I would question the "honesty" (*) of any election where there is no real freedom of expression for anyone opposed to the government, and "there's no real opposition" because "they keep getting arrested". Of course, they wouldn't get arrested if they weren't saying or doing things the Russian government didn't like.
That having been said, my gut reaction is that the Russian people would go for Putin or his successor anyway because they're more comfortable with (de facto) dictatorship than democracy; I think, partly because the Western pro-"democracy", pro-free-market governments fucked up during the 1990s, letting corruption, inequality and insecurity thrive because they tolerated too much in the name of reform. But mainly because the effects of several generations having lived in a totalitarian society has had a very deep malign influence on the Russian mindset, and you can't expect to change this overnight.
For what it's worth, I don't know what would happen if (for whatever reason) Kim Jong-Il was suddenly ousted from power and North Korea was suddenly "free". It's my belief that this would cause horrific social problems and that- unfortunately- it would probably be better to "wean" the people off dictatorship by preserving the illusion that Kim was still alive and was gradually moving the country towards freedom (for whatever bullshit reasons sounded plausible).
I don't think that would have been necessary- or possible- in Russia, but I do think that the pro-freedom countries fucked up by pressuring Russia to change too fast. On the other hand, a lot of the other former-Soviet countries seem to be handling democracy and freedom quite well, so maybe the Russians just want a strong leader because they're nostalgic for the Soviet era when they had an empire (when it comes to the crunch, I don't buy that the USSR was anything more than a Russian empire masquerading as some sort of communist union).
(*) I mean I'd question the use of the word in a technical sense, even *if* the vote-counting was "fair". To my mind, there's no question that the Russian elections are a meaningless sham if there's no free campaigning.
A pentium 133 is recent compared to this. When I got my Gameboy my PC was a C64 That as may be, the game in question was released in *1998*. I bought my Pentium 233 PC that same year- and even then there were much faster processors available.
Okay; let's rephrase that. I used 1921 because it was a reasonable cutoff point, but if you want to look at it that way, I don't see that "England" has interfered in the Republic of Ireland's independence in an unreasonable manner in anything like recent history, and certainly not by the 1970s/1980s.
And don't think for a minute that there was peace for 400 years. There was suppression and constant struggle in each generation since then. Yes, but the question is, where does an invading population become legitimate? Even accounting for what you said, would it have been reasonable to kick out the protestant (or at least Scottish/English-descended) population of Ulster, say, 100 years ago?
This caused something like 30% of the populace of Ireland end up dieing. A good portion of the others left the country. Some claim it was calculated genocide. Intentional genocide or not, I agree that the potato famine was primarily caused by the London-based government's colonisation of Ireland and imposition of their system, and- as you point out- by the continued exportation of goods even when people were starving. In that context, I would have supported (within reason) any action by the Irish people against the "English" government, and actions such as the modern IRA's (and worse) would have had far greater moral legitimacy.
But we're not talking about the early-to-mid 19th century, we're talking about the late 20th century; and we're also talking specifically about the north, not the whole of Ireland.
The IRA wasn't a terrorist group. It was a political group. With respect... bullshit. They may have been doing it for political ends (how many terrorist organisations aren't, though?!). However, they most certainly *were* a terrorist organisation- and I didn't see the IRA themselves participating directly in the political process at all.
If one accepts the generally-held belief that Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA, then that's a different kettle of fish. However, Sinn Fein themselves deny this to be the case (although most likely for practical reasons, since even if everyone "knows" this to be the case, it would change things completely for them to acknowledge it). And when people talk of the IRA, they generally mean the terrorist side, not Sinn Fein, who aren't the IRA (honest, guv;-) ).
Actually, we have had a state sponsor of terrorism list that we used to ban technology transfers, direct funding, and stuff since the late seventies (maybe earlier?). It is the one thing Reagan did when we started supporting Iraq, we had to remove them from the list. I honestly don't believe that the Irish (or US(!)) governments were actually supporting the IRA, so this may not matter either way.
Looking from the outside in, I see Ireland and their struggles a little differently then you do I guess. While what happened was bad, I don't see it as one sided. By the way, I'm Scottish- not English- and have been in favour of Scottish independence to varying degrees over the years. I consider myself Scottish first, and although I amn't 100% opposed to the Union, I find it uncomfortable to think of myself as British, since that has the air of "Greater England". Although I've grown up a bit and dislike anti-English racism, I'm certainly not English and am aware of having a different viewpoint of the Union as a whole to them. So I'm nowhere near as much on the inside as you seem to think I am.
