There is almost no way that we could get congress to repeal it
And there's your problem. The only reason those
people are there is because you voted them in.
If you can't even tell them to either repeal the
law or you'll find someone else to do it, then
that's the crux of the problem. That's what
you really need to fix, because they can enact
another one just like it more quickly than it
can be struck down.
The other possibility is that a majority of
your citizens are perfectly okay with it.
This is, after all, a period of overreaction
following a national tragedy.
If our "representatives" would do thier goddamn jobs and live up to thier oath of office and stop passing obviously untenable legislation as a way of making political hay, then maybe we wouldn't need to go to the courts so often.
I agree. I'm just saying that voting them away
is the designed solution to the problem.
Relying on a side effect of an undesigned
solution such as the Supreme Court means
that things like the Eldred case get punted
back to the Legislature.
Anyone who voted in favor of a bill that's declared unconstitutional should be removed from office because they've violated the oath of office.
Well, some laws live right on the border, so
this is not a good solution, either. You
need to consider that things like Affirmative
Action, for example, may have been passed
with the best intentions even though they
are arguably unconstitutional.
Point is, people who look to the Supreme Court
to correct bad laws are looking for short
term solutions. This is bad because by the
time a law does get struck down, it's already
affected many people. Worse, many bad laws
won't get struck down. What you really need
to do is to either fix your representation
system, or fix your citizenry so that they are
less apathetic or ignorant.
The political system, like any system, needs
maintenance. Your post hints at setting
up an ideal automatic system (remove legislators
who propose unconstitutional laws), and can
only work as well as our foresight allows -
which is to say, never as well as we'd like.
Vigilance really is the price here.
We could make flying cars if we wanted to,
but we really don't want to yet (economic and
regulatory reasons).
Uh, no, we can't make flying cars. We
can make small airplanes, but they can't stop
at an intersection like a car can. We can
make helicopters, but rotors have a much bigger
footprint than a car. We can make vehicles
with small rocket thrusters, but probably not
with the range of a car.
when the patriot act is finally challenged
in the supreme court it will be destroyed.
Looks like the Supreme Court is becoming the
first resort of the opponents of a law, be it
the DMCA or the PATRIOT act. This is wrong.
The way things are supposed to work is
to voice and consider these concerns before
it is signed into law. Before it affects the
life, liberty, and happiness of actual people.
This is done by constituents voicing their
concerns, and representatives acting on behalf
of those concerns.
The Supreme Court is not supposed to be in
the business of correcting legislative
stupidities (and in fact refrained from doing
so in the Eldred case). The proper role of
the Supreme Court is to clarify a law where
lower courts have each reasonably come to
different interpretations. They are, if you
will, legal scholars with a final say.
You've basically replaced the rightful and
designed role of hundreds of elected
representatives with the peripheral role
of a dozen justices appointed by
Presidents. While I understand your
frustration and lack of faith in your
representatives, the risks here should be
obvious.
Support and consultation, which is where most of the money is anyways.
This business model gives vendors a disincentive
to make their software bug-free, easy-to-configure,
or self-healing. You don't want to put a company
in a position where doing a really good job can
be suicidal. Aligned interests (good code in
exchange for good money) can be a much better
model in the long run.
OSS is a superior business model, UNLESS you are MS.
That's really oversimplified. There are many
applications that don't lend well to open
source development.
For example, much of the value of Apple computers
is in OS X and the core iApps. If Apple opened
the sources to the iApps, Microsoft can bundle
the same iApps with Windows. So why "switch"?
On the other hand, Windows is not likely to
"steal" the Darwin kernel (and if they really
wanted to they can get BSD themselves), so it's
not a problem for Apple to open source it.
NVidia maintains its market position by
superior hardware and drivers. Giving away
the sources to the drivers aids the
competition.
Pro Tools Free is a good example of a powerful
and artificially limited software, given away
for free. Giving it away for free lets a lot
of people learn to use it, which is great.
Opening its sources would make it trivial to
bypass any such artificial limitations
(in this case, number of editing tracks, IIRC),
hurting the more expensive actual product that
you're supposed to buy after outgrowing the
freebie. Like Apple, Digidesign really wants
to sell you hardware, so opening the sources
can make it easier to run Pro Tools Free
with somebody else's hardware.
Would you like to propose alternative business
models for these companies?
Re:Legacy hardware = bad, legacy software = good
on
Legacy-Free PCs
·
· Score: 1
On the software front, though, remarkably little has changed in the last twenty+ years, except for stuff moving from research labs out to the real world, and consolidation behind the Microsoft "standard".
