Being open to public scrutiny is one thing. Having your every move tracked and recorded by the government is another.
Face recognition is a semi-feasible reality, in real-time, but even if it isn't 100% reliable it really doesn't need to be - OCR software is 20 year old technology and it works REAL NICE. Why do you think that most states require you to have a license plate on your front bumper? D'oh - OCR the license plate, cross ref that to your personal records and match that to the face behind the wheel. Now when you get out of the car they know approximately where you were last based on the movement of your vehicle. They have a rough approximation of your current attire and facial features, and if a face that semi-matches yours is seen in an area you are know to be in... bingo - its a match.
The best thing, though, isn't the cameras - it's the RFID going into every single thing you buy. Wallet, watch, sunglasses, hat, jacket, pants, shirt, belt... if 9 out of 10 of those were bought by the same person guess what : that's a pretty safe identification. And in a couple of years the trackers on those babys will be able to track your movement down to the nearest couple of yards when in an environment filled with sensors. Make all this camera business look like childs play.
Copy the mp3 files to the iPod - check. Via USB - check. Have iPod add the mp3 files to the playlist and play them when I push the play button - no worky.
If I only wanted to transport files I would burn them to DVD and take them with me. The whole appeal of the iPod isn't moving files around, it is playing them as music - and to do that you need to upload them using some bullshit loader. Perhaps the linux crowd has rubbed off on me a little, I'm thinking Free as in Freedom.
Maybe I'm wrong, but according to the documentation if you are going to play the file as music, you are putting it on the iPod via the AppleSoft loader software.
And this is why I don't own one. A friend of mine has one and after I saw all the hoops we had to jump through to get music (mp3s) off the hard drive into the playlist I decided against getting one.
Might be a software bug. Many (many) years ago I was a corporate coder working on, of all things, the drug testing 'randomizer' program that one of the other coder wanna'bes wrote. Wrote it up in Foxpro because that was the language he knew. Anyways, I noticed a particularly alarming long term trend that in a company of +/- 300 the guys that got picked most of the time were the same set of guys (about 100).
Checked the code and the guy that wrote it set his precision to two digits on his variables, meaning his random number generator only returned two significant digits. This is all well and good until you realize that the random number generator doesn't return a number between 1 and 300 (the number of employees)... it returns a number between 0 and 1 which then gets multiplied by 300 (the number of employees). If the granularity of your random number is only.01,.02,.03,....99 then there are only 100 possible choices, so the other 200 employees never got picked (of course when a person left the company it shifted the stack by one, so the others did get tested but (well you can see where I'm going with that.)
The day you can plug in the USB plug into my Wintel computer and just dump.mp3 files onto the iPod - have the iPod figure out what they are and let me play them is the day I go buy one.
This business of 'let Apple install a bunch of shit on your computer and force you to move your files onto the iPod using our proprietary software and interface' is a bunch of crap. Every other player out there does it (except Sony's mini-disk, which can eat a bag of dicks) so I can't fathom why Apple doesn't.
I really want one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to install some loader to move.mp3's over the USB onto a hard drive when it really isn't necessary.
Chyea! If you break into a cold sweat when someone says 'roll for initiative' then you are old school. If you have dice that have more or less than six sides on them, you are old school. If someone could make you cry by tearing your character sheet in half... you are old school. If your game manuals weigh more than your Xbox, you are old school. If your dragon looked like a duck, you are probably old school. If you played MULE, Oregon Trail, Jumpman, Choplifter, or anything you had to type in yourself, you are old school.
Jesus I wish I had mod points. I occasionally pop Knoppix (STD) into my desktops when I want a 'wow that's fast' Linux desktop and I have been considering an Apple laptop 'just because'... but I haven't got any experience with OSX or whatever. Thanks much.
Someone wasn't paying attention at the meeting I gave on Microsoft's behalf. Someone in the crowd asked if it would support unix/linux code and I said STFU, not SFU. Big difference.
Speaking of 'evil bit', did anybody else read that as "European Article Nuremberg Code"?
For those of you that don't remember - Nuremberg was one of the original places where using tattoos to number, identify, and catalog people was invented. Doing this was eventually viewed as impolite and not politically correct, and the rest of the world asked them to stop, which they did. Scary.
I'm guessing your laptop has the 'boot from USB device' option in the BIOS? I have been looking for a way to do this with my Latitude CPiA (PII/366) and I don't think it is supported (but am open to suggestions.)
The extra battery life would be nice, but the lack of moving parts would be even nicer.
