Again, your proxy outbids him up to $41. DumbJoe decides he's not going to let you beat him, so bids $51. Oops, you lose!
The language you use sums it up perfectly. It's all about beating people and "winning" auctions. You don't win squat, you pay for it.:-) Nice marketing move from eBay. Everyones a winner!
It's not the job of the police to "protect and serve" no matter what their slogan says.
I am not American, but I understood it was the job of the Mayor to protect and uphold the constitution. Isn't this a part of the swearing in process?
FTA: the mayor called it "a blatant disregard for the Police Department"
Sounds like a blatant disregard for the consitution. In UK politics he'd be out on his ass for that indiscression. It's a complete and utter failure to do the one thing he was elected to do. If he doesn't like the law he should use the process to change it, not intimidation and public insults such as "traitor".
Moral of the story? If the US says "get the fuck out of the city", get the fuck out of the city.
Like New Orleans? Some people don't have the option due to circumstance/health. Others, such as doctors, are often ethically compelled to stay to help out.
Blanket firebombing belongs in WW2 with all the other horrors of that war. There is no excuse for attacking civilian areas regardless of any enforced evacuation.
Spend a lot of time contemplating the hatred I've followed, and the the company I've kept that got me into this mess.
Or you could contemplate the fact that they got your name through either:
Cash given for "information"
Someone elses torture
This has precident. In the UK when we had our terrorism scare from the IRA many Irish people were arrested and fitted up for crimes they had no involvement. During the "interogation" many gave the names of people they knew had no involvement in terrorism just to end the pain. They selected these people because had they named real people they suspected of being terrorists, they and their family would die horribly. Many of those people got the same treatment.
The common joke at the time was "innocent until proven Irish". The only thing that's changed is skin colour and that only seems to be making this problem far worse as it goes beyond sectarianism into pure racism. Arab == terrorist in your eyes. How can any of them be innocent...etc etc etc?
Sounds like you could use a Dedibox from http://www.dedibox.fr/
They Offer a dedicated server with 160GB of HD, your OS of choice, 100MB bandwith and unlimited data.
You can SSH, FTP, VNC, whatever you want. How does that sound?
Price is 30/month.
This is very interesting to me; I was looking at virtual hosting a short while ago but I could not find anyone that offered enough space to backup my data (I'd be looking for 120gig minimum).
Are there any English language equivalents that offer vast storage and decent bandwidth?
PS the 30/month is Euros, pretty reasonable given I was almost willing to pay around 20 euros pcm for 4 gig just to backup the most important stuff.
ah but the whole use of celebrity heads was lame. Discuss
It was a plot device so that they could have guest stars playing themselves without resorting to overused time travel plots like some other serious Sci-Fi shows. It sucked most of the time, but cameos often do elsewhere. It certainally had it's moments with some people though.
I'm not holding my breath. Series 4 and 5 of Family Guy suffered by having different writers etc and it just wasn't the same show. For example, Stewie has lost his "kill lois, take over the world" zeal which for me was one of the highlights of the show. I expect the same sorts of disappointment with Futurama, but the talent is there to surprise us if they put their heads together.
The only way this should be done where redaction is absolutely required is to completely remove the data from the document. You need to reflow the text as well to obscure the size of the redaction boxes. If it's a proportional font and you know it's kerning properties, you can write an app to determine a list of probable words that would be that length. The best thing to do is to remove the data are replace it with a standard sized REMOVED block or some other token.
Hard Drive? That could be optional but do you really think it's just spinning constantly?
Yes. In fact, I know it is.
Mine is set to spin down during playback, it's in the options on more recent builds of XBMC. I don't store any media on it so this works nicely. It's a great little media player, video playback is flawless.
In other news, I ran a 2.5" drive in my firewall box three or four years ago. The adapters weren't common at the time, I got one through my employer as they used them to write disk images for laptops. It was literally a PCB with the two different IDE connectors on it. No components at all IIRC, just an physical adapter really. The only reason I used it was because I had a 2 gig 2.5" drive gathering dust and smoothwall isn't all that demanding for space.
I'm wasting my time here, you are so patrioticly blinded that you cannot think objectively.