Also, I'm not religious, and don't come from a sectarian background. So I don't have any axe to grind in that respect. However, what I consider to be the double-standards by the US towards the country (or political entity) that I am- like it or not- a part of, and the acquiescence of the sycophantic UK government in this matter most definitely grates with me.
There always has been a force in Ireland that rejected English rule and the quasi self rule that was forced on them. You're aware that the majority of Ireland has been independent of the UK since *1921*, right? And you're also aware that the majority of the populace of Northern Ireland are in favour of remaining a part of the UK?
If you accept that you can't kick a population out because they shouldn't have invaded 400 years ago, then you can't argue against that. One point of contention is that only six of the nine counties of Ulster actually formed Northern Ireland, and had all nine been counted, it probably would have been in favour of independence. But the fact remains that the people in those six counties wanted to remain a part of the UK.
You seem to be under the impression that "England" is ruling against the democratic wishes of the people of Northern Ireland. This is incorrect. While a democratic mandate doesn't absolve the UK government of dealing with the problems and issues of a strongly divided population, it provides more legitimacy for the province to be a part of the UK than of Ireland. If (and probably when, given the faster growth of the Catholic population) the majority of people there wish to become a part of Ireland, I'll be happy for that to happen.
Permited and not stopping are separate things. You're arguing over semantics instead of what was clearly meant. You *tolerated* the fundraising of an anti-democratic terrorist organisation directly opposed to one of your major allies.
Do you honestly think some politician was thinking "Lets allow these guys to raise funds so they can kill and main people in England"? No, I think the sleazy fuck was thinking of how he could appease a section of his voters and get re-elected.
Do you think we actually knew that they were going to be killing people? Wow.... given that this continued *long* after they'd been doing exactly that during the 1970s, you certainly *should* have known(!!)
Or was the general consensus that they were going to work in a civilized manor with england to settle their differences? I see very no evidence- even from the perspective of that time- that the IRA were planning on doing that.
We couldn't just go in and arrest these people because they had rights to due process and all. I agree. My main criticism of the US was that they openly tolerated fundraising on behalf of a terrorist organisation (as described above).
That makes it sound like the authorities weren't even trying. You see, just because it appears one way doesn't mean it was/is. I was referring specifically to the situation as you had attempted to explain and/or justify it.
With regard the the remainder; yes, morals change. However, I still very strongly doubt that the difference in standards towards terrorism was due to the 10-to-30-year lapse between most of the IRA atrocities and 9/11.
Uh... you're aware that the part of my message you were replying to was actually a quote from its parent? If you want to respond to that, hit the reply button on the original message. (As *I* said, I had no problem personally with Amazon delaying orders, because they were upfront about it, and still met their delivery promises.)
However, since you raised these issues, let me reply to them anyway:-
Amazon only charges your credit card when the order ships - it's in Amazon's best interest to ship as fast as possible so it can charge your credit card. No, it's not. If Amazon shipped all orders as fast as possible, no-one would bother using the paid shipping option (even when they would have been quite happy to pay to have it sooner). Delaying the free orders is a good balance because it gets something out of the customers who are ordering on price, but avoids them having to fork out for those customers who are buying on speed/availability.
Let me say it again- I doubt that the "free" shipping is cheap for Amazon.
"one of the reps told me......" yeah, yeah. Who? When? Let me guess "you forget"..... As I already pointed out, those were the OP's words that I had quoted. But I can confirm that my personal experience of using Super Saver seems to bear this out.
One of the reps told me on the phone that if you choose free shipping, your order goes through a delivery tar pit (Delivery is deliberately delayed). That much has been obvious to me for a long time (at least as far as amazon.co.uk are concerned). The actual dispatch date is clearly being delayed on items that are in stock.
I can live with this; they make clear that delivery dates will be 3-5 days later on Super Saver items, and don't actually claim (nor imply, if one actually pays attention) that this is due to slow delivery. Frankly, Amazon are already pretty cheap for a lot of things, and the free shipping must cost them a fair amount on lower-value items. I think it's reasonable for them to not want to cannibalise their paid-shipping orders.
I am familier with this but unfortunately, it isn't as easy to get out of the region as some might think. I wasn't attempting to justify this, and in fact, I doubt leaving the region would solve the problem at this stage. On the contrary, it would probably give encouragement to the Wahhabi extremists, which I consider a Very Bad Thing. But it is undeniably a factor, and one which is downplayed in the West.
Regarding Ireland, although the English undoubtedly attempted to colonise it with their own people around 400 years ago, this is no more recent than the colonisation of most of the United States. So unless the (non-native) Americans consider their country and population to be invaders and withdraw, and would tolerate terrorist attacks by Native Americans(!), they have no moral legitimacy over their standards on the Ireland/Northern Ireland situation. Well, that's one way of looking at it.