You just haven't been paying attention:
Computers are now a fact of life among
musicians and many artists.
Desktop publishing has gone from buzzword to
fact of life.
Mobile computing has grown up.
Email reaches even your grandparents.
A virtual world of information, known as
the WWW.
What's changed is who is sitting in front of
that computer. That's not trivial at all.
Ever try getting a budget-constrained school
to spend $10,000 per seat for video editing
tools?
You can put together a viable suite for
about $1500 (G4 eMac + RAM + Final Cut Pro
Academic or Final Cut Express + Photoshop
Elements). It might actually be better for
a high school lab to use something like
iMovie, to get them to concentrate on the
editing (pacing, etc) rather than learning
a professional tool.
That's not free, but that's not $10K either.
there is nothing wrong with high schoolers coming away with a little technical knowledge.
Except that "technical knowledge" may come out
of the precious time they have access to the
lab, and were supposed to be using to edit
videos. I have nothing against having kids
work within tight constraints. However, the
constraints need to be carefully evaluated
against the objectives of the course.
it is not in any way debatable. A 2Ghz P4 smokes a 1Ghz G4
...except...
with apps optimized for Altivec the performance is about the same if not better with the G4
...and...
when on battery power the P4 is unable to run at full speed.
Do you even know what debatable means?
It is entirely debatable (argument or
discussion is possible; open to dispute;
questionable) which CPU is better for you.
As you hinted, the debate will center around
whether you use applications that are G4
friendly, and whether you need to run on
batteries frequently.
In case you haven't noticed, AIDs is one of the most medically researched topics.
Sure, but not because of the tens of
millions afflicted in Africa. Some African
nations had started to distribute "illegal"
generics, because their dying population
cannot afford the patented drugs.
I'll repeat it for you. The free market, by
definition, optimizes for profit. If AIDS
research costs $5B and earns $6B, while a
special drug for an ailment only Bill Gates
has costs $5B and he's willing to pay $10B,
free market will invest in Bill Gates' drug.
The fact that AIDS is hotly researched is
because many relatively rich people are
affected. Many diseases (TB, for example)
that primarily affect poor third world
countries are neglected by the free market,
because there's no money there.
The free Market is the only way. If it was supported by public research, that would mean MORE taxes as well as Political influence.
No, many health issues are not best handled
(nevermind only handled) by private industry.
It will lead to abuses like:
"Poor people diseases" getting too little
funding
"Rich people diseases" getting too much
funding
Unnecessary medication. Remember their
objective is to sell you as many pills as
possible without killing you or otherwise
making you stop buying.
A better approach is a hybrid. Let private
industry work on "rich people diseases",
because there the demand aligns with profit,
where private industries work best. However,
somebody has to take care of the neglected
diseases.
The old saw that money doesn't buy happiness is, quite frankly, nonsense. Money is what buys quality food; what buys a nice home; what pays for entertainment; what purchases time off to enjoy the above things.
You're misinterpreting it. What that's trying
to say is:
The amount of money you have is not
directly related to your happiness. In fact,
many people manage to be happy without
money, and Bill Gates may not be that much
happier than you are.
Money does not directly bring happiness.
You need people and things to spend on to be
happy.
You need to be content with and grateful
for what you have to be happy, because if
you're greedy you will be unhappy, however
much money you have.
Nobody is saying that money cannot bring
happiness.
The free market is a wonderful mechanism to determine this: if there's a lot of demand for something, then folks will see a lot of money to be made there
No, the free market will direct research towards
the drugs that are profitable, not where
there is a great humanitarian demand. For
example, if AIDS is mostly an African problem,
then nobody will be researching AIDS drugs
because Africans cannot afford expensive drugs.
Who says a compiler has to be hosted? So it's a cross-compiler, big frickin' deal.
I was actually using a technical term. ANSI/ISO
C implementations are either "hosted" (must
have standard library, etc) or "freestanding"
(fewer requirements). The term refers to the
runtime environment.
BTW, cc65 is at least an ANSI ('89 spec?) C compiler.
If it's missing stdio, it's not any form of
ANSI C (including 89/90) except "freestanding". "Freestanding" is really just an escape hatch
in the spec, because any two freestanding implementations (unlike two hosted
compilers) are not likely to be compatible
at all. They don't even have to have a
function named main(), for example. There's
really no such thing as a standard freestanding
implementation.