If you want to say the real translation is elsewhere, please post it, o Arabic expert.
I said I was in a hurry, know how to use google do you? In a google news search for "Iran translation", fourth link. This article mentions names and publications, I trust you can manage from there on your own? Or do you need your hand held as we journey through the wonderful world of propaganda?
The one that's building nukes? Or is that all faulty intelligence? And how do you account for the many statements that Iran's president has made in recent months, including the tone of the letter he sent Bush? (Right, I know... you haven't read it.)
You mean the letter in from 2003?. The one where they offered talks on officially reconizing Israel, nuclear proliferation, ending all support of terrorism?
Or perhaps it's the country that is internationally considered the most potentially destabilizing in the region.
Israel? Who have also built illegal nukes? Who have in fact invaded other countries on many occasions? Who are probably raining down shells on civilians as I type this?
And are you really saying that in a comparison of the civilian, "peacetime" deaths that Hussein caused, we should be tallying up the insurgents and terrorists - the people who are blowing up marketplaces and mosques, innocents, women and children - we should feel the same way about their deaths as we do the thousands of Kurds that Hussein gassed, or the tens of thousands of ethnic minorities and political dissidents that his regime tortured and killed without warrant?
WTF? Make up your mind...what does the 600,000 figure represent? That is those people, both innocent and "terrorist" (in Saddams eyes). Both figures that I mention involve both civilian and combat deaths. You are arguing my point for me here!
They're full of Iraqi citizens, most of them executed without trials, "disappeared" in the best Venezuelan tradition.
Which tradition was that? When the CIA were helping out down there? We've been executing people in Iraq without trial regularly. Or have you not been reading the news? Soldiers do this in war, it's what happens when you put them in those situations.
For the real bigwigs, their families were also killed - wives raped in front of husbands, children killed in front of mothers.
We've done that as well! There is footage from Abu Graib that is way too messed up to release. Yes, we raped their children in front of them. look here. Yes, I know it's a wiki but it has links to names, places and publications on this.
Now tell me how that compares, at all, to insurgent deaths, or to the deaths of coalition troops who fight, whether or not you agree with it, to make that country a better place.
Because "making a better place" is neither why we went there, or what the net result will be. Iraq used to be secular; now vast swathes of land are rulled by Islamic nutters who have banned women from education. They cannot walk the street without minders and the correct clothing. The stuff we started hating the Taliban for (after they stopped being nice to our oil firms). You cannot run a business due to the ongoing violence. I fail to see the "better" here, except perhaps to Harliburtons bottom line.
Tell me, how can "freedom" exist in a place where the police cannot even show their faces when on duty? Do you know what "freedom" entails? "keeping your head down and praying" isn't a part of it.
PS everytime you critize my spelling, remember one simple thing...I'm dyslexic and don't really care either way.
My original reply to you did not post for some reason, and I don't have time to rewrite it. So, just a quickie here.
And the "wipe Israel off the map" thing is deliberate disinfomation, no one in power ever said that.
O RLY?
Ya, RLY. The New York Times article is subscription only now, but he never said that. It was made up by the western media. The real translation is available is other places I'm sure. It was PROPAGANDA and you lapped it up.
Well, see, here's a word you need to look up: "apocalyptic". In this case, Iran's leadership actually has an uncommon extremist Muslim attitude that the end of the world isn't really a bad thing, and helping it along would be Allah's work.
Emm, are we talking about the same Iran? The one that hasn't attacked another country in over a century? And that attitude is present in with Bush, he'd quite happilly bring about the end of the world. He and all the faithful will miss it all via The Rapture. A crusade is good is his eyes.
I know that in your little fantasy world, it's nice to think that they're just perfectly rational
No, thats reality. Its the fantasy "we've been planning this campaign since 1997" world that they are aggressive nutjobs who need to be cut down in size. Them, and their natural resources.
Well, Saddam's regime killed somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 people, depending on which mass graves you count, over a period of around 25 years.