What you are looking for here is a Schedule C "Company" - basically moonlighting, doing work on the side that amounts to more than $600 in business from a single source. The customer generally asks for your SSN to send you a tax form 1099 since you aren't a real 'company'... it is the IRS' way of being a gentle reminder for you to pay your taxes on this after hours work related money. You put all the misc income on the Schedule C, and you can apply work related expense deductions against that income directly. Thus if you bought a $1000 computer, paid $50 a month in broadband and you earned $3000 that year from doing web pages on that machine, you would claim $3000 - $1600 = $1400 in Schedule C income. Note that this is effectively 'self employment' money, so you have to pay the 6.2% fica matching that is generally paid by the employer... so the taxes on this money are generally a little higher - but the cool thing is that as long as you make a profit 3 out of every 5 years, on the years that you have a loss, the loss applies directly to your regular income (something you generally have to do by having more expenses than the standard deduction, etc...)
Note that the IRS knows this is an easy way to abuse the system, so expect some scrutiny.
Also note that I'm not an accountant, so this post represents how I think it work, not how it really works. Ask your accountant.
Very few IDE drives will sustain 60MB/s across the entire drive. In fact I'm not aware of any IDE drives that will write the final 25% of capacity anywhere near 50MB/s, much less dream of 60MB/s.
If my desktops had firewire ports, however, I would give external firewire drives serious consideration though.
Bingo. On my home network I run two 80G IDE drives in Glo-RAID configuration. Two different computers, one drive in each. One is shared to everybody, the other isn't shared except during synch time. Every once in a while when everything is cool I simply copy all the files from the working drive to the other drive.
Protects vs. virus, end user deleting / overwriting files, 100% hardware redundancy (regular RAID generally doesn't protect against a smoked CPU, power supply, motherboard, bad RAM, bad IDE cable, etc.), and what have you.
The only problem with applying it to the OP's problem is being able to do monthly archives of a full T of data. I guess you could simply buy big drives and how swap trays - hard drives are pretty long lasting in cold storage unless you drop them.
I answered your question and backed it up with facts. You just lacked the ability to understand, driven by a lack of historical understanding if I had to guess.
a) Do you think that what America did in August 1945 was effective?
You were supposed to understand (acknowledge) that yes, it was very effective, and because it was effective (fact) I was in effect saying it was what was going to be necessary to convert the unconvertables from terrorists into peaceful people. Until you have a firm grasp of that the Quran (Koran) says about 'the Infidels' (that's the US) and how the groups that make up Al Qaeda believe on a fundamental level, a show of force of Hiroshima proportions can't be justified. Once you have a firm grasp of the forces at play and what it will take to convert the unconvertables from terrorists into a peaceful people, understanding that no lesser force will suffice and until the US plays its 'we are not fucking around anymore' card the world will live in fear of terrorism... only then will you understand and appreciate the need in unleashing the four horsemen. It may not be the only way, but I'm willing to give it a chance - you honestly don't need to drop too many nukes before 'the bad guys' decide to give peace a chance, once again a 100% known fact as proved in 1945. We tried the peaceful approach, and it was taken as weakness, actually encouraging the terrorists to attack us; we are dealing with a group that only respects force.
b) Evaluate the economic environment in America in the two decades following August 1945.
The good (factual) answer I was looking for from you, in support of my hypothesis, was that the US experienced a most incredible buildup in economic power in the 20 years following Hiroshima. Advances in medicine, science, art, and engineering at unprecedented levels propelled the US into an economic prosperity unheard of in global history, allowing us to put men on the moon, eradicate smallpox, and create several polution free sources of energy to drive the next generations of the world. The US would be so lucky as to go through that sort of economic revival again, living in a world free of fear, fear of terrorism.
Uday and Qusay are not my role models, at least not that I'm aware of... Ronald Reagan (as he was in 1980), however, would be handling the current issues a lot more like anyone I might have hoped for - compare and contrast how Iraq handled the hostage situation when they were dealing with Jimmy Carter, and how they handled it when they were dealing with Reagan. (Answer, saving us a round trip to AC land : Reagan was eager to drop some serious shit on anybody fucking with us, and Iraq knew it. The hostages came home the day that Reagan took office.) The Islamic extremists that were at work then are the same Islamic extremists at work today. If 25 years of peaceful dealings with them didn't convert them to a peaceful group, maybe peace isn't the answer. It took about 15 seconds to convert Japan from warmongers to peaceful - maybe that's what it is going to take with the Islamic extremists.