Generally, be very skeptical of systems with
8-bit CPUs claiming ANSI C compliance. 'long'
and 'double', which are not optional, are going
to be particularly painful for them to implement.
Our diversity is our strength, not our weakness. Free Software's strategic marketing paradigm is a massively parallel drunkard's walk filtered by a Darwinistic process.
Free software is Darwinistic, but it is not a
random walk. The typical "yet another editor"
project starts by copying the feature set of
established editors, adding little more than a
different icon placement, and ends with maybe
a third of the features complete. These are
repeated attempts to progress in a path where
many before have failed, not a random seeding
to see which one becomes viable.
More importantly, discipline is required.
In commercial development, discipline comes
from money. In free software development,
you need to find your own discipline to see
the program to completion. The ability to
set a personal goal and accomplish it is
what separates mature people from children
(of any age) in my mind. I may be wrong and
you may in fact have the required diversity,
but without discipline none of the diverse
seeds will actually bloom. I don't think
you'll argue that discipline is in abundance
here.
It's better to let coders control their own multiple directions. One of them will get it right.
Yes, but remember that one severe weakness of
evolution is that it takes a lot of
time. Directed human activity caused the
extinction of many species that can't evolve
quickly enough.
The above program will not link correctly on the cc65 [cc65.org] compiler when targeting the Commodore C16-Plus/4, as there is no stdio at *all* in the C16 runtime.
Then it's not a frickin' hosted ISO C compiler,
and all bets are off. You don't expect Java
code to compile on a C++ compiler, do you?
Unfortunately, the people that Microsoft is
trying to please like growth. Despite
monopolies in desktop OS and office suite
markets, Wall Street likes to see a growing
company. In a sense, Microsoft can hardly
help it, unless they want their stock price
to suffer greatly when people start thinking
of it as sure but slow.
Look, I understand that CEO is not an easy job, but how much accountability is this guy held to
Your concern is entirely understandable, but all
it does is to create a kind of professional
scapegoat CEO who goes from dying company to
dying company turning off the lights. This can
be lucrative, because they get paid CEO
salaries, but don't actually have to fulfill
any company ambitions.
Meanwhile, the person actually responsible walks
off to a different executive job, obviously
with a much more relaxing severance package
than the rest of the suc^H^H^Hemployees. The
real problem is that Boards of Directors are
filled with... CEOs from other companies! Life
at the executive level really does consist of
scratching each others' backs.
but if malloc chooses to reallocate z to be the same space where x lived, then your debugging malloc won't complain.
Sorry, I misunderstood you the first time. You
are correct that this particular case won't be
caught. One possibility might to never actually
free memory in debug mode, which obviously still
won't work if you really require lots of memory.
but the release builds are where you want the protection from security holes.
If that's the case, you'll either want to
optimize the memory debugging library to look
up allocated blocks much more quickly, or
use another language.
However, even the simple library that I
proposed will probably catch over 90% of the
memory bugs, which should make it a worthwhile
investment in time.
Teaching is part of the job. At least I think so. And I try extra hard to not appear distrurbed when a junior guy comes with questions.
I'd argue that for a senior engineer, teaching
is the main job. As salaries increase over your
seniority, it becomes more and more difficult to
produce (code) to justify your salary. A single
human can only code so much so well, and it's
unreasonable to ask the company to pay you more
than you can produce for them.
However, if you can enable three $50K junior
programmers who normally produce $60K for the
company to produce $70K instead, you've just
justified an extra $30K for yourself.
keeping a list of memory you've allocated before has the main problem that malloc tends to reuse previously-allocated memory--so you may have a dangling pointer that becomes valid because of another malloc.
Not a big problem. Note that dbg_malloc() can
similarly traverse the list before returning,
and if the malloc()ed pointer is already in the
list, the scenario you cite just happened.
Of course, a scheme like this will also be a lot slower than garbage collection.
Unlike GC, this can be disabled in release
builds.
void dbg_free(void *p) { for (i = 0; i < blocks_allocated; i++) { if (blocks[i] == p) { blocks[i] = NULL; free(p); return; } } /* double free! */ }
The code is obviously not complete. It can't
reuse the blocks[] array after some free()s
and doesn't check overflows, but it should
illustrate how easily a simple memory debugger
can be built. A simple #ifdef will
ensure that a release build will use the
real malloc() and free() for maximal speed.