Mostly from the war you guys forced him into. "We'll be your allies, but you must attck Iran".
ight now, around 35,000 people have died over three years, the majority of whom died in the initial invasion
Jesus fucking christ, way to fuck with the numbers. The 35,000 number (which is 38,000) is from Iraq Body Count I presume. This figure only represents "violent deaths reported in two English media publications". It doesn't count insurgents. It doesn't count "terrorists". It completely ignores deaths due to the lack of clean water, sewage, food, heathcare. It ignores collalition losses. It ignores the initial massacre of the Iraqi army during the invasion. The correct figure is nearer 100,000. Now redo your "deaths per year" maths please...
And, if you've been paying attention, people who commit atrocities there (including some coalition soldiers) are being taken to task for crimes - this is new for Iraq, on any level. (Please spare me the "put Bush on trial" obvious inane response.)
Bullshit, only the ones we hear about and when they are forced to acknowledge it and MUST be seen to be doing something about it. Things like Abu Graib are well documented in previous wars and the interogation techniques used were standard. You can look them up. They weren't "bad apples", they were "following orders". That's no excuse, but believing that "own soldiers are genetically/culturally unable to torture" is crazy. What makes American soldiers better than Iraqis when under presure? Or did you miss Vietnam?
You can do all that already. There are "personal" file servers for bluetooth and wifi you can carry about. Media players have settings for microdrives where they cache each song (saves battery). You can get bluetooth stereo headphones. I'm sure there are cameras with BT, I've seen ones (Canon?) that had WiFi.
The only difference from your idea is that you need a phone PDA at the centre of it. That has your screen and keyboard (touch-screen) in one item, and you can also use it as a standalone phone without the headset. You can get optional keyboards built in or external, there's even a bluetooth one that projects the keys onto a desk using a laser. Having one item do the lion-share isn't all that bad however; you need to consider battery life in a multiple device system and it's a weakest-link type of thing.
You'd need to bite the bullet and get a Windows Mobile phone though; they are the only ones that seem to be able to do it all.
The old skool 3d franchises have been mostly done already anyway. Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake have all been brought up to date in new guises. DNF is a not bad franchise to have, but it's not an original idea.
Prior to his death in 1953, what Stalin had been up to wasn't widely known. Following WW2 he was somewhat popular. It was only when they denounced Stalinism a few years later did people start totalling up the numbers.
I was under the impression that the US fear of the commies was mostly 50 onwards. Obviously there was the whole Berlin thing but was much paranoia other than that?
Nobody ever says "The UK initiated a regime change in Iran", it's always "THE AMERKKIAN ZIONIST CIA DID IT!".
lol, very true! When it comes to messing up the middle east, you guys learned from the best! (us)
If that's the way you see it, you have SERIOUSLY misunderstood geo-politics in the 20th century my friend. The US hasn't been an expansionist nation in centuries.
It depends on how you define expansionist. For the soviets it was making the USSR itself bigger. For the west it was establishing "democratic" client states. Most of the wests client states were essentially puppet regimes, with malable leadership often helped to power by ourselves.
It really comes down to this; you get the USSR and NATO fighting over places like Afganistan, Sudan, Turkey etc all for ultimate strategic gain. The semantics were different but it's the same end-goal. With Communism, you want state-managed resources, so you need a central coverment. Client states under the west can operate autonomously, but get support in various other guises such as trade, military deployments (great deterant to invaders) and so on.
Otherwise we'd now have the United Capitalist Federation of America, with colonies spread all over the globe.
Which is essentially what we have. There are numerous states left over from the cold war where they aren't exactly colonies but go beyond simple allies. It's like the Cuban revolution; prior to that Cuba was a US client state. That's about as much of a "Capitalist Federation" as you would get, but in many ways its the same thing. We're now 50 years on and many of these client states have changed drastically, so it's hard to think of specific examples.
Could have made the same argument in Bosnia after 3 years. Or South Korea. Or Germany for that matter. Stop getting your panties in a bunch; these things take time.
I'm not so sure...Iraq is quite different. Bosnia at least was part of a real country (AFAIK). Iraq on the other hand is an artificial country whose borders were drawn up while the ignoring centuries-old conflicts that shaped Persia. I'm not convinced that it could ever work as a country without someone like Saddam at the helm. Some sort of civil dispute leading to a Bosnia-style split is inevitable if you ask me. A friend of mine who teaches politics suggests that the election system in Iraq was drawn up in a way that this would be compatible with (and may even encourage), but I'm out of my depth on those discussions.