If you disagree with me, what do you suggest will be a 100% effective way to bring peace to the Middle East? I am sure Israel would listen, maybe even GWB would take it under consideration.
What this has to do with iPods I have no clue. Mods, feel free to hammer on these as off topic.
We are totally off topic, and you are an AC. The combination isn't particularly conducive, and it really doesn't matter what I think.
Turning it around, a) Do you think that what America did in August 1945 was effective? b) Evaluate the economic environment in America in the two decades following August 1945.
Japan circa 1945 disagrees with you. They were falling all over themselves to sign a peace treaty, couldn't sign it fast enough. More importantly, they actually took to heart the concept of 'peaceful coexisting with the rest of the world' and changed as a people.
Violence doesn't work at the 'eye for an eye' level. I agree with you on that. Violence works very well when the penalty is 1000:1, however. Raise the stakes to an immediate 1000 people per person harmed in a terrorist act; $1000 per $1 of damage caused, and watch how well the world becomes a very peaceful place.
Do you know why so (relatively) few people drive with a blood alcohol level of.1 or higher now in America? Because the penalty is so incredibly high, so incredibly devastating not only to the guy doing it but to his entire family, and that the American government has showed time and time again that they aren't afraid to punish you and punish you big time for doing it. I like to drive under the influence, I mean I really, really like to DUI (out away from other people so I not a danger to other people) but I don't do it - because I can't afford the punishment and I'm not willing to put my family through the torture that comes as parallel punishment to them. I stopped long ago not because of morality or beliefs or anything like that - I stopped because the punishment for doing it is way beyond what I am willing to take in return.
You raise the stakes high enough and the terrorists will stop all their terrorism. We saw this in 1945, but nobody with enough power to do anything is old enough to remember.
You are trying to read the minds of thousands of Japanese military leaders, undo what happened at Nagasaki and interpolate what they would have done. Given that you didn't see Pearl Harbor coming (you have an excuse if you are under 70, which I am guessing) you may / may not be correct.
There is a lot of hypothesis surrounding Nagasaki, and one question with a known factual answer : Did it work? The answer is, as we all know, Yes. Whether or not it would have worked otherwise is simply Monday Morning Quarterbacking but in 1945 failure wasn't an option.
Know why we didn't drop two nukes on Barcelona and Madrid? Because Spain didn't start a fight with us, strike at us first, blow up our Battleships (Twin Towers), or (most importantly) threaten to fight us to the last man and forever strive to make us afraid. Japan did. They decided it wasn't worth it after America unleased the four horsemen. That last one is what is being threatened right now, a certain group will never relent, never back down, and strive forever to make us afraid.
We tried limited, targed, precision munitions in Afghanistan. Didn't work. We are trying to 'be the good guys' and be 'politically correct' in Iraq. It isn't working.
When Americans can celebrate their Independence Day (July 4th) without being afraid - whatever we did to get there worked and was worth whatever it took. This year that isn't the case and whatever we have done so far obviously isn't working. Everybody knows what it takes to turn a group of terrorists into a peaceful society - simply raise the stakes to a level that they are no longer willing to participate. The question now is whether or not Bush has the balls to pull the trigger. I'm guessing not.
Japan was full of militant bad-asses until about August 9th, 1945 - at which point they decided that maybe acts of terrorism (Pearl Harbor) were a bad idea and peace was a real good idea.
You can adjust the attitude of even the most bad-ass bullies, but you have to be willing to shock and awe. What we did in Iraq the first few weeks wasn't shock and awe, it was about like what most Americans are doing in their city parks this weekend (big fireworks.) Hiroshima - now THAT was shock and awe. And it worked.
Actually America is trying to do exactly what I said wouldn't work : be semi-reserved in the use of force and hope that they don't do anything in response. America is holding back, and it is not going to work.
Hiroshima. 8:15 AM; August 6, 1945. America did not hold back, they used the most horrific destruction available and at their disposal - killed about 50,000 people in about 10 seconds.
Nagasaki. Three days later. America set the record straight - we are not fucking around. No, really - we are serious. Killed maybe another 50,000 people in the blick of an eye.
Our current policy is basically 'be a pussy.' We are showing weakness to a foe that feasts on displays of weakness. We are in fear this weekend that someone is going to do something in retribution.
We live in fear because they do not. You are right, what we are doing isn't working - because we are not really doing what I said we were. What I should have said in that second sentence was 'this is how America should have handled it starting Sept 12, 2001.' But it is how they handled it 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 - and it was very effective.
b: Go rent the movie 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas.