This code can also be easily extended to check
for memory leaks.
substantial help from Britain (~$70B pledged) and the US (not fixed yet, but estimated at $50-100B that the US will pay to rebuild Iraq)
Would that require Iraq to buy US and UK
products? If so, isn't that like... US taxpayers
subsidizing US companies?
Furthermore, the Iraqi people will get a lot more benefit off their oil revenues when they are not being used to build Saddam's palaces, torture chambers, weapon programs, etc.
Sure, but would they be even better off if
US oil companies don't end up controlling the
oil wells? In whose interest would these
companies be acting?
4. Actually, oil companies probably make less money in the long run. [...]
5. Yes, [Bush gets political donations]
Hmm, I wonder what makes oil companies donate
money to a president who causes them to make
less money.
The result of this war will likely A) increase stability in the Gulf (with Saddam gone) and B) increase oil supply (with Iraq oil sources opened up). The net result of these two should substantially reduce the cost of oil and hence profits for oil companies.
You mean like how companies moved manufacturing
overseas to cut costs, and pass on the savings
to the consumer? Oh, wait, did that happen?
the american government doesnt give a shit about iraqi people
You know, I am really sick and tired of such statements as yours, there.
Actually, I think many Americans will agree that
the US government doesn't give a shit about
Americans, nevermind Iraqis. In a different
thread, you might be complaining about how
Disney influences lawmakers. Why do you assume
they can act honorably in Iraq?
Slashdot Mirror
And there's your problem. The only reason those people are there is because you voted them in. If you can't even tell them to either repeal the law or you'll find someone else to do it, then that's the crux of the problem. That's what you really need to fix, because they can enact another one just like it more quickly than it can be struck down.
The other possibility is that a majority of your citizens are perfectly okay with it. This is, after all, a period of overreaction following a national tragedy.
I agree. I'm just saying that voting them away is the designed solution to the problem. Relying on a side effect of an undesigned solution such as the Supreme Court means that things like the Eldred case get punted back to the Legislature.
Anyone who voted in favor of a bill that's declared unconstitutional should be removed from office because they've violated the oath of office.
Well, some laws live right on the border, so this is not a good solution, either. You need to consider that things like Affirmative Action, for example, may have been passed with the best intentions even though they are arguably unconstitutional.
Point is, people who look to the Supreme Court to correct bad laws are looking for short term solutions. This is bad because by the time a law does get struck down, it's already affected many people. Worse, many bad laws won't get struck down. What you really need to do is to either fix your representation system, or fix your citizenry so that they are less apathetic or ignorant.
The political system, like any system, needs maintenance. Your post hints at setting up an ideal automatic system (remove legislators who propose unconstitutional laws), and can only work as well as our foresight allows - which is to say, never as well as we'd like. Vigilance really is the price here.
Uh, no, we can't make flying cars. We can make small airplanes, but they can't stop at an intersection like a car can. We can make helicopters, but rotors have a much bigger footprint than a car. We can make vehicles with small rocket thrusters, but probably not with the range of a car.
Looks like the Supreme Court is becoming the first resort of the opponents of a law, be it the DMCA or the PATRIOT act. This is wrong.
The way things are supposed to work is to voice and consider these concerns before it is signed into law. Before it affects the life, liberty, and happiness of actual people. This is done by constituents voicing their concerns, and representatives acting on behalf of those concerns. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be in the business of correcting legislative stupidities (and in fact refrained from doing so in the Eldred case). The proper role of the Supreme Court is to clarify a law where lower courts have each reasonably come to different interpretations. They are, if you will, legal scholars with a final say.
You've basically replaced the rightful and designed role of hundreds of elected representatives with the peripheral role of a dozen justices appointed by Presidents. While I understand your frustration and lack of faith in your representatives, the risks here should be obvious.
This business model gives vendors a disincentive to make their software bug-free, easy-to-configure, or self-healing. You don't want to put a company in a position where doing a really good job can be suicidal. Aligned interests (good code in exchange for good money) can be a much better model in the long run.
That's really oversimplified. There are many applications that don't lend well to open source development.
For example, much of the value of Apple computers is in OS X and the core iApps. If Apple opened the sources to the iApps, Microsoft can bundle the same iApps with Windows. So why "switch"? On the other hand, Windows is not likely to "steal" the Darwin kernel (and if they really wanted to they can get BSD themselves), so it's not a problem for Apple to open source it.
NVidia maintains its market position by superior hardware and drivers. Giving away the sources to the drivers aids the competition.