And if I remember right, You're mistaken:-
Even though innocent civilians were caught up and killed in the process, the targets of the attacks were primarily Military or leadership targets. They didn't walk into a crowded mall They bombed the centre of Manchester in 1996. To be fair, they gave warning, but this is was not by the widest stretch of anyone's imagination a military target.
On the other hand, there was no such warning with the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing. Although this was supposedly not sanctioned by the IRA "leadership", IMHO if that was the case, it brings into question as much whether those people were truly the leaders of the IRA than whether it was an "IRA" attack.
Remembrance Day may have been a "military" remembrance, but that would be a tenuous excuse to treat it as a military bombing. Remembrance Day is strongly associated with the sacrifice of those fighting during WWI and WWII- what mad this attack even more disgusting (IMHO) is that the (pre-Provisional) IRA collaborated with the Nazis before *and during* WWII.
Or what about the various pub bombings, including one in Birmingham. Yes, there were plenty of attacks on military targets. There were also plenty on blatantly civilian targets.
Well, to an extent. We actually locked up the ones that committed crimes. But you permitted the continuation of fundraising for a terrorist organisation.
Now I'm not going to pretend that we had every one who did something bad locked up. We had organized crime for decades and couldn't even get that taken care of. That's a failure of execution, not of intent. It's not the same as intentionally going soft on them or tolerating fundraising because of votes from the sentimentalist terrorist-sympathisers within the Irish-American population.
But for the most part, the ones who blew people up or killed someone weren't exactly walking the streets here as a government directive. They may not have been put to justice as they deserved, and some might not have even been bothered. That makes it sound like the authorities weren't even trying.
But it wasn't a cake walk for them. Oh, well that makes it okay then!
No offence, I don't want it to come across like I'm taking this personally; nor do I personally consider you an "opponent". But that comes across as a silly, wishy-washy half-baked self-justifying excuse.... "Well, they didn't have it *that* easy you know. Some of them were only allowed to own black-and-white televisions, you know!"
But okey. Asian and Europa thats not places where you can sell new eletronic thing. They only buy old stuff, if any.;-) Do you actually have the remotest idea what you're talking about, or do you just open your mouth and let the first moronic, untouched-by-reality dreck that pops into your head spew out?
I hear that Japan's a real technical backwater, by the way.
Exhibit B: A bald, monkey-like beast sighted in public screaming like a pig, with sweat stains on the chest and under the armpits has one. Another case where the "Slashdot == The Wider World" assumption causes incorrect thinking. Slashdotters know who Steve Ballmer is. The average iPod purchaser (or supposed prospective Zune defector) probably hasn't even heard of the guy, and if they have I doubt they know very much about him. He's probably just part of the amorphous, anonymous mass of Microsoft management to them. Bill Gates is still the only major Microsoft personality.
MS's problem (from Joe Public's perspective) is that the company *as a whole* has an uncool image, the suits transparently trying to copy what Apple do with such slickness, and missing the point.
FWIW, I don't have anything against the much-derided brown Zune case in principle. I'm starting to get really tired with the whole over-polished, over-slick Apple vibe- it's just starting to remind me of why I disliked GAP so much a few years back. (I think this may be the effect of their preppie/yuppie/hipster-oriented advertising too, though).
If MS had the flair to do something truly original, in different colours, and carry it off with style, they might get away with it. But if you put something that looks like a third-rate attempt to knock off last year's iPod by a generic manufacturer in a brown case, it's just going to look 100 times worse. And that's exactly what Zune is. For all that I'm bored of Apple in certain respects, they do what they do very well, and there's no sign of that changing in the near future. MS are so obviously trying to copy them, and failing in their corporate way; this is what makes Zune so uncool.
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, the fact that you were stoned (and younger) when you saw the first one would tend to tip things in its favour.
Also, the constant fucking wipes in the original three movies drove me batty. Were they just invented at that time or what? Not being a rabid Star Wars fanboy (or even a particular fan of the series), I don't know for sure, but they look far more reminiscent of 1930s sci-fi serials like Flash Gordon. Since I know that Star Wars was greatly inspired by those serials, I assume that Lucas was paying homage to them.
