Want to "unplug the internet", as you seem to imply you can do?
Actually, nobody in the United States government is implying that they would "unplug" other countries (whatever that means). The countries that are criticizing the current situation are the ones implying that the U.S. would unplug them for whatever imagined reason.
After about half a day of WTF?!s our root servers will be humming nicely and you can bet we won't be sad because of our tragic loss.
That is sort of what would happen. The problem with your contention is that the rest of the world has only 3 root servers, in Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Tokyo. I'm fairly sure that 3 servers isn't enough to handle all non-U.S. internet traffic. And establishing backbones capable of handling that amount of traffic would require much longer than "half a day."
This is what is going to happen unless you cooperate.
This seems rather absurd. The whole threat seems to run along the lines of "If you don't give us control of the Internet, we will deny ourselves access to the Internet in retaliation, and then spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a parallel system, completely lacking all currently existing content!" If I were the U.S. government, I would take that as a joke, not a threat.
They were actually three mathematics students. Here's something Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote about them:
The human carnage of World War I prompted - perhaps out of feelings of political guilt - the practice of honoring not only the victorious generals and triumphant statesmen, but also of saluting symbolically the millions of often anonymous soldiers who gave their lives in wars, which most of them never desired. Their triumphant commanders were usually commemorated with bronze or marble statues, usually placed atop a horse or column, wielding a sword. In contrast, the solemn Tomb of a single Unknown Soldier was designed serve as a somber remembrance of all the young men who had been killed in the massacres of attrition warfare. Such memorials mushroomed in almost every major European capital after World War I.
But the complicated, long-ignored, and at times even distorted story of the Enigma machine cries out for yet another symbolic act of recognition: an international salute for the Unknown Victor. The deciphering of the Enigma by three young Poles, and the subsequent voluntary sharing by Poland of that capacity with France and England, was perhaps more significant than any other contribution by single individuals to the Allied victory in World War II. Their uncommon ingenuity and personal sacrifice deserves a special acknowledgement that has for too long been overlooked.
While on the eve of World War II the intelligence services of the Western powers were unable to make any headway toward breaking the German ciphers, it was three mathematics students from the University of Poznan - Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Róycki, and Henryk Zygalski - that cracked the secret of the Enigma machines. Unlike the strategizing of generals, daring of the intelligence agents, or battlefield valor of soldiers, these young Polish men would apply their intellects to arrive at a novel technique for breaking ciphers--a mathematical method, known as mechanical combination theory, which had never before been used by cryptologists.
By January 1933, working for the Polish intelligence services, they had succeeding in breaking the Enigma's complex cipher, and little over a year later their efforts had produced ten working replicas of the German encryption machines. Keeping pace with German efforts to increase the strength of their transmissions, Zygalski created the innovative 'perforated-sheets,' Rejewski constructed the 'cyclometer,' and Róycki created the 'clock' method, breaking the ciphers with ingenuity rather than brute force and simple luck. Responding to further updates to the Enigma, the three collaborated on the mathematical modeling and construction of the 'bomba', drastically reducing the time needed by mechanizing the deciphering process. By the eve of the Second World War, Polish intelligence possessed 80-90% of the knowledge on the German Order of Battle along the Polish-German border due to the efforts of these cryptanalysts.
A few short weeks before the German attack, the French and British intelligence services were astounded to receive, as a gift from the Polish intelligence, Polish-constructed copies of the German Enigma machines. Following the fall of Poland in September, the three made their way to France, carrying two of their Enigma replicas with them. Their work, beginning in France, and continuing more substantially in Britain, would stimulate the creation of the Ultra project. Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower would affirm after the war that the Ultra project was "decisive" to the victory in World War II.
The intelligence gained by the Allies from Enigma decrypts informed leaders of German plans for Norway and France days before they would be implemented. As the cryptanalysis efforts grew, Ultra would have a crucial strategic impact on the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the North African Campaign, the Italian Campaign, and even aided in the invasion of Nor
...Dell has simply operated as a reseller and box builder. Where is the innovation coming out of Dell?
That is exactly where Dell's innovation lies: in being able to produce on the fly boxes in large or small volumes customized to the user's designs at a very low cost. Their innovation is in logistics and supply chain, not necessarily computing technology. Still, it is a genuine innovation, and one that has made them piles of cash.
(Oh and sorry I know my english isn't that good..)