Pro Tools Free is a good example of a powerful and artificially limited software, given away for free. Giving it away for free lets a lot of people learn to use it, which is great. Opening its sources would make it trivial to bypass any such artificial limitations (in this case, number of editing tracks, IIRC), hurting the more expensive actual product that you're supposed to buy after outgrowing the freebie. Like Apple, Digidesign really wants to sell you hardware, so opening the sources can make it easier to run Pro Tools Free with somebody else's hardware.
Would you like to propose alternative business models for these companies?
You just haven't been paying attention:
- Computers are now a fact of life among
musicians and many artists.
- Desktop publishing has gone from buzzword to
fact of life.
- Mobile computing has grown up.
- Email reaches even your grandparents.
- A virtual world of information, known as
the WWW.
What's changed is who is sitting in front of that computer. That's not trivial at all.You can put together a viable suite for about $1500 (G4 eMac + RAM + Final Cut Pro Academic or Final Cut Express + Photoshop Elements). It might actually be better for a high school lab to use something like iMovie, to get them to concentrate on the editing (pacing, etc) rather than learning a professional tool.
That's not free, but that's not $10K either.
there is nothing wrong with high schoolers coming away with a little technical knowledge.
Except that "technical knowledge" may come out of the precious time they have access to the lab, and were supposed to be using to edit videos. I have nothing against having kids work within tight constraints. However, the constraints need to be carefully evaluated against the objectives of the course.
with apps optimized for Altivec the performance is about the same if not better with the G4
when on battery power the P4 is unable to run at full speed.
Do you even know what debatable means?
It is entirely debatable (argument or discussion is possible; open to dispute; questionable) which CPU is better for you. As you hinted, the debate will center around whether you use applications that are G4 friendly, and whether you need to run on batteries frequently.
Sure, but not because of the tens of millions afflicted in Africa. Some African nations had started to distribute "illegal" generics, because their dying population cannot afford the patented drugs.
I'll repeat it for you. The free market, by definition, optimizes for profit. If AIDS research costs $5B and earns $6B, while a special drug for an ailment only Bill Gates has costs $5B and he's willing to pay $10B, free market will invest in Bill Gates' drug.
The fact that AIDS is hotly researched is because many relatively rich people are affected. Many diseases (TB, for example) that primarily affect poor third world countries are neglected by the free market, because there's no money there.
The free Market is the only way. If it was supported by public research, that would mean MORE taxes as well as Political influence.
No, many health issues are not best handled (nevermind only handled) by private industry. It will lead to abuses like:
- "Poor people diseases" getting too little
funding
- "Rich people diseases" getting too much
funding
- Unnecessary medication. Remember their
objective is to sell you as many pills as
possible without killing you or otherwise
making you stop buying.
A better approach is a hybrid. Let private industry work on "rich people diseases", because there the demand aligns with profit, where private industries work best. However, somebody has to take care of the neglected diseases.You're misinterpreting it. What that's trying to say is:
- The amount of money you have is not
directly related to your happiness. In fact,
many people manage to be happy without
money, and Bill Gates may not be that much
happier than you are.
- Money does not directly bring happiness.
You need people and things to spend on to be
happy.
- You need to be content with and grateful
for what you have to be happy, because if
you're greedy you will be unhappy, however
much money you have.
Nobody is saying that money cannot bring happiness.No, the free market will direct research towards the drugs that are profitable, not where there is a great humanitarian demand. For example, if AIDS is mostly an African problem, then nobody will be researching AIDS drugs because Africans cannot afford expensive drugs.
I was actually using a technical term. ANSI/ISO C implementations are either "hosted" (must have standard library, etc) or "freestanding" (fewer requirements). The term refers to the runtime environment.
BTW, cc65 is at least an ANSI ('89 spec?) C compiler.
If it's missing stdio, it's not any form of ANSI C (including 89/90) except "freestanding". "Freestanding" is really just an escape hatch in the spec, because any two freestanding implementations (unlike two hosted compilers) are not likely to be compatible at all. They don't even have to have a function named main(), for example. There's really no such thing as a standard freestanding implementation.
Generally, be very skeptical of systems with 8-bit CPUs claiming ANSI C compliance. 'long' and 'double', which are not optional, are going to be particularly painful for them to implement.
Free software is Darwinistic, but it is not a random walk. The typical "yet another editor" project starts by copying the feature set of established editors, adding little more than a different icon placement, and ends with maybe a third of the features complete. These are repeated attempts to progress in a path where many before have failed, not a random seeding to see which one becomes viable.