Taping over Top Gear? Sounds like fecking excellent judgment to me! That'd be the unrelated 1960s radio show of the same name, not the TV show. Sorry, but I couldn't figure out if this was an intentional misunderstanding for a humorous excuse to slag off Jeremy Clarkson and co, or you were just.... slagging off Jeremy Clarkson and Co.:)
You cannot simplify this the way you are attempting to do. The IRA was a revolutionary army and Ireland was a quasi civil war. From the ancient times, they have been attempting to expel the English invaders. And much of Al Qaeda's recruiting propaganda revolves around wanting to expel the American presence in Saudi Arabia. (In fact, this is a very major factor in Wahhabi anti-Americanism; agree with it or not, it should be more widely-known that this is a greater factor than many in the west acknowledge... but I'm getting sidetracked here).
So this isn't really a situation where terrorist were attacking england as much as it was a situation where a revolution was attempting to happen and they resorted to terrorist actions. That's a matter of perspective. If it was- as you assert- a civil war, then it was only one involving Northern Ireland. Since there was not a notable percentage of the English population involved in it, or seeking to become part of Ireland, it could reasonably be argued that this was an attack on another population. Technically, they are both part of the UK, and ultimately ruled by London, but it is misleading to present it as a "civil war" on that basis.
The Timothy McVeigh case was much closer to "civil war" terrorism, and I can't begin to imagine the amount of hostility and naked aggression that would ensue if the UK harboured such terrorists and permitted them to fundraise.
It you were on the other side, you would be calling the British terrorist Various British actions might or might have not been justified, but they were clearly not intentionally "terrorist" in the way they were carried out.
There is no hypocrisies in it at all. Simply because you cannot directly relate the two situations. I appreciate that the two situations are far from identical; and I'll also point out that 9/11 was (as a single incident) far greater than anything the IRA perpetrated. Still, as you point out and I will point out to you, this is not as simple as you think it is.
The essence is that had things happened the other way around, things would have been quite different. The Americans were willing to tolerate and provide shelter for terrorist groups who conducted attacks against their supposed allies, and yelped and expected co-operation when they were attacked by terrorists.
I think that comment is too broad reaching. Specifically, the senators from New York and Massachusetts, where the Irish-American political influence is strongest, opposed this extradition treaty. That's the ultimate hypocritical irony. You'd think that New Yorkers would be less inclined to support terrorists after 9/11, but it looks like the old double standard is still in place. Or at least if there are a few votes in it.
The rest of the country didn't care, but it was never high on the U.S. priorities. They probably didn't care because the UK had already enacted its side of the bargain. Frankly, the UK government should have shoved this alleged agreement to the bottom of the pile until the US stopped trying to appease a (supposedly) tiny minority of sentimentalist fuckwits.
And frankly, if the rest of the country didn't care about this anti/pro-terrorism double standard and blocking their side of a bargain that was supposed to be in their interest, then they're just as guilty.
Can you imagine what would have happened if- during the 1980s- an organisation had tried to kill senior members of the U.S. government, including the president, and had come damn close to succeeding? And the UK had continued to allow fundraising for this organisation? That's exactly what happened in reverse with the IRA, and it defies belief that there was so little diplomatic fall-out- and it's also damn obvious that if the Americans were victims this would never happen in reverse.
And years later, when it's the US's turn to suffer the effects of terrorism, and the sycophantic UK government led by that contemptible poodle, Tony Blair, is going along with virtually *everything* their government wants, the US is still letting a bunch of sentimentalist IRA-sympathising scum and hypocritical vote-seeking senators dictate the same old double standards?
I point out the absurdity of one poster's pedantic use of a term to prove a point, and then I get accused of using pedantry to prove a point! Then you entirely missed *my* point, despite it being there in plain English. I was well aware what you were trying to achieve.
Despite being nowhere near as witty or innovative as you seem to think it is, my point was that if you still wish to make a point via word substitution (tedious Slashdot favourite) and extreme pedantry, you have to make sure your facts are correct. Here we go:-
I can just as easily say that "At the supermarket, you do have a debt, it just gets canceled if you decide not to pay, and they return the goods to the shelf." I had already spelled out clearly why this was (probably) wrong, and you still didn't get it:-
"I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that the title to the goods doesn't pass to the buyer until they have actually been paid for. In other words, you're not in debt because they're not yours until you paid for them." Now, which part of this don't you understand?!
Even if I was wrong and you were right (though I know which side I'd put my money on), I'd expect anyone with half a brain to be able to understand and reply to that! In your own words...
LOL!!! This is priceless!
The only time they ever licenced their IP onto somebody else's platform was back in the Colecovision/Atari 2600 era when they didn't have a platform of their own. Hotel Mario, Philips CD-I, early 1990s. Though I don't know how willing Nintendo were in that case, as supposedly it had something to do with legal issues surrounding a failed joint-venture (obligatory unreferenced fact via WP article).
the only disadvantage being the lack of tactile feedback Yes, but some might consider that a very big "only" disadvantage. It was one of the things people seriously disliked about the Sinclair ZX81, for example.