You better be sorry. This is the Quebec Language Police. Your post doesn't give equal space to the French language. Due to a provision in our extradition treaty, you are to be sent to Le Gitmo. Have a bon day.
Re:To the rag that is the Wash. Times: Let them sc
on
Reining in Google
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· Score: 1
The Washington Times was created to balance out the Washington Post. But it's because there used to be a newspaper on the right in Washington for a long time, the Washington Star. During the era of media consolidation, the Post bought out the Star, promising to represent both sides, and then manifestly not doing so. Thus the Moonies, for whatever lunatic reasons of their own, decided to fund the creation of the Washington Times to fill the void left by the Star. However, the WTimes has lost money every year since it was launched--it's more like a charitable venture than a newspaper proper.
I tried Path Finder but thought it sucked. Instead, I paid for Launchbar, which works perfectly. I use Spotlight to fill in for the few minor areas in which Launchbar doesn't get everything. I've almost completely stopped using the Finder, and I've set the Dock to auto-hide now. Frees up a lot of screen real estate, and makes using the Mac much faster.
If a lawsuit like that were to happen, it already would have occurred from the DVD players integrated into cars, and driving directions systems integrated into dashboards that have existed for several years now.
In most states, driving while listening to headphones is illegal. I don't see why driving while listening/viewing an iPod would be any less illegal. I doubt Apple could be held liable.
Monopolies and price fixing can be solved not through regulartion but through lawsuits, as they are in violation of anti-trust law. Anti-trust law is not the same as regulation, and certainly not even close to the equivalent of government price regulation. Why would we allow the government to fix prices if we would reject businesses from fixing prices--neither is acceptable.
They should just vote down regulation of lettuce prices. We live (ostensibly) in a free market. Prices shouldn't be regulated, but determined by fair market value.
My guess is that this way, when you download a security update (1.0.6 to 1.0.7 for example) all of your extensions won't be disabled. This way, an extension writer can just specify that the extension is for the 1.5.* releases, and not have release an updated version of the extension every time FF is patched for security.
ICANN's Board has included citizens of Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
What I notice in your writing is a kind of unqualified support for democracy as an institution, which is somewhat disturbing because the same sentiment was loudly proclaimed by President Bush in his second inaugural address. Perhaps this is where neoconservatism and the leftists meet, I'm not sure.
Regarding the Monroe Doctrine, it was designed to keep European colonial power out of the Western Hemisphere. You seem to be upset with the Roosevelt Corrollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which was around the same time the U.S. became a world power (the last turn of the century). This Mr. Clarridge does not seem to know his history all that well, and whomever transcribed the interview can't spell--which casts doubt on the relevance of the interview to one's understanding of how those two historical doctrines have shaped U.S. attitudes toward interventionism.
The "Unlawful Combatant" designation is only unconstitutional if applied to a citizen of the United States (where I agree with you, it should not be used). Otherwise, there is no constitutional provision for how to deal with foreign combatants encountered in military operations.
I agree, generally, that the United States should respect the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders. On the other hand, the context of the Cold War remains crucial to the understanding of U.S. actions toward several leftist leaders at the time. If a country were to elect a pro-Soviet leftist leader, it would be pulled into the Soviet sphere of influence, altering the balance of power, both regionally and globally. The greater concern (however unfair to the populace of the given country) was the advantage that the Soviets would gain relative to the "Free World."
Alliance with dictators does weaken the U.S. image, but Clinton and Bush both had policies of pushing for humanitarian reforms, rather than simply cutting off relations. After Andijon, Bush demanded an inquiry, which got the U.S. thrown out of Uzbekistan and cooperation in the War on Terror cut off. That was a pretty big sacrifice for the sake of siding with the people.
U.S. support for Pakistan throughout the Cold War had to do with both the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan and India's socialist and pro-Soviet policies. Pakistan was wedged right in-between and served as a buffer. China supported Pakistan as well, for largely the same reasons: antagonism with both the USSR and India.
As with any war, it is the poor who do the dying. Afghanistan for Russia was no different, just as Vietnam was for America. The key point was that for the legitimacy and public support for the Soviet leadership to dry up, the people would have to feel the effects of the Cold War directly. Russians wouldn't feel political manuevering amongst Latin American government. But if their kids started dying for nothing, like ours did in Vietnam, then they'd feel it alright. And Afghanistan weakened Brezhnev substantially.