Maybe when you're not fighting religious fanatics.
Who isn't these days? Bush mentions God in almost every speach and he has gone on record saying that God told him to invade Iraq. The Chinese and anti-religion to the point of it being a religion itself! The Israeli's believe they have a religious/ethnic right to own that piece of the middle east. The Islamists see our culture as abhorent and fight any signs of it near them, and they are willing to die to do this. We're left with the Buddists and I'm sure a few of them want to create their own "King James" edition, removing the non-violence ideals!;-)
Do you want to stop most war? Disprove the existance of God beyond all doubt and argument. That will be a glorious day for humanity.
Yeah, getting little things like "facts" wrong tends to be a common theme amongst those who take pleasure in blaming the US for everything.
Incorrectly stating a date is not "facts", it's details. When it happened is not relevant to this debate. But I'm not defending someone elses post, nor should it be valid critism of the central point here.
The UK came up with the plan and pursued it, the US agreed to assist. So why, pray tell, is the US the country being blamed?
Who said the UK wasn't to blame? It was the UKs idea but "agreed to assist" grossly downplays the USA's involvement. The CIA did most of the work, managed by Americans.
Ofcourse, the revisionist historians who see this as some blatant power-grab, or the removal of a "democratic" regime for political purposes, all fail to acknowledge the realities of that time period.
How much hypocracy can you get in one sentance? You refer to the time period (start of the cold war); how could this be anything other than a "power grab"? It's a power grab if the soviets take the country and it's exactly the same when you do it. The entire cold war was one big power grab; the later invention of the ICBM changed all that of course. Back then, power was territory. Turkey, Afganistan, Cuba, they all had conflicts due to these cold war power grabs. They also had short-range missles stationed on them, pointing at the enemy. But hey, the US had the Iranian peoples best interest in mind all along, right?
Back then Global Communism under a totalitarian USSR was much more threatening and terrifying than the prospect of a Global Islamist Caliphate is today.
Bull. This is before the legacy of Stalin. Prior to that asshat, there was no reason to fear Communism. The fact that you capitalise "Global Communism" suggests that you disagree with me on this for ideological reasons. If Stalin wanted to promote Communism, he'd have been better off never being born!
By the way, there is no threat of a "Global Islamist Caliphate". Never was. All we have here is a bunch of people screaming "get out of my country" then after 40 years of that some fly some planes into some buildings. They have no desire to take over the world. They don't want the whole world to be islamic (well, a couple do, but we have our own Christian equivalents in Fallwell etc). Their goals are clear and stated every other month. Get out of the middle east. Stop dicking around with their goverments. Stop supporting repressive brutal dictatorships. Never once have I seen Al Qaida say "global islam" or anything along those lines.
A revolution in an Iran increasingly leaning towards communism (and sharing a border with the USSR) was a logical way to avoid more intense warfare later on. And, as history shows, NATO nations won the Cold War without having to fight much.
Complete conjecture. Would Iran being communist be any worse than the current state of affairs? Without a time machine we cannot answer that. I'd argue that the cold war turning into real war was always unlikely, due to the M.A.D. brought about by the nukes. The 1953 revolution in Iran is largely responsible for the anti-US feeling over there. It could be argued that the majority of terror has roots in this event.
As for the rest of your nonsense, the time for diplomacy in Iraq came and passed in the 1990's. Sadam survived one war, years of inspections and negotiations, followed by years of sanctions. Negotiating any more at that point was sheer lunacy.
No, thinking that invading was an improvement was lunacy. I'll argree that the situation was pretty dire over there with Saddam in charge. But I'd like to see anyone make a convincing argument that the current situation is better. Or that it will be better in five years. You do realise that we are now there forever? We have built 15 or so permament bases. Most of the US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (long term deterent stationing) have been moved to Iraq. And the his
When the USA and USSR agreed to decommission stockpiles, much of what was decommissioned was due for end-of-life anyway. Many fuel systems and payload setups have limited shelf lives, we are talking about some pretty nasty chemical propelants here. In the arms treaties, both sides got rid of their older stuff. It was a good move politically, but it didn't do much strategically.