I'm sure some enterprising people will work out techniques that improve the feedback/feel, but in the meantime don't dismiss it as a minor issue.
No, I'm afraid you're wrong. The moment a cashier rings up your order at the supermarket you are in debt. Now, you may well pay that debt off within the next three seconds. However, that is a side issue. If you're going to play the word-substitution pedantry-to-prove-a-point game, you'd better make damn sure that your argument is correct and flawless.
In this case, I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that the title to the goods doesn't pass to the buyer until they have actually been paid for. In other words, you're not in debt because they're not yours until you paid for them.
Wow, paying them money! What an extreme action! That'll show them they can't profit off you. You're suggesting that he could have got away with *not* paying them?!
Okay, I had an experience that directly contradicted this claim, but since evidence doesn't matter to you, there's not much point in discussing it. You seem to be under the impression that the GP's interest (or lack of it) is the only relevant thing here. This is a public forum, and many people will follow what is being said even if they aren't taking part in the conversation. It's somewhat self-indulgent to pretend otherwise and withhold this supposed "evidence" (which is relevant to the discussion being followed) just because the GP wasn't interested.
And if you wanted a private conversation, don't conduct it via Slashdot.
No, they were not. It was pretty evident early on, especially at the eastern front, that the war wasn't sustainable. If by "early on" you mean "early during the war", well.... the war went on for six years. That is certainly "sustainable" if not winnable.
As for WW2 and your proposal; nuking a highly populated area is genocide. You make many assumptions, not least the fact that the first targets would be highly-populated areas. ("Highly populated" is a matter of opinion, so this is open to debate, however.)
You're also incorrect that "nuking a highly populated area" is in itself genocide. It would only be genocide if it was part of a concerted effort to entirely annihilate the German people (or whoever).
Such attacks would only need to continue for as long as was necessary to force a surrender and/or destroy the infrastructure or will to fight. Perhaps you think that last one sounds morally dubious, involving (as it would have to) civilians? Well, yes. But if it had been necessary to win the war (preventing a greater evil), you're damn right I think it would be justified.
Yes, I know this is hovering on the edge of being armchair/keyboard moralist wankery. I'm trying to avoid arguments like "they did worse things first" or "they started it" as justification, because they come across as childish and can quickly turn into an immoral revenge fantasy. Actually, this whole thing is a moral can of worms, and this post could have been three or four times as long were I to try to explain my feelings fully without risk of being misunderstood- and it still would have been armchair moralism.
But I still maintain that if there had been a plausible danger of the Germans winning WWII, or even of prolonging it, it would have been morally justifiable to use nuclear weapons against Germany. That's not even getting into the risk- as far as *we* knew back then- that Germany might have developed its own nuclear weapon had time gone on.
In a sense, "serious amateur" videography is probably further behind than it would be solely judged by the current level of technology. Reason being that until recently, the equipment sold at consumer prices was nowhere near good enough to give professional results. Sure, camcorders were around, but the vast majority were more like point-and-shoot cameras- both in terms of the quality of the results and the level of control.
Contrast this with photography, where for many years even a bottom-of-the-range SLR has had the potential to take photographs that could pass as professional. That's not to say that photography is- or rather, was- a cheap hobby. A decent equipment setup and film costs could get very expensive; but it was still within range of the amateur. So a "serious hobbyist" field has grown up around it.
With video, it would be hard, if not impossible, to produce results from (e.g.) an early 1990s home camcorder that would look like anything other than camcorder footage. So essentially (IMHO) amateur videography was a dead-end until recently, which has held back the development of an amateur videography culture, and will probably cause the field to lag a bit.
They were lucky? Well the guessing at alternate history game is always fun. Yes, I'm aware that debating the past in this manner is always an intellectual wankfest to some extent.
However, Noncrazy Hitler wouldn't have been Hitler as we know him, and history would have had to be very different. By contrast, Germany surrendered just 3 months before the atomic bomb was ready enough to be dropped on Japan.
Slashdot Mirror
I would question the "honesty" (*) of any election where there is no real freedom of expression for anyone opposed to the government, and "there's no real opposition" because "they keep getting arrested". Of course, they wouldn't get arrested if they weren't saying or doing things the Russian government didn't like.
That having been said, my gut reaction is that the Russian people would go for Putin or his successor anyway because they're more comfortable with (de facto) dictatorship than democracy; I think, partly because the Western pro-"democracy", pro-free-market governments fucked up during the 1990s, letting corruption, inequality and insecurity thrive because they tolerated too much in the name of reform. But mainly because the effects of several generations having lived in a totalitarian society has had a very deep malign influence on the Russian mindset, and you can't expect to change this overnight.