Get back to me when you have watched it front to back, maybe twice.
There are two ways to deal with thugs, best explained by the two ways America dealt with Al Qaeda.
You can ignore them - this is how America handled it until Sept 11, 2001. You can apply the most overwhelming amount of destructive force you have available and at your disposal - this is how America handled it starting Sept 12, 2001.
When dealing with thugs, there is no middle ground (because if you give them just a little grief they give it back double - you are only safe when you hurt them so bad they can't retaliate.) If you aren't ready to kill someone over the issue, don't pursue it. And playing the music too loud isn't really worth killing someome over.
You sound like a reasonable man, living a gentle life. You would not have been able to make the important decisions that ended WWII - bringing peace to the world - because of the intense violence it took to force peace.
I suggest you do what I do : look for it as an outlet for humor. Tell yourself a little racial joke, or compare the socioeconomic disparity between you and him. Remind yourself that he may have a loud sound system, but you have a Gig of RAM and a P4 (with hyperthreading!) When you can do that, it really won't bother you any more.
One last thing : it isn't about him, it is about you. Perception is key here - your perception. A blue sky isn't good, it isn't bad... it just 'is'. The only thing that makes it good or bad is how you decide to perceive it. As long as they don't physically interact with you or your property, it is all a matter of how you decide to perceive it. It is no different than a beautiful woman walking topless down your street - one neighbor will enjoy it, one neighbor will ignore it, one neighbor will be totally repulsed by it - it is all a matter of how you decide to see it.
You want to live in peace with others, that peace comes from within. Most 'others' don't even know you exist. This is true right up until someone physically interacts with you or your property - that's when a totally different set of rules apply (but that's not what you inquired about.)
He is sending the laptop to Africa where it will be used in an educational setting. Fuck the EULAs and disregard MSRP, load it up with whatever you think will be most useful and mail it. I'm going to suggest loading it with whatever actually works with the hardware, and whatever you think they know how to use - because it isn't like you can drop in on them to keep it running. Bear in mind viruses and worms that don't affect Linux / Mac/OS installs (like either of those would run on a four year old Toshiba) and balance it with whatever apps you have available and think they know how to run.
Anybody gives you any shit about it, have them talk to me. BillG@Microsoft.com
Ok. So what is a civilized person to do? I'm the bad-guy in all this. Help me. Let's hear your solution.
Damn, we get off topic tonight, or what?
On topic, you could mod your iPod to broadcast either white space (silence) onto the guy's radio, or broadcast maximum output and volume in the 12 to 30 Hz range (extreme bass, will blow his shit right up.)
Off topic: As for the theatrics, you were asking for it. If I am driving around minding my own business and someone gets out of his house, gets in his car, follows me around and drives into my neighborhood and honks his horn at me, that is pretty much the universal signal for 'let the violence commence.' Look at it from his perspective - you obviously chased him down and signalled to get his attention. It worked, and now that you had his attention he was interested in finding out what exactly you had in mind. Don't grab a tiger by the tail unless you have the balls to see it through.
What can you do? Lets see.
a: You could take a deep breath and let him pass, even at a slow pace in 14 seconds he will be gone. Yes, this is being a pussy but that's ok, it is how 99.999% of us handle most confrontations most of the time (including myself).
b: Go rent the movie 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas. Taking charge and standing up to 'those people' sounds pretty cool, but if you go about it mindlessly the cops will shoot you.
c: Learn from b: and also realize that 'those people' are usually people just like you and I, they just happen to be touching a raw nerve you have exposed. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself if it is really worth getting all worked up over. It really isn't but if you spend any time thinking about it whatsoever he will be gone before you are done thinking about it.
d: I could go on but I won't, because anybody that reads/. and whines about boomers driving in their neighborhood is probably too 'civilized' to kill someone on principle. Until you are ready for a revolution, you are going to have to keep putting up with it. Sorry. Sucks to live in fear, but until you are ready to point a gun at someone and (if necessary) pull the trigger there's not much you can do about it.
You dumb motherfscker, type that line verbatim in a command window in Windows and it runs just fine. I'm all about bashing Microsoft and Windows, but at least lets keep it real.
C:\WINNT>for/L %I in (1,1,10) do @echo %I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Slashdot Mirror
Being open to public scrutiny is one thing. Having your every move tracked and recorded by the government is another.
... bingo - its a match.