Shi'a Muslim 89%, Sunni Muslim 9%, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i 2%
2. Breakdown of USA's Religions:
Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)
How about those breakdowns within those who are in power And Protestant/Catholic essentally believe in the same things anyway*, certainally not to the extent of the differences in the islamic religions.
* offer null and void in Northern Ireland due to local historical reasons.
I would hardly say that the replacment of Iraq's then-current government and military could be considered wiping the country off the map. In contrast, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's made statements that Israel is a stain in the Islamic world and should be wiped off the map.
I'd hardly say that's what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually said. You can't pick holes in someones arguments based on wording they used, then followup with a deliberate misquote.
The last time I checked, the most torturous thing Bush did was share his bad grammar with the world.
Are you nuts? Iraq was in planning since 1998. 9/11 had nothing to do with it and only provided (misguided) justification to the US population. The net result is way more unstabability and little things, like the first ever suicide bombing in the WHOLE of Western Europe (2005).
He's a liar and a thief. On 9/12/2001, the whole world was knocking at the USA's door asking "do you need any help? just ask, you know we are here if you need us.". By 2005, he'd managed to turn most of the world against the USA. That's an outstanding feat.
Because last I checked, the US military budget is half of the annual spendings on defense worldwide.
Not only that, but according to these figures, the amount the US spends is half of their own discretionary spending budget on warfare.
Eisenhower touched on this in his leaving speach. He was concerned that WW2 had set in motion a new wave of US industry; weaponry. He believed that it had the potential to corrupt the country. He was essentially right; the arms industry is one of the most influential industries around now.
"we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Remember the effects of propaganda: citizens of enemy countries will be raised to see you as enemies.
I get that point of view from reading a history book, not propaganda. Perhaps it is you that is exposed to the propaganda? Perhaps these countries have genuine reasons to fear you? The hatred/mistrust of the USA is a very grass-roots thing. Most 9-11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, which is generally considered to be a US ally.
these people honestly think you're demon worshippers who have come to rape their children (or something similar).
That's because it's essentially true. Rape, Abu-graib, the UK soldiers killing the kids last month; these things are all well documented parts of war that crop up in every large conflict. Whether it's Ruskies in Berlin in 1945 or Marines in Vietnam in the 60s/70s, the story is usually the same. Combat psychology is well known now and the reasons behind the breakdown in morality are largely understood. A facinating experiment to read up on is The Milgram Experiment, which showed that (consistently) greater than 60% of people are capable of torturing someone to death given the right situation.
And we were raping their children in Abu Graib. We did it in front of their parents as a form of torture. Those photographs (and video apparently) will likely never be released to the public as they are way too fucked up for most people to deal with.
He got the date wrong. Look it up if you want. Operation Ajax, 1953. It's not exactly a secret or anything, however they don't teach it in school and I don't think the movie is out yet. This is one of the cornerstones of why some islamists have issues with the USA.
And it wasn't a popular revolution. Popular revolutions by definition do not involve outside funding and state-sponsored terrorist campaigns.
The overthrowing of a democratically elected government in 1953 Iran was the first of MANY such operations. The US has overthrown more democracies that it has "created". It's all about the magical word..."socialist". Elect one of them and you are Fuxored.
Threatening to build nuclear weapons in 5 years isn't a normal reaction from those who are afraid of an imminent threat.
Iran is making no such threat. We are the ones talking of them building nukes in five years, not them.
So it looks like another war might be neccesary after all. You figured they'd have learned from Iraq's example, but common sense seems to be in short supply in the middle east.
another? Which previous war was also "neccesary". This I can't wait to hear...
Common sense? You clearly haven't been following the news. Numerous leaked memos and whistle-blowers have come forward to prove that the Iraq invasion was going to proceed regardless of any diplomacy. Any "diplomacy" you saw was to placate YOU and the international community. The PNAC have been planing that one since 1997. These plans involve using Iraq as a gateway to the middle east. Irans recent nuclear sabre-rattling has nothing to do with the fact that the PNAC has their sights on them. They've had their crosshairs aimed for several years, they are just looking for a justification to do it now.