I agree that we took our eye off the ball in diverting so many resources to go fight Saddam in Iraq. I think we've given the Iraqis a good opportunity, but it wasn't an opportunity we had to give them. We should have made sure al Qaeda was rolled up first. As far as alliances within Afghanistan, we didn't have the time to get thousands of troops into the theater--we started the war in under three weeks (the fastest beginning to a war in U.S. history as far as I can tell). We needed an anti-Taliban army, and the Northern Alliance was exactly that, which is why al Qaeda assassinated their top general one or two days before 9/11--they knew we would need the Northern Alliance. Allying with drug dealers is neither here nor there--it is quite easy to prioritize the war on al Qaeda over the "War on Drugs."
We should not have allied with India right off the bat, because Muslims get very upset by India's treatment of Muslim, and because of the Kashmir conflict. Similarly, openly allying with Russia would be bad because of Chechnya and the n
You're right. The British Empire was a strategic threat to the United States up until the 1890's or thereabouts. Spain was not a threat. It had many colonies, but none were very productive after the 16th century. The Dutch (of all nations...) were more powerful than the Spanish after the 16th century, and Spain was easily defeated by the U.S. in the Spanish-American war.
The Soviets did take Afghanistan, but the U.S., China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia funded and trained the Afghans who took it back by bleeding the USSR white. Merely the effects of breaking the Sino-Soviet alliance, and the implicit restriction of Soviet ability to act and intervene around the world because of the Chinese acting as a third pole in the international system paid far more dividends than just cooperation in Afghanistan.
You can say that we never should have let the Nationalists lose against the Communists, but the Nationalists were not that much better. They were corrupt and authoritarian, which are the principal reasons that the Communists enjoyed popular support. We could have propped them up, but it may well have ended just like when we propped up the Shah in Iran. We're not a fair weather ally of Taiwan--we've consistently prevented China from using force to reunify the two nations. They have freedom and autonomy and a great economy, they just don't have international legal status. The only reason they don't have that is because the U.S. had bigger fish to fry, and because for many years the Kuomintang did not push for independence, because they claimed to be the legitimate government of the whole Mainland. U.S. Taiwan policy has little to no bearing on our policy credibility anywhere else in the world, except in East Asia. We have no credibility problems with our East Asian allies (if anything, our military threat is a little too credible).
Engaging China was a bipartisan strategy. Relations were opened by Nixon-Kissinger, and normalized by Carter-Brzezinski. It wasn't so simple as, Taiwan=Democracy and is therefore our ally to the exclusion of China=Totalitarian. That's the kind of logic that gets Bush Jr. and the neocons in trouble, quite frankly.
China was never, and is still not, a *real* strategic threat to the United States. It has vast potential, but it's still decades from being able to utilize any of it. It was even further away from realizing its potential back in the 60s. However, what the realists saw was a chance to change the polarity of the international system. There was essentially a two bloc status quo: the Free World versus the Sino-Soviet bloc. Nixon and then Brzezinski managed to change that into a three bloc world: the Free World, the Soviet bloc, and the Non-Aligned Movement (of which China was the de facto leader). In this way, China and the United States could (and did) cooperate on strategic manners, such as curbing Soviet expansionism (see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
The realists asked themselves what was more important: the breakup of the Sino-Soviet bloc and strategic cooperation against the Soviet Union (the only actual geostrategic threat the United States has ever faced), or a tiny liberal island ruled by a not-so democratic system (Taiwan didn't truly democratize until the 1990s) with no actual power. The U.S. chose to defeat the USSR and drop Taiwan, because the potential for the two bloc system to turn into a "hot war" and destroy the world was of greater concern than the legal status of Taiwan's sovereignty under international law.
I'm not saying they made a perfect choice, but viewing the wider context, the choice is not so simple as you make it out to be.
You are not entirely correct. The Kuomintang party (the old nationalist party that Chiang Kai-shek led) holds the position that Taiwan is a part of China, and claims to be the legitimate government over the Mainland. The Democratic People's Party (currently in power) believes no such thing, and would likely press for outright independence, if it thought it could get away with it.
No, this is probably a good thing. If Netscape takes off again, then it's good because the Gecko rendering engine will be more widely used, and web designs will be coded to standards more often. If Netscape doesn't take off, then it's not the failure of Firefox/Gecko, it's the failure of Netscape (again). Either way, Firefox doesn't get hurt.