... if 9 out of 10 of those were bought by the same person guess what : that's a pretty safe identification. And in a couple of years the trackers on those babys will be able to track your movement down to the nearest couple of yards when in an environment filled with sensors. Make all this camera business look like childs play.
Face recognition is a semi-feasible reality, in real-time, but even if it isn't 100% reliable it really doesn't need to be - OCR software is 20 year old technology and it works REAL NICE. Why do you think that most states require you to have a license plate on your front bumper? D'oh - OCR the license plate, cross ref that to your personal records and match that to the face behind the wheel. Now when you get out of the car they know approximately where you were last based on the movement of your vehicle. They have a rough approximation of your current attire and facial features, and if a face that semi-matches yours is seen in an area you are know to be in
The best thing, though, isn't the cameras - it's the RFID going into every single thing you buy. Wallet, watch, sunglasses, hat, jacket, pants, shirt, belt
Copy the mp3 files to the iPod - check.
Via USB - check.
Have iPod add the mp3 files to the playlist and play them when I push the play button - no worky.
If I only wanted to transport files I would burn them to DVD and take them with me. The whole appeal of the iPod isn't moving files around, it is playing them as music - and to do that you need to upload them using some bullshit loader. Perhaps the linux crowd has rubbed off on me a little, I'm thinking Free as in Freedom.
Maybe I'm wrong, but according to the documentation if you are going to play the file as music, you are putting it on the iPod via the AppleSoft loader software.
And this is why I don't own one. A friend of mine has one and after I saw all the hoops we had to jump through to get music (mp3s) off the hard drive into the playlist I decided against getting one.
Might be a software bug. Many (many) years ago I was a corporate coder working on, of all things, the drug testing 'randomizer' program that one of the other coder wanna'bes wrote. Wrote it up in Foxpro because that was the language he knew. Anyways, I noticed a particularly alarming long term trend that in a company of +/- 300 the guys that got picked most of the time were the same set of guys (about 100).
... it returns a number between 0 and 1 which then gets multiplied by 300 (the number of employees). If the granularity of your random number is only .01, .02, .03, ... .99 then there are only 100 possible choices, so the other 200 employees never got picked (of course when a person left the company it shifted the stack by one, so the others did get tested but (well you can see where I'm going with that.)
Checked the code and the guy that wrote it set his precision to two digits on his variables, meaning his random number generator only returned two significant digits. This is all well and good until you realize that the random number generator doesn't return a number between 1 and 300 (the number of employees)
The day you can plug in the USB plug into my Wintel computer and just dump .mp3 files onto the iPod - have the iPod figure out what they are and let me play them is the day I go buy one.
.mp3's over the USB onto a hard drive when it really isn't necessary.
This business of 'let Apple install a bunch of shit on your computer and force you to move your files onto the iPod using our proprietary software and interface' is a bunch of crap. Every other player out there does it (except Sony's mini-disk, which can eat a bag of dicks) so I can't fathom why Apple doesn't.
I really want one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to install some loader to move
Chyea! ... you are old school.
If you break into a cold sweat when someone says 'roll for initiative' then you are old school.
If you have dice that have more or less than six sides on them, you are old school.
If someone could make you cry by tearing your character sheet in half
If your game manuals weigh more than your Xbox, you are old school.
If your dragon looked like a duck, you are probably old school.
If you played MULE, Oregon Trail, Jumpman, Choplifter, or anything you had to type in yourself, you are old school.
Dang kids with their fancy new toys.
"Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - some PC user.
Jesus I wish I had mod points. I occasionally pop Knoppix (STD) into my desktops when I want a 'wow that's fast' Linux desktop and I have been considering an Apple laptop 'just because' ... but I haven't got any experience with OSX or whatever. Thanks much.
Someone wasn't paying attention at the meeting I gave on Microsoft's behalf.
Someone in the crowd asked if it would support unix/linux code and I said STFU, not SFU.
Big difference.
Bill
billg@microsoft.com
Speaking of 'evil bit', did anybody else read that as "European Article Nuremberg Code"?
For those of you that don't remember - Nuremberg was one of the original places where using tattoos to number, identify, and catalog people was invented. Doing this was eventually viewed as impolite and not politically correct, and the rest of the world asked them to stop, which they did. Scary.
I'm guessing your laptop has the 'boot from USB device' option in the BIOS? I have been looking for a way to do this with my Latitude CPiA (PII/366) and I don't think it is supported (but am open to suggestions.)
The extra battery life would be nice, but the lack of moving parts would be even nicer.
