite police, not aircraft carriers. Sunni and Shia would focus on killing each other (the endless cycle of x1 vs. x2, where x = religious dogma). Give them a global occupier and a bigger enemy than each other, and they form a global resistance.
Hitler was initially supported by many americans, including the Bush family and General Motors. Fascism was seen as friendly until it got out of control, and go look up Operation Paper Clip. WWII was full of much more history and cross-intrigue than your highly propagandized view of it. Pol Pot (Khmer Rouge) was arguably a direct result of clandestine american bombing "back into the stone age"--and a stone age mentality resulted. Stalin was an ally, and then the resulting cold war was a consequence of a struggle for global dominance, not justice. The modern versions of these monsters usually get American support at some stage, viz. S. Hussein.
When things go bad, the world doesn't come running to the USA so much as the USA intercedes, often after things have been contrived to go bad. Really, you need to do better research.
I fail to see how having a base in Arabia saves any Jews, instead of inciting hatred. Perhaps you can tidily unravel the mess that is the post-colonial middle east for us in a slashdot posting...
And yes, I believe that a trillion annual dollars applied to diplomacy, propaganda, and education would be far more effective and efficient than bombing. Most international diplomats and scholars would agree. Why is that more scary than an excess of armaments and an enormous standing army aimed offshore?
Please re-read: et al strives to refer to shareholders. And fails, I guess.
"me too" to your thoughts on enforcement through aggression. It simply doesn't work anymore, if it ever did. Guerrilla warfare is far too effective to rule with an iron fist.I rather think that it isn't so much a failed strategy due to changing political circumstances as a failure to read essential human nature (i.e. put the shoe on the other foot). If you came and ruined my life and my family's, and left me with few options, a demented revenge fever is predictable. Where there are strong ideologies (like extreme religion), the revenge justification gets caught up in noble goals.
My main point is that that is the intention. The iron fist needs something to grasp.
That aggressive right-to-might belief is a fundamental strategic error, and used as a ruse to centralize power by increasing insecurity, and thus reduce the need for false flag operations.
When you invade other countries, hell, when you put over 700 military bases in foreign countries, establish an international influence-pervert-abduct-torture network, establish a global disinformation campaign, spend more money on the rule of force than the rest of the world combined, work with tyrants, and work hand-in-hand with industry to shift capital and control away from sovereignty everywhere, well, people will be pissed off.
When you try to crush the few extreme radicals that this naturally results in, by killing lots of civilians and destroying infrastructure (and thus ways of life), hey presto, many many more radicals with nothing left to lose. The US military is a radical-producing machine.
When you put a military base on holy land of a competing militant religion and use it to create more displaced refugees--oh look, suicide bombers.
Yes, I'm saying that spending a trillion dollars annually on international education/propaganda and diplomacy rather than military aggression would have resulted in greater security for the USA (but fewer riches for the shareholders of lockheed-martin and halliburton et al). Too late now, though, you got the enemies you were looking for, and it will take a generation to make peace.
The biggest conspiracy theorists are the spies. They actually make a decent living hatching ridiculous conspiracy theories (oooh, the Canadian Mint is run by aliens using their advanced nanotech to prepare for invasion). That way their masters get to spy on pinko commie agitators everywhere, like environmentalists and democracy advocates (ooh look, the Raging Grannies are inciting insurrection, let's tap their phones, send in the moles).
Sure, but not always. Sometimes laws that are regularly broken but not always enforced are good to have as a fallback. Assault, for instance: no need to call the cops over every little scuffle. The will of the law's subjects is usually very complex, and the line of illegality can be fuzzy.
bwahaha! touché!
Ah well, wit is wasted on the young, and America chooses to be perennially young. I was referring, of course, to the origins of the metric system.
Niven's Ringworld is one million miles across the ribbon, the rim walls holding in the atmosphere are 1000 miles high, and its circumference is 600 million miles around. For those who use a more sensible and thus cowardly* base 10 measurement system: 1,609,344 km wide, rim walls 1,609 km high, and 965,606,400 km in circumference. That yields a radius (AU) of 153,681,031 km. The radius/width ratio is thus about 154:1, so your instincts are correct, even if the calculation is a bit off.
Added bonus: the surface area works out to 1.6×10^15 sq.km--about 3 million Earths; wrap your head around that! Halo's 10,000 km diameter is relatively tiny.
(* Profuse apologies: impugning the valour of anything French, including metrics, on american-run sites is, seemingly, de rigueur.)
Consider that it's likely that they want to be Sony, not MS--or rather, have been trying to become what Sony should've been.
Let's see:
In each of these cases, you can see Apple following Sony's lead, but trying to do it right. While Sony is a behemoth with a zillion products, Apple is picking away at the high-profile successes that Sony has had, and one-upping. It will be interesting to see if Apple gets back into optics, and tackles the camera market.
As is "their"--look up the word "they" in the dictionary, you lexically challenged quasi-grammarian.
It's worth noting that Mac OS 9, which had no security whatsoever, had almost no (or none? The point is I've never come across one) viruses or worms. Users were just more vigilant, and the operating system's transparency (the degree to which the way the system worked was obvious to the end user) meant end users had a better idea of the consequences of their actions.
OS 9 had fewer than a hundred likely infections, not including Word macros (more of a carrier risk, as currently, than damage). All were pretty rare. There was an autostart worm and earlier systems were plagued by a few common viruses, but the freeware Disinfectant handled them easily. They didn't cause much damage, though I did get a deal on an infected machine once because the owners didn't identify the problem.
Mostly, though, OS 9 was network secure because it just didn't offer any network services unless you fiddled to open them up; nearly anything more than basic Appletalk or TCP/IP involved installing and configuring something. It's transparent to the user because there's nothing much to hide. OS 9 is secure by default because the services just aren't there to exploit.
Right, it just gets more and more twisted.
but the kicker is this: we pay the levy on the blank cd's we use for our release. this means that some major-label canadian artist (ms. levign perhaps) is actually making money off of my band's record while my band is losing money.
Well, all you have to do is join the American Federation of Musicians, then apply to the Canadian Private Copying Collective for a zero-rating on the levy.
That should save you $105 on your purchase of 500 blanks (yes, $0.21 on ea.!!), and after the $60 application fee for the zero-rating and the $112.00 annual AFM dues plus the $115 initiation fee, you'll have saved -$182 ...oh.
I was archiving field recordings on blank media, and paying a levy. At some point, I just broke down and started downloading mp3's so that I didn't feel so ripped off.