More importantly, discipline is required. In commercial development, discipline comes from money. In free software development, you need to find your own discipline to see the program to completion. The ability to set a personal goal and accomplish it is what separates mature people from children (of any age) in my mind. I may be wrong and you may in fact have the required diversity, but without discipline none of the diverse seeds will actually bloom. I don't think you'll argue that discipline is in abundance here.
It's better to let coders control their own multiple directions. One of them will get it right.
Yes, but remember that one severe weakness of evolution is that it takes a lot of time. Directed human activity caused the extinction of many species that can't evolve quickly enough.
Then it's not a frickin' hosted ISO C compiler, and all bets are off. You don't expect Java code to compile on a C++ compiler, do you?
Unfortunately, the people that Microsoft is trying to please like growth. Despite monopolies in desktop OS and office suite markets, Wall Street likes to see a growing company. In a sense, Microsoft can hardly help it, unless they want their stock price to suffer greatly when people start thinking of it as sure but slow.
You mean like Netscape?
Your concern is entirely understandable, but all it does is to create a kind of professional scapegoat CEO who goes from dying company to dying company turning off the lights. This can be lucrative, because they get paid CEO salaries, but don't actually have to fulfill any company ambitions.
Meanwhile, the person actually responsible walks off to a different executive job, obviously with a much more relaxing severance package than the rest of the suc^H^H^Hemployees. The real problem is that Boards of Directors are filled with... CEOs from other companies! Life at the executive level really does consist of scratching each others' backs.
Sorry, I misunderstood you the first time. You are correct that this particular case won't be caught. One possibility might to never actually free memory in debug mode, which obviously still won't work if you really require lots of memory.
but the release builds are where you want the protection from security holes.
If that's the case, you'll either want to optimize the memory debugging library to look up allocated blocks much more quickly, or use another language.
However, even the simple library that I proposed will probably catch over 90% of the memory bugs, which should make it a worthwhile investment in time.
I'd argue that for a senior engineer, teaching is the main job. As salaries increase over your seniority, it becomes more and more difficult to produce (code) to justify your salary. A single human can only code so much so well, and it's unreasonable to ask the company to pay you more than you can produce for them.
However, if you can enable three $50K junior programmers who normally produce $60K for the company to produce $70K instead, you've just justified an extra $30K for yourself.
Not a big problem. Note that dbg_malloc() can similarly traverse the list before returning, and if the malloc()ed pointer is already in the list, the scenario you cite just happened.
Of course, a scheme like this will also be a lot slower than garbage collection.
Unlike GC, this can be disabled in release builds.
Yes, but not much more sophisticated. All you really need is something like this:
The code is obviously not complete. It can't reuse the blocks[] array after some free()s and doesn't check overflows, but it should illustrate how easily a simple memory debugger can be built. A simple #ifdef will ensure that a release build will use the real malloc() and free() for maximal speed. This code can also be easily extended to check for memory leaks.Would that require Iraq to buy US and UK products? If so, isn't that like... US taxpayers subsidizing US companies?
Furthermore, the Iraqi people will get a lot more benefit off their oil revenues when they are not being used to build Saddam's palaces, torture chambers, weapon programs, etc.
Sure, but would they be even better off if US oil companies don't end up controlling the oil wells? In whose interest would these companies be acting?
4. Actually, oil companies probably make less money in the long run. [...]
5. Yes, [Bush gets political donations]
Hmm, I wonder what makes oil companies donate money to a president who causes them to make less money.
The result of this war will likely A) increase stability in the Gulf (with Saddam gone) and B) increase oil supply (with Iraq oil sources opened up). The net result of these two should substantially reduce the cost of oil and hence profits for oil companies.
You mean like how companies moved manufacturing overseas to cut costs, and pass on the savings to the consumer? Oh, wait, did that happen?
That thing you're smoking is probably illegal.
- The $100B comes from US tax payers.
- The Iraqi people get a lot of stuff blown up
and rebuilt, using their own money. Oh,
and some of them have to be "collaterally
damaged", sorry.
- Saddam Hussein pays for all he's done.
- Billions in profits go to oil companies.
- Millions in donations from oil companies go
to Bush's re-election campaign fund.
This is how your political system is designed to work. Who the losers are is left as an exercise for the reader.Actually, I think many Americans will agree that the US government doesn't give a shit about Americans, nevermind Iraqis. In a different thread, you might be complaining about how Disney influences lawmakers. Why do you assume they can act honorably in Iraq?