What you are looking for here is a Schedule C "Company" - basically moonlighting, doing work on the side that amounts to more than $600 in business from a single source. The customer generally asks for your SSN to send you a tax form 1099 since you aren't a real 'company' ... it is the IRS' way of being a gentle reminder for you to pay your taxes on this after hours work related money. You put all the misc income on the Schedule C, and you can apply work related expense deductions against that income directly. Thus if you bought a $1000 computer, paid $50 a month in broadband and you earned $3000 that year from doing web pages on that machine, you would claim $3000 - $1600 = $1400 in Schedule C income. Note that this is effectively 'self employment' money, so you have to pay the 6.2% fica matching that is generally paid by the employer ... so the taxes on this money are generally a little higher - but the cool thing is that as long as you make a profit 3 out of every 5 years, on the years that you have a loss, the loss applies directly to your regular income (something you generally have to do by having more expenses than the standard deduction, etc...)
Note that the IRS knows this is an easy way to abuse the system, so expect some scrutiny.
Also note that I'm not an accountant, so this post represents how I think it work, not how it really works. Ask your accountant.
Very few IDE drives will sustain 60MB/s across the entire drive. In fact I'm not aware of any IDE drives that will write the final 25% of capacity anywhere near 50MB/s, much less dream of 60MB/s.
If my desktops had firewire ports, however, I would give external firewire drives serious consideration though.
Bingo.
On my home network I run two 80G IDE drives in Glo-RAID configuration.
Two different computers, one drive in each. One is shared to everybody, the other isn't shared except during synch time.
Every once in a while when everything is cool I simply copy all the files from the working drive to the other drive.
Protects vs. virus, end user deleting / overwriting files, 100% hardware redundancy (regular RAID generally doesn't protect against a smoked CPU, power supply, motherboard, bad RAM, bad IDE cable, etc.), and what have you.
The only problem with applying it to the OP's problem is being able to do monthly archives of a full T of data. I guess you could simply buy big drives and how swap trays - hard drives are pretty long lasting in cold storage unless you drop them.
Ack shit. Substitute Iran for Iraq in the third big paragraph. I'm pretty eager to admit it when I make a mistake, and that was a pretty good one.
I answered your question and backed it up with facts. You just lacked the ability to understand, driven by a lack of historical understanding if I had to guess.
... only then will you understand and appreciate the need in unleashing the four horsemen. It may not be the only way, but I'm willing to give it a chance - you honestly don't need to drop too many nukes before 'the bad guys' decide to give peace a chance, once again a 100% known fact as proved in 1945. We tried the peaceful approach, and it was taken as weakness, actually encouraging the terrorists to attack us; we are dealing with a group that only respects force.
... Ronald Reagan (as he was in 1980), however, would be handling the current issues a lot more like anyone I might have hoped for - compare and contrast how Iraq handled the hostage situation when they were dealing with Jimmy Carter, and how they handled it when they were dealing with Reagan. (Answer, saving us a round trip to AC land : Reagan was eager to drop some serious shit on anybody fucking with us, and Iraq knew it. The hostages came home the day that Reagan took office.) The Islamic extremists that were at work then are the same Islamic extremists at work today. If 25 years of peaceful dealings with them didn't convert them to a peaceful group, maybe peace isn't the answer. It took about 15 seconds to convert Japan from warmongers to peaceful - maybe that's what it is going to take with the Islamic extremists.
a) Do you think that what America did in August 1945 was effective?
You were supposed to understand (acknowledge) that yes, it was very effective, and because it was effective (fact) I was in effect saying it was what was going to be necessary to convert the unconvertables from terrorists into peaceful people. Until you have a firm grasp of that the Quran (Koran) says about 'the Infidels' (that's the US) and how the groups that make up Al Qaeda believe on a fundamental level, a show of force of Hiroshima proportions can't be justified. Once you have a firm grasp of the forces at play and what it will take to convert the unconvertables from terrorists into a peaceful people, understanding that no lesser force will suffice and until the US plays its 'we are not fucking around anymore' card the world will live in fear of terrorism
b) Evaluate the economic environment in America in the two decades following August 1945.
The good (factual) answer I was looking for from you, in support of my hypothesis, was that the US experienced a most incredible buildup in economic power in the 20 years following Hiroshima. Advances in medicine, science, art, and engineering at unprecedented levels propelled the US into an economic prosperity unheard of in global history, allowing us to put men on the moon, eradicate smallpox, and create several polution free sources of energy to drive the next generations of the world. The US would be so lucky as to go through that sort of economic revival again, living in a world free of fear, fear of terrorism.