For what it's worth, I don't know what would happen if (for whatever reason) Kim Jong-Il was suddenly ousted from power and North Korea was suddenly "free". It's my belief that this would cause horrific social problems and that- unfortunately- it would probably be better to "wean" the people off dictatorship by preserving the illusion that Kim was still alive and was gradually moving the country towards freedom (for whatever bullshit reasons sounded plausible).
I don't think that would have been necessary- or possible- in Russia, but I do think that the pro-freedom countries fucked up by pressuring Russia to change too fast. On the other hand, a lot of the other former-Soviet countries seem to be handling democracy and freedom quite well, so maybe the Russians just want a strong leader because they're nostalgic for the Soviet era when they had an empire (when it comes to the crunch, I don't buy that the USSR was anything more than a Russian empire masquerading as some sort of communist union).
(*) I mean I'd question the use of the word in a technical sense, even *if* the vote-counting was "fair". To my mind, there's no question that the Russian elections are a meaningless sham if there's no free campaigning.
But we're not talking about the early-to-mid 19th century, we're talking about the late 20th century; and we're also talking specifically about the north, not the whole of Ireland. The IRA wasn't a terrorist group. It was a political group. With respect... bullshit. They may have been doing it for political ends (how many terrorist organisations aren't, though?!). However, they most certainly *were* a terrorist organisation- and I didn't see the IRA themselves participating directly in the political process at all.
If one accepts the generally-held belief that Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA, then that's a different kettle of fish. However, Sinn Fein themselves deny this to be the case (although most likely for practical reasons, since even if everyone "knows" this to be the case, it would change things completely for them to acknowledge it). And when people talk of the IRA, they generally mean the terrorist side, not Sinn Fein, who aren't the IRA (honest, guv
Also, I'm not religious, and don't come from a sectarian background. So I don't have any axe to grind in that respect. However, what I consider to be the double-standards by the US towards the country (or political entity) that I am- like it or not- a part of, and the acquiescence of the sycophantic UK government in this matter most definitely grates with me.
If you accept that you can't kick a population out because they shouldn't have invaded 400 years ago, then you can't argue against that. One point of contention is that only six of the nine counties of Ulster actually formed Northern Ireland, and had all nine been counted, it probably would have been in favour of independence. But the fact remains that the people in those six counties wanted to remain a part of the UK.
You seem to be under the impression that "England" is ruling against the democratic wishes of the people of Northern Ireland. This is incorrect. While a democratic mandate doesn't absolve the UK government of dealing with the problems and issues of a strongly divided population, it provides more legitimacy for the province to be a part of the UK than of Ireland. If (and probably when, given the faster growth of the Catholic population) the majority of people there wish to become a part of Ireland, I'll be happy for that to happen. Permited and not stopping are separate things. You're arguing over semantics instead of what was clearly meant. You *tolerated* the fundraising of an anti-democratic terrorist organisation directly opposed to one of your major allies. Do you honestly think some politician was thinking "Lets allow these guys to raise funds so they can kill and main people in England"? No, I think the sleazy fuck was thinking of how he could appease a section of his voters and get re-elected. Do you think we actually knew that they were going to be killing people? Wow.... given that this continued *long* after they'd been doing exactly that during the 1970s, you certainly *should* have known(!!) Or was the general consensus that they were going to work in a civilized manor with england to settle their differences? I see very no evidence- even from the perspective of that time- that the IRA were planning on doing that. We couldn't just go in and arrest these people because they had rights to due process and all. I agree. My main criticism of the US was that they openly tolerated fundraising on behalf of a terrorist organisation (as described above). That makes it sound like the authorities weren't even trying. You see, just because it appears one way doesn't mean it was/is. I was referring specifically to the situation as you had attempted to explain and/or justify it.
With regard the the remainder; yes, morals change. However, I still very strongly doubt that the difference in standards towards terrorism was due to the 10-to-30-year lapse between most of the IRA atrocities and 9/11.
However, since you raised these issues, let me reply to them anyway:- Amazon only charges your credit card when the order ships - it's in Amazon's best interest to ship as fast as possible so it can charge your credit card. No, it's not. If Amazon shipped all orders as fast as possible, no-one would bother using the paid shipping option (even when they would have been quite happy to pay to have it sooner). Delaying the free orders is a good balance because it gets something out of the customers who are ordering on price, but avoids them having to fork out for those customers who are buying on speed/availability.