It's too bad you were modded down so quickly, because you do raise a point that has been debated in U.S. foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War, and even further back in more isolated circumstances.
The United States certainly will support dictators, and has done so a number of times throughout the country's history. Musharraf and Karimov are only the latest two. U.S. idealism is, of course, tempered by pragmatic decisions about supporting the "lesser of two evils" and believing that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Those are tough choices to make, and I don't believe that any foreign policy maker likes to be in a situation where they have to support an illigitimate regime. In the two cases you mention, Musharraf and Karimov were willing to support the U.S. efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and U.S. policy makers clearly felt that the latter were bigger threats than the two dictators. That's certainly debatable. But it's quite clear that the U.S. would have been able to make very little headway against the Taliban or Al Qaeda if it did not ally with local power centers, as distasteful as they are.
I think my original point remains. The U.S. has been quite willing to overthrow democratically elected governments that it did not think would ultimately guarantee freedom. The two key examples are Mossadegh and Allende. It's debatable, and indeed still hotly debated, whether the U.S. overreacted towards these two leaders. They were leftists and ideologically aligned with the Soviet Union (the ultimate geostrategic threat the U.S.), but neither were totalitarians themselves. I think the U.S. didn't want to find out whether, after consolidating their power, these leaders would move toward support of the USSR--a totalitarian state that *did* oppress the liberties of every nation it dominated.
Going on the idea that it's mimicking 70% of Office's features, I'm going to go with Rich Text Gmail feature. I don't think that actually comes anywhere close to 70% of MS Office's feature set, but that's the closest guess.
So you would prefer an organization with an international board where all 191 governments got to actively meddle in its affairs, to an organization with an international board in which one country has a veto, but by-in-large lets it run in a laissez-faire manner? I'm less afraid of a Verizon search page than I am of the Great Firewall of China.
Slashdot Mirror
You're in luck! It's not run by the U.S. government. It's run by a private, non-governmental, non-profit organization.
I guess that solves that problem.
Don't be silly. They were already all against us. This is why we don't want to give them any control.
Actually, nobody in the United States government is implying that they would "unplug" other countries (whatever that means). The countries that are criticizing the current situation are the ones implying that the U.S. would unplug them for whatever imagined reason.
That is sort of what would happen. The problem with your contention is that the rest of the world has only 3 root servers, in Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Tokyo. I'm fairly sure that 3 servers isn't enough to handle all non-U.S. internet traffic. And establishing backbones capable of handling that amount of traffic would require much longer than "half a day."
This seems rather absurd. The whole threat seems to run along the lines of "If you don't give us control of the Internet, we will deny ourselves access to the Internet in retaliation, and then spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a parallel system, completely lacking all currently existing content!" If I were the U.S. government, I would take that as a joke, not a threat.
That is exactly where Dell's innovation lies: in being able to produce on the fly boxes in large or small volumes customized to the user's designs at a very low cost. Their innovation is in logistics and supply chain, not necessarily computing technology. Still, it is a genuine innovation, and one that has made them piles of cash.
The Washington Times was created to balance out the Washington Post. But it's because there used to be a newspaper on the right in Washington for a long time, the Washington Star. During the era of media consolidation, the Post bought out the Star, promising to represent both sides, and then manifestly not doing so. Thus the Moonies, for whatever lunatic reasons of their own, decided to fund the creation of the Washington Times to fill the void left by the Star. However, the WTimes has lost money every year since it was launched--it's more like a charitable venture than a newspaper proper.
I tried Path Finder but thought it sucked. Instead, I paid for Launchbar, which works perfectly. I use Spotlight to fill in for the few minor areas in which Launchbar doesn't get everything. I've almost completely stopped using the Finder, and I've set the Dock to auto-hide now. Frees up a lot of screen real estate, and makes using the Mac much faster.
If it's only somewhat geeky, I'm not watching it.
Actually, I think the fundamental system of Wikipedia is capitalist (scroll down).
If a lawsuit like that were to happen, it already would have occurred from the DVD players integrated into cars, and driving directions systems integrated into dashboards that have existed for several years now.
In most states, driving while listening to headphones is illegal. I don't see why driving while listening/viewing an iPod would be any less illegal. I doubt Apple could be held liable.