Uday and Qusay are not my role models, at least not that I'm aware of
If you disagree with me, what do you suggest will be a 100% effective way to bring peace to the Middle East? I am sure Israel would listen, maybe even GWB would take it under consideration.
What this has to do with iPods I have no clue. Mods, feel free to hammer on these as off topic.
We are totally off topic, and you are an AC.
The combination isn't particularly conducive, and it really doesn't matter what I think.
Turning it around,
a) Do you think that what America did in August 1945 was effective?
b) Evaluate the economic environment in America in the two decades following August 1945.
Violence just causes more violence.
.1 or higher now in America? Because the penalty is so incredibly high, so incredibly devastating not only to the guy doing it but to his entire family, and that the American government has showed time and time again that they aren't afraid to punish you and punish you big time for doing it. I like to drive under the influence, I mean I really, really like to DUI (out away from other people so I not a danger to other people) but I don't do it - because I can't afford the punishment and I'm not willing to put my family through the torture that comes as parallel punishment to them. I stopped long ago not because of morality or beliefs or anything like that - I stopped because the punishment for doing it is way beyond what I am willing to take in return.
Japan circa 1945 disagrees with you.
They were falling all over themselves to sign a peace treaty, couldn't sign it fast enough.
More importantly, they actually took to heart the concept of 'peaceful coexisting with the rest of the world' and changed as a people.
Violence doesn't work at the 'eye for an eye' level. I agree with you on that.
Violence works very well when the penalty is 1000:1, however. Raise the stakes to an immediate 1000 people per person harmed in a terrorist act; $1000 per $1 of damage caused, and watch how well the world becomes a very peaceful place.
Do you know why so (relatively) few people drive with a blood alcohol level of
You raise the stakes high enough and the terrorists will stop all their terrorism. We saw this in 1945, but nobody with enough power to do anything is old enough to remember.
Perhaps.
You are trying to read the minds of thousands of Japanese military leaders, undo what happened at Nagasaki and interpolate what they would have done. Given that you didn't see Pearl Harbor coming (you have an excuse if you are under 70, which I am guessing) you may / may not be correct.
There is a lot of hypothesis surrounding Nagasaki, and one question with a known factual answer : Did it work? The answer is, as we all know, Yes. Whether or not it would have worked otherwise is simply Monday Morning Quarterbacking but in 1945 failure wasn't an option.
Know why we didn't drop two nukes on Barcelona and Madrid? Because Spain didn't start a fight with us, strike at us first, blow up our Battleships (Twin Towers), or (most importantly) threaten to fight us to the last man and forever strive to make us afraid. Japan did. They decided it wasn't worth it after America unleased the four horsemen. That last one is what is being threatened right now, a certain group will never relent, never back down, and strive forever to make us afraid.
We tried limited, targed, precision munitions in Afghanistan. Didn't work.
We are trying to 'be the good guys' and be 'politically correct' in Iraq. It isn't working.
When Americans can celebrate their Independence Day (July 4th) without being afraid - whatever we did to get there worked and was worth whatever it took. This year that isn't the case and whatever we have done so far obviously isn't working. Everybody knows what it takes to turn a group of terrorists into a peaceful society - simply raise the stakes to a level that they are no longer willing to participate. The question now is whether or not Bush has the balls to pull the trigger. I'm guessing not.
Oh I dunno about that.
Japan was full of militant bad-asses until about August 9th, 1945 - at which point they decided that maybe acts of terrorism (Pearl Harbor) were a bad idea and peace was a real good idea.
You can adjust the attitude of even the most bad-ass bullies, but you have to be willing to shock and awe. What we did in Iraq the first few weeks wasn't shock and awe, it was about like what most Americans are doing in their city parks this weekend (big fireworks.) Hiroshima - now THAT was shock and awe. And it worked.
Actually America is trying to do exactly what I said wouldn't work : be semi-reserved in the use of force and hope that they don't do anything in response. America is holding back, and it is not going to work.
Hiroshima. 8:15 AM; August 6, 1945. America did not hold back, they used the most horrific destruction available and at their disposal - killed about 50,000 people in about 10 seconds.
Nagasaki. Three days later. America set the record straight - we are not fucking around. No, really - we are serious. Killed maybe another 50,000 people in the blick of an eye.
Our current policy is basically 'be a pussy.' We are showing weakness to a foe that feasts on displays of weakness. We are in fear this weekend that someone is going to do something in retribution.