Often I wonder how great nations allow bad things to happen. How populations can turn a blind eye to what is going on in their name. Your ignorance has helped me understand this problem greatly. Thank you, thank you very much.
People who love porn would not mind DRM or any other restrictive technology
Hardly, "discrete brown packaging" and "dial-home DRM" are mutually exclusive. Most pr0n fans prefer anonyminity. Would you want DRM Barnyard Antics showing up on your account as a daily viewing?
There are existing court rulings (U.S. Circuit Courts) asserting that violence is not the same as sex and is therefore cannot be used to classigy something as obscene.
That itself is obscene. One creates life, the other takes it away. Which should be more culturally acceptible?
I think it's the 2x45 minute playtimes. Makes it hard on TV companies to promote (less time for ads) and requires a lot of stamina for a casual player.
TV aside, you're wrong there. Ever heard of the phrase "jumpers for goalposts"? Perhaps not, it may be a UK-only thing. Anyhow, soccer is one of the most accessible sports out there. All you need is a ball and something to mark the goals, which is more than enough for kids to develop a lasting interest. Hell, a year or so ago some friends and I were on a country road in a minibus. The road was blocked a mile away due to an accident. We got the ball and had a kick-around in the field next to the road. Most of us were over 30 and many have kids.
On the other hand, some of us did play a little American Football when we were younger. I also played the Madden series a bit. Your football is way less accessible, there's far steeper learning curve. Watch soccer for five minutes and there isn't really much else to know. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, tactics, formations, the "flow" of the game, but it's enjoyable even on a surface layer.
You are not spied on inside your house without cause, but posting on the internet is like putting a big sign up in your front yard with information availalable to the public in general.
They are spying on you in your own home. Your phone records are being datamined for one, and that's just a recent story. By it's very definition datamining is "without cause". How can you have just cause against a cross-referenced number in the database?
Echelon is real. It sifts through your web / email / fax and phone calls. Numerous governments have admited to it's presence. Many of the listening sites are known. Details have been leaked about it. It passed beyond the tinfoil hat realm a long time ago. It's been involved in commercial espionage, both for and against companies of allied countries. The recent talk of phone records and wiretaps makes me squirm. It's been going on for years.
Of course things are different from 1984, especially regarding technology. Mind you, according to lots of other literature from the age, we should be reading this discussion on the moon. But in many ways, 1984 was spot on:
Continuous war
Fear & Propaganda
Ever shifting alliances
Alternative views are unpatriotic
Psychological torture of untried prisoners
Ignorance of the population wrt current events and the history leading up to them
You could go on and on, but don't listen to me, I'm not much of a writer. Others have made my point in a much better way, there's been numerous comparison articles on the subject over the years.
Slashdot Mirror
The language you use sums it up perfectly. It's all about beating people and "winning" auctions. You don't win squat, you pay for it. :-) Nice marketing move from eBay. Everyones a winner!
I am not American, but I understood it was the job of the Mayor to protect and uphold the constitution. Isn't this a part of the swearing in process?
Sounds like a blatant disregard for the consitution. In UK politics he'd be out on his ass for that indiscression. It's a complete and utter failure to do the one thing he was elected to do. If he doesn't like the law he should use the process to change it, not intimidation and public insults such as "traitor".
Like New Orleans? Some people don't have the option due to circumstance/health. Others, such as doctors, are often ethically compelled to stay to help out.
Blanket firebombing belongs in WW2 with all the other horrors of that war. There is no excuse for attacking civilian areas regardless of any enforced evacuation.
Or you could contemplate the fact that they got your name through either:
This has precident. In the UK when we had our terrorism scare from the IRA many Irish people were arrested and fitted up for crimes they had no involvement. During the "interogation" many gave the names of people they knew had no involvement in terrorism just to end the pain. They selected these people because had they named real people they suspected of being terrorists, they and their family would die horribly. Many of those people got the same treatment.