Let me say it again- I doubt that the "free" shipping is cheap for Amazon. "one of the reps told me......" yeah, yeah. Who? When? Let me guess "you forget"..... As I already pointed out, those were the OP's words that I had quoted. But I can confirm that my personal experience of using Super Saver seems to bear this out.
I can live with this; they make clear that delivery dates will be 3-5 days later on Super Saver items, and don't actually claim (nor imply, if one actually pays attention) that this is due to slow delivery. Frankly, Amazon are already pretty cheap for a lot of things, and the free shipping must cost them a fair amount on lower-value items. I think it's reasonable for them to not want to cannibalise their paid-shipping orders.
Jokes often make fun of some underlying reality, and they also have to be funny. Yours seemed to be some inane comment justifying itself as a joke.
Regarding Ireland, although the English undoubtedly attempted to colonise it with their own people around 400 years ago, this is no more recent than the colonisation of most of the United States. So unless the (non-native) Americans consider their country and population to be invaders and withdraw, and would tolerate terrorist attacks by Native Americans(!), they have no moral legitimacy over their standards on the Ireland/Northern Ireland situation. Well, that's one way of looking at it. And if I remember right, You're mistaken:- Even though innocent civilians were caught up and killed in the process, the targets of the attacks were primarily Military or leadership targets. They didn't walk into a crowded mall They bombed the centre of Manchester in 1996. To be fair, they gave warning, but this is was not by the widest stretch of anyone's imagination a military target.
On the other hand, there was no such warning with the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing. Although this was supposedly not sanctioned by the IRA "leadership", IMHO if that was the case, it brings into question as much whether those people were truly the leaders of the IRA than whether it was an "IRA" attack.
Remembrance Day may have been a "military" remembrance, but that would be a tenuous excuse to treat it as a military bombing. Remembrance Day is strongly associated with the sacrifice of those fighting during WWI and WWII- what mad this attack even more disgusting (IMHO) is that the (pre-Provisional) IRA collaborated with the Nazis before *and during* WWII.
Or what about the various pub bombings, including one in Birmingham. Yes, there were plenty of attacks on military targets. There were also plenty on blatantly civilian targets. Well, to an extent. We actually locked up the ones that committed crimes. But you permitted the continuation of fundraising for a terrorist organisation. Now I'm not going to pretend that we had every one who did something bad locked up. We had organized crime for decades and couldn't even get that taken care of. That's a failure of execution, not of intent. It's not the same as intentionally going soft on them or tolerating fundraising because of votes from the sentimentalist terrorist-sympathisers within the Irish-American population. But for the most part, the ones who blew people up or killed someone weren't exactly walking the streets here as a government directive. They may not have been put to justice as they deserved, and some might not have even been bothered. That makes it sound like the authorities weren't even trying. But it wasn't a cake walk for them. Oh, well that makes it okay then!
No offence, I don't want it to come across like I'm taking this personally; nor do I personally consider you an "opponent". But that comes across as a silly, wishy-washy half-baked self-justifying excuse.... "Well, they didn't have it *that* easy you know. Some of them were only allowed to own black-and-white televisions, you know!"
I hear that Japan's a real technical backwater, by the way.
MS's problem (from Joe Public's perspective) is that the company *as a whole* has an uncool image, the suits transparently trying to copy what Apple do with such slickness, and missing the point.
FWIW, I don't have anything against the much-derided brown Zune case in principle. I'm starting to get really tired with the whole over-polished, over-slick Apple vibe- it's just starting to remind me of why I disliked GAP so much a few years back. (I think this may be the effect of their preppie/yuppie/hipster-oriented advertising too, though).
If MS had the flair to do something truly original, in different colours, and carry it off with style, they might get away with it. But if you put something that looks like a third-rate attempt to knock off last year's iPod by a generic manufacturer in a brown case, it's just going to look 100 times worse. And that's exactly what Zune is. For all that I'm bored of Apple in certain respects, they do what they do very well, and there's no sign of that changing in the near future. MS are so obviously trying to copy them, and failing in their corporate way; this is what makes Zune so uncool.
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, the fact that you were stoned (and younger) when you saw the first one would tend to tip things in its favour.
The Timothy McVeigh case was much closer to "civil war" terrorism, and I can't begin to imagine the amount of hostility and naked aggression that would ensue if the UK harboured such terrorists and permitted them to fundraise. It you were on the other side, you would be calling the British terrorist Various British actions might or might have not been justified, but they were clearly not intentionally "terrorist" in the way they were carried out. There is no hypocrisies in it at all. Simply because you cannot directly relate the two situations. I appreciate that the two situations are far from identical; and I'll also point out that 9/11 was (as a single incident) far greater than anything the IRA perpetrated. Still, as you point out and I will point out to you, this is not as simple as you think it is.