Monopolies and price fixing can be solved not through regulartion but through lawsuits, as they are in violation of anti-trust law. Anti-trust law is not the same as regulation, and certainly not even close to the equivalent of government price regulation. Why would we allow the government to fix prices if we would reject businesses from fixing prices--neither is acceptable.
They should just vote down regulation of lettuce prices. We live (ostensibly) in a free market. Prices shouldn't be regulated, but determined by fair market value.
My guess is that this way, when you download a security update (1.0.6 to 1.0.7 for example) all of your extensions won't be disabled. This way, an extension writer can just specify that the extension is for the 1.5.* releases, and not have release an updated version of the extension every time FF is patched for security.
From http://icann.org/tr/english.html
See also the nationalities of committee board members here: http://www.icann.org/committees/alac/
I'm not sure the exact definition of walkabout/dreamtime, but I'm pretty sure it means that we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
What I notice in your writing is a kind of unqualified support for democracy as an institution, which is somewhat disturbing because the same sentiment was loudly proclaimed by President Bush in his second inaugural address. Perhaps this is where neoconservatism and the leftists meet, I'm not sure.
Regarding the Monroe Doctrine, it was designed to keep European colonial power out of the Western Hemisphere. You seem to be upset with the Roosevelt Corrollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which was around the same time the U.S. became a world power (the last turn of the century). This Mr. Clarridge does not seem to know his history all that well, and whomever transcribed the interview can't spell--which casts doubt on the relevance of the interview to one's understanding of how those two historical doctrines have shaped U.S. attitudes toward interventionism.
The "Unlawful Combatant" designation is only unconstitutional if applied to a citizen of the United States (where I agree with you, it should not be used). Otherwise, there is no constitutional provision for how to deal with foreign combatants encountered in military operations.
I agree, generally, that the United States should respect the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders. On the other hand, the context of the Cold War remains crucial to the understanding of U.S. actions toward several leftist leaders at the time. If a country were to elect a pro-Soviet leftist leader, it would be pulled into the Soviet sphere of influence, altering the balance of power, both regionally and globally. The greater concern (however unfair to the populace of the given country) was the advantage that the Soviets would gain relative to the "Free World."
Alliance with dictators does weaken the U.S. image, but Clinton and Bush both had policies of pushing for humanitarian reforms, rather than simply cutting off relations. After Andijon, Bush demanded an inquiry, which got the U.S. thrown out of Uzbekistan and cooperation in the War on Terror cut off. That was a pretty big sacrifice for the sake of siding with the people.
U.S. support for Pakistan throughout the Cold War had to do with both the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan and India's socialist and pro-Soviet policies. Pakistan was wedged right in-between and served as a buffer. China supported Pakistan as well, for largely the same reasons: antagonism with both the USSR and India.
As with any war, it is the poor who do the dying. Afghanistan for Russia was no different, just as Vietnam was for America. The key point was that for the legitimacy and public support for the Soviet leadership to dry up, the people would have to feel the effects of the Cold War directly. Russians wouldn't feel political manuevering amongst Latin American government. But if their kids started dying for nothing, like ours did in Vietnam, then they'd feel it alright. And Afghanistan weakened Brezhnev substantially.
I agree that we took our eye off the ball in diverting so many resources to go fight Saddam in Iraq. I think we've given the Iraqis a good opportunity, but it wasn't an opportunity we had to give them. We should have made sure al Qaeda was rolled up first. As far as alliances within Afghanistan, we didn't have the time to get thousands of troops into the theater--we started the war in under three weeks (the fastest beginning to a war in U.S. history as far as I can tell). We needed an anti-Taliban army, and the Northern Alliance was exactly that, which is why al Qaeda assassinated their top general one or two days before 9/11--they knew we would need the Northern Alliance. Allying with drug dealers is neither here nor there--it is quite easy to prioritize the war on al Qaeda over the "War on Drugs."
We should not have allied with India right off the bat, because Muslims get very upset by India's treatment of Muslim, and because of the Kashmir conflict. Similarly, openly allying with Russia would be bad because of Chechnya and the n
The Soviets did take Afghanistan, but the U.S., China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia funded and trained the Afghans who took it back by bleeding the USSR white. Merely the effects of breaking the Sino-Soviet alliance, and the implicit restriction of Soviet ability to act and intervene around the world because of the Chinese acting as a third pole in the international system paid far more dividends than just cooperation in Afghanistan.