The common joke at the time was "innocent until proven Irish". The only thing that's changed is skin colour and that only seems to be making this problem far worse as it goes beyond sectarianism into pure racism. Arab == terrorist in your eyes. How can any of them be innocent...etc etc etc?
This is very interesting to me; I was looking at virtual hosting a short while ago but I could not find anyone that offered enough space to backup my data (I'd be looking for 120gig minimum).
Are there any English language equivalents that offer vast storage and decent bandwidth?
PS the 30/month is Euros, pretty reasonable given I was almost willing to pay around 20 euros pcm for 4 gig just to backup the most important stuff.
It was a plot device so that they could have guest stars playing themselves without resorting to overused time travel plots like some other serious Sci-Fi shows. It sucked most of the time, but cameos often do elsewhere. It certainally had it's moments with some people though.
I'm not holding my breath. Series 4 and 5 of Family Guy suffered by having different writers etc and it just wasn't the same show. For example, Stewie has lost his "kill lois, take over the world" zeal which for me was one of the highlights of the show. I expect the same sorts of disappointment with Futurama, but the talent is there to surprise us if they put their heads together.
The only way this should be done where redaction is absolutely required is to completely remove the data from the document. You need to reflow the text as well to obscure the size of the redaction boxes. If it's a proportional font and you know it's kerning properties, you can write an app to determine a list of probable words that would be that length. The best thing to do is to remove the data are replace it with a standard sized REMOVED block or some other token.
Mine is set to spin down during playback, it's in the options on more recent builds of XBMC. I don't store any media on it so this works nicely. It's a great little media player, video playback is flawless.
In other news, I ran a 2.5" drive in my firewall box three or four years ago. The adapters weren't common at the time, I got one through my employer as they used them to write disk images for laptops. It was literally a PCB with the two different IDE connectors on it. No components at all IIRC, just an physical adapter really. The only reason I used it was because I had a 2 gig 2.5" drive gathering dust and smoothwall isn't all that demanding for space.
I said I was in a hurry, know how to use google do you? In a google news search for "Iran translation", fourth link. This article mentions names and publications, I trust you can manage from there on your own? Or do you need your hand held as we journey through the wonderful world of propaganda?
You mean the letter in from 2003?. The one where they offered talks on officially reconizing Israel, nuclear proliferation, ending all support of terrorism?
Israel? Who have also built illegal nukes? Who have in fact invaded other countries on many occasions? Who are probably raining down shells on civilians as I type this?
WTF? Make up your mind...what does the 600,000 figure represent? That is those people, both innocent and "terrorist" (in Saddams eyes). Both figures that I mention involve both civilian and combat deaths. You are arguing my point for me here!
Which tradition was that? When the CIA were helping out down there? We've been executing people in Iraq without trial regularly. Or have you not been reading the news? Soldiers do this in war, it's what happens when you put them in those situations.
We've done that as well! There is footage from Abu Graib that is way too messed up to release. Yes, we raped their children in front of them. look here. Yes, I know it's a wiki but it has links to names, places and publications on this.
Because "making a better place" is neither why we went there, or what the net result will be. Iraq used to be secular; now vast swathes of land are rulled by Islamic nutters who have banned women from education. They cannot walk the street without minders and the correct clothing. The stuff we started hating the Taliban for (after they stopped being nice to our oil firms). You cannot run a business due to the ongoing violence. I fail to see the "better" here, except perhaps to Harliburtons bottom line.
Tell me, how can "freedom" exist in a place where the police cannot even show their faces when on duty? Do you know what "freedom" entails? "keeping your head down and praying" isn't a part of it.
PS everytime you critize my spelling, remember one simple thing...I'm dyslexic and don't really care either way.
Nah, the genocide league is topped by Stalin and the Native American holocaust. Both of them trump Hitlers efforts at ethnic cleansing.
No, thats reality. Its the fantasy "we've been planning this campaign since 1997" world that they are aggressive nutjobs who need to be cut down in size. Them, and their natural resources.
Mostly from the war you guys forced him into. "We'll be your allies, but you must attck Iran".