We live in fear because they do not. You are right, what we are doing isn't working - because we are not really doing what I said we were. What I should have said in that second sentence was 'this is how America should have handled it starting Sept 12, 2001.' But it is how they handled it 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 - and it was very effective.
b: Go rent the movie 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas.
... it just 'is'. The only thing that makes it good or bad is how you decide to perceive it. As long as they don't physically interact with you or your property, it is all a matter of how you decide to perceive it. It is no different than a beautiful woman walking topless down your street - one neighbor will enjoy it, one neighbor will ignore it, one neighbor will be totally repulsed by it - it is all a matter of how you decide to see it.
Get back to me when you have watched it front to back, maybe twice.
There are two ways to deal with thugs, best explained by the two ways America dealt with Al Qaeda.
You can ignore them - this is how America handled it until Sept 11, 2001.
You can apply the most overwhelming amount of destructive force you have available and at your disposal - this is how America handled it starting Sept 12, 2001.
When dealing with thugs, there is no middle ground (because if you give them just a little grief they give it back double - you are only safe when you hurt them so bad they can't retaliate.) If you aren't ready to kill someone over the issue, don't pursue it. And playing the music too loud isn't really worth killing someome over.
You sound like a reasonable man, living a gentle life. You would not have been able to make the important decisions that ended WWII - bringing peace to the world - because of the intense violence it took to force peace.
I suggest you do what I do : look for it as an outlet for humor. Tell yourself a little racial joke, or compare the socioeconomic disparity between you and him. Remind yourself that he may have a loud sound system, but you have a Gig of RAM and a P4 (with hyperthreading!) When you can do that, it really won't bother you any more.
One last thing : it isn't about him, it is about you. Perception is key here - your perception. A blue sky isn't good, it isn't bad
You want to live in peace with others, that peace comes from within. Most 'others' don't even know you exist. This is true right up until someone physically interacts with you or your property - that's when a totally different set of rules apply (but that's not what you inquired about.)
He is sending the laptop to Africa where it will be used in an educational setting. Fuck the EULAs and disregard MSRP, load it up with whatever you think will be most useful and mail it. I'm going to suggest loading it with whatever actually works with the hardware, and whatever you think they know how to use - because it isn't like you can drop in on them to keep it running. Bear in mind viruses and worms that don't affect Linux / Mac/OS installs (like either of those would run on a four year old Toshiba) and balance it with whatever apps you have available and think they know how to run.
Anybody gives you any shit about it, have them talk to me. BillG@Microsoft.com
Ok. So what is a civilized person to do? I'm the bad-guy in all this. Help me. Let's hear your solution.
:
/. and whines about boomers driving in their neighborhood is probably too 'civilized' to kill someone on principle. Until you are ready for a revolution, you are going to have to keep putting up with it. Sorry. Sucks to live in fear, but until you are ready to point a gun at someone and (if necessary) pull the trigger there's not much you can do about it.
Damn, we get off topic tonight, or what?
On topic, you could mod your iPod to broadcast either white space (silence) onto the guy's radio, or broadcast maximum output and volume in the 12 to 30 Hz range (extreme bass, will blow his shit right up.)
Off topic
As for the theatrics, you were asking for it. If I am driving around minding my own business and someone gets out of his house, gets in his car, follows me around and drives into my neighborhood and honks his horn at me, that is pretty much the universal signal for 'let the violence commence.' Look at it from his perspective - you obviously chased him down and signalled to get his attention. It worked, and now that you had his attention he was interested in finding out what exactly you had in mind. Don't grab a tiger by the tail unless you have the balls to see it through.
What can you do? Lets see.
a: You could take a deep breath and let him pass, even at a slow pace in 14 seconds he will be gone. Yes, this is being a pussy but that's ok, it is how 99.999% of us handle most confrontations most of the time (including myself).
b: Go rent the movie 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas. Taking charge and standing up to 'those people' sounds pretty cool, but if you go about it mindlessly the cops will shoot you.
c: Learn from b: and also realize that 'those people' are usually people just like you and I, they just happen to be touching a raw nerve you have exposed. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself if it is really worth getting all worked up over. It really isn't but if you spend any time thinking about it whatsoever he will be gone before you are done thinking about it.
d: I could go on but I won't, because anybody that reads
You dumb motherfscker, type that line verbatim in a command window in Windows and it runs just fine. I'm all about bashing Microsoft and Windows, but at least lets keep it real.
/L %I in (1,1,10) do @echo %I
C:\WINNT>for
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C:\WINNT>