The essence is that had things happened the other way around, things would have been quite different. The Americans were willing to tolerate and provide shelter for terrorist groups who conducted attacks against their supposed allies, and yelped and expected co-operation when they were attacked by terrorists.
Hypocrites.
And frankly, if the rest of the country didn't care about this anti/pro-terrorism double standard and blocking their side of a bargain that was supposed to be in their interest, then they're just as guilty.
Can you imagine what would have happened if- during the 1980s- an organisation had tried to kill senior members of the U.S. government, including the president, and had come damn close to succeeding? And the UK had continued to allow fundraising for this organisation? That's exactly what happened in reverse with the IRA, and it defies belief that there was so little diplomatic fall-out- and it's also damn obvious that if the Americans were victims this would never happen in reverse.
And years later, when it's the US's turn to suffer the effects of terrorism, and the sycophantic UK government led by that contemptible poodle, Tony Blair, is going along with virtually *everything* their government wants, the US is still letting a bunch of sentimentalist IRA-sympathising scum and hypocritical vote-seeking senators dictate the same old double standards?
Seriously, this is beneath contempt.
Despite being nowhere near as witty or innovative as you seem to think it is, my point was that if you still wish to make a point via word substitution (tedious Slashdot favourite) and extreme pedantry, you have to make sure your facts are correct. Here we go:- I can just as easily say that "At the supermarket, you do have a debt, it just gets canceled if you decide not to pay, and they return the goods to the shelf." I had already spelled out clearly why this was (probably) wrong, and you still didn't get it:- "I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that the title to the goods doesn't pass to the buyer until they have actually been paid for. In other words, you're not in debt because they're not yours until you paid for them." Now, which part of this don't you understand?!
Even if I was wrong and you were right (though I know which side I'd put my money on), I'd expect anyone with half a brain to be able to understand and reply to that! In your own words... LOL!!! This is priceless!
I'm sure some enterprising people will work out techniques that improve the feedback/feel, but in the meantime don't dismiss it as a minor issue.
In this case, I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that the title to the goods doesn't pass to the buyer until they have actually been paid for. In other words, you're not in debt because they're not yours until you paid for them.
And if you wanted a private conversation, don't conduct it via Slashdot.
You're also incorrect that "nuking a highly populated area" is in itself genocide. It would only be genocide if it was part of a concerted effort to entirely annihilate the German people (or whoever).
Such attacks would only need to continue for as long as was necessary to force a surrender and/or destroy the infrastructure or will to fight. Perhaps you think that last one sounds morally dubious, involving (as it would have to) civilians? Well, yes. But if it had been necessary to win the war (preventing a greater evil), you're damn right I think it would be justified.
Yes, I know this is hovering on the edge of being armchair/keyboard moralist wankery. I'm trying to avoid arguments like "they did worse things first" or "they started it" as justification, because they come across as childish and can quickly turn into an immoral revenge fantasy. Actually, this whole thing is a moral can of worms, and this post could have been three or four times as long were I to try to explain my feelings fully without risk of being misunderstood- and it still would have been armchair moralism.
But I still maintain that if there had been a plausible danger of the Germans winning WWII, or even of prolonging it, it would have been morally justifiable to use nuclear weapons against Germany. That's not even getting into the risk- as far as *we* knew back then- that Germany might have developed its own nuclear weapon had time gone on.
In a sense, "serious amateur" videography is probably further behind than it would be solely judged by the current level of technology. Reason being that until recently, the equipment sold at consumer prices was nowhere near good enough to give professional results. Sure, camcorders were around, but the vast majority were more like point-and-shoot cameras- both in terms of the quality of the results and the level of control.
Contrast this with photography, where for many years even a bottom-of-the-range SLR has had the potential to take photographs that could pass as professional. That's not to say that photography is- or rather, was- a cheap hobby. A decent equipment setup and film costs could get very expensive; but it was still within range of the amateur. So a "serious hobbyist" field has grown up around it.
With video, it would be hard, if not impossible, to produce results from (e.g.) an early 1990s home camcorder that would look like anything other than camcorder footage. So essentially (IMHO) amateur videography was a dead-end until recently, which has held back the development of an amateur videography culture, and will probably cause the field to lag a bit.
But not for long.
However, Noncrazy Hitler wouldn't have been Hitler as we know him, and history would have had to be very different. By contrast, Germany surrendered just 3 months before the atomic bomb was ready enough to be dropped on Japan.