You can say that we never should have let the Nationalists lose against the Communists, but the Nationalists were not that much better. They were corrupt and authoritarian, which are the principal reasons that the Communists enjoyed popular support. We could have propped them up, but it may well have ended just like when we propped up the Shah in Iran. We're not a fair weather ally of Taiwan--we've consistently prevented China from using force to reunify the two nations. They have freedom and autonomy and a great economy, they just don't have international legal status. The only reason they don't have that is because the U.S. had bigger fish to fry, and because for many years the Kuomintang did not push for independence, because they claimed to be the legitimate government of the whole Mainland. U.S. Taiwan policy has little to no bearing on our policy credibility anywhere else in the world, except in East Asia. We have no credibility problems with our East Asian allies (if anything, our military threat is a little too credible).
China was never, and is still not, a *real* strategic threat to the United States. It has vast potential, but it's still decades from being able to utilize any of it. It was even further away from realizing its potential back in the 60s. However, what the realists saw was a chance to change the polarity of the international system. There was essentially a two bloc status quo: the Free World versus the Sino-Soviet bloc. Nixon and then Brzezinski managed to change that into a three bloc world: the Free World, the Soviet bloc, and the Non-Aligned Movement (of which China was the de facto leader). In this way, China and the United States could (and did) cooperate on strategic manners, such as curbing Soviet expansionism (see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
The realists asked themselves what was more important: the breakup of the Sino-Soviet bloc and strategic cooperation against the Soviet Union (the only actual geostrategic threat the United States has ever faced), or a tiny liberal island ruled by a not-so democratic system (Taiwan didn't truly democratize until the 1990s) with no actual power. The U.S. chose to defeat the USSR and drop Taiwan, because the potential for the two bloc system to turn into a "hot war" and destroy the world was of greater concern than the legal status of Taiwan's sovereignty under international law.
I'm not saying they made a perfect choice, but viewing the wider context, the choice is not so simple as you make it out to be.
Don't forget China has its own little slice of the Kashmir conflict as well: Aksai Chin
You are not entirely correct. The Kuomintang party (the old nationalist party that Chiang Kai-shek led) holds the position that Taiwan is a part of China, and claims to be the legitimate government over the Mainland. The Democratic People's Party (currently in power) believes no such thing, and would likely press for outright independence, if it thought it could get away with it.
No, this is probably a good thing. If Netscape takes off again, then it's good because the Gecko rendering engine will be more widely used, and web designs will be coded to standards more often. If Netscape doesn't take off, then it's not the failure of Firefox/Gecko, it's the failure of Netscape (again). Either way, Firefox doesn't get hurt.
The United States certainly will support dictators, and has done so a number of times throughout the country's history. Musharraf and Karimov are only the latest two. U.S. idealism is, of course, tempered by pragmatic decisions about supporting the "lesser of two evils" and believing that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Those are tough choices to make, and I don't believe that any foreign policy maker likes to be in a situation where they have to support an illigitimate regime. In the two cases you mention, Musharraf and Karimov were willing to support the U.S. efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and U.S. policy makers clearly felt that the latter were bigger threats than the two dictators. That's certainly debatable. But it's quite clear that the U.S. would have been able to make very little headway against the Taliban or Al Qaeda if it did not ally with local power centers, as distasteful as they are.
I think my original point remains. The U.S. has been quite willing to overthrow democratically elected governments that it did not think would ultimately guarantee freedom. The two key examples are Mossadegh and Allende. It's debatable, and indeed still hotly debated, whether the U.S. overreacted towards these two leaders. They were leftists and ideologically aligned with the Soviet Union (the ultimate geostrategic threat the U.S.), but neither were totalitarians themselves. I think the U.S. didn't want to find out whether, after consolidating their power, these leaders would move toward support of the USSR--a totalitarian state that *did* oppress the liberties of every nation it dominated.
Going on the idea that it's mimicking 70% of Office's features, I'm going to go with Rich Text Gmail feature. I don't think that actually comes anywhere close to 70% of MS Office's feature set, but that's the closest guess.
So you would prefer an organization with an international board where all 191 governments got to actively meddle in its affairs, to an organization with an international board in which one country has a veto, but by-in-large lets it run in a laissez-faire manner? I'm less afraid of a Verizon search page than I am of the Great Firewall of China.