Jesus fucking christ, way to fuck with the numbers. The 35,000 number (which is 38,000) is from Iraq Body Count I presume. This figure only represents "violent deaths reported in two English media publications". It doesn't count insurgents. It doesn't count "terrorists". It completely ignores deaths due to the lack of clean water, sewage, food, heathcare. It ignores collalition losses. It ignores the initial massacre of the Iraqi army during the invasion. The correct figure is nearer 100,000. Now redo your "deaths per year" maths please...Bullshit, only the ones we hear about and when they are forced to acknowledge it and MUST be seen to be doing something about it. Things like Abu Graib are well documented in previous wars and the interogation techniques used were standard. You can look them up. They weren't "bad apples", they were "following orders". That's no excuse, but believing that "own soldiers are genetically/culturally unable to torture" is crazy. What makes American soldiers better than Iraqis when under presure? Or did you miss Vietnam?
You can do all that already. There are "personal" file servers for bluetooth and wifi you can carry about. Media players have settings for microdrives where they cache each song (saves battery). You can get bluetooth stereo headphones. I'm sure there are cameras with BT, I've seen ones (Canon?) that had WiFi.
The only difference from your idea is that you need a phone PDA at the centre of it. That has your screen and keyboard (touch-screen) in one item, and you can also use it as a standalone phone without the headset. You can get optional keyboards built in or external, there's even a bluetooth one that projects the keys onto a desk using a laser. Having one item do the lion-share isn't all that bad however; you need to consider battery life in a multiple device system and it's a weakest-link type of thing.
You'd need to bite the bullet and get a Windows Mobile phone though; they are the only ones that seem to be able to do it all.
The old skool 3d franchises have been mostly done already anyway. Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake have all been brought up to date in new guises. DNF is a not bad franchise to have, but it's not an original idea.
I was under the impression that the US fear of the commies was mostly 50 onwards. Obviously there was the whole Berlin thing but was much paranoia other than that?
lol, very true! When it comes to messing up the middle east, you guys learned from the best! (us)
If that's the way you see it, you have SERIOUSLY misunderstood geo-politics in the 20th century my friend. The US hasn't been an expansionist nation in centuries.
It depends on how you define expansionist. For the soviets it was making the USSR itself bigger. For the west it was establishing "democratic" client states. Most of the wests client states were essentially puppet regimes, with malable leadership often helped to power by ourselves.
It really comes down to this; you get the USSR and NATO fighting over places like Afganistan, Sudan, Turkey etc all for ultimate strategic gain. The semantics were different but it's the same end-goal. With Communism, you want state-managed resources, so you need a central coverment. Client states under the west can operate autonomously, but get support in various other guises such as trade, military deployments (great deterant to invaders) and so on.
Otherwise we'd now have the United Capitalist Federation of America, with colonies spread all over the globe.
Which is essentially what we have. There are numerous states left over from the cold war where they aren't exactly colonies but go beyond simple allies. It's like the Cuban revolution; prior to that Cuba was a US client state. That's about as much of a "Capitalist Federation" as you would get, but in many ways its the same thing. We're now 50 years on and many of these client states have changed drastically, so it's hard to think of specific examples.
Could have made the same argument in Bosnia after 3 years. Or South Korea. Or Germany for that matter. Stop getting your panties in a bunch; these things take time.
I'm not so sure...Iraq is quite different. Bosnia at least was part of a real country (AFAIK). Iraq on the other hand is an artificial country whose borders were drawn up while the ignoring centuries-old conflicts that shaped Persia. I'm not convinced that it could ever work as a country without someone like Saddam at the helm. Some sort of civil dispute leading to a Bosnia-style split is inevitable if you ask me. A friend of mine who teaches politics suggests that the election system in Iraq was drawn up in a way that this would be compatible with (and may even encourage), but I'm out of my depth on those discussions.
Maybe when you're not fighting religious fanatics.
Who isn't these days? Bush mentions God in almost every speach and he has gone on record saying that God told him to invade Iraq. The Chinese and anti-religion to the point of it being a religion itself! The Israeli's believe they have a religious/ethnic right to own that piece of the middle east. The Islamists see our culture as abhorent and fight any signs of it near them, and they are willing to die to do this. We're left with the Buddists and I'm sure a few of them want to create their own "King James" edition, removing the non-violence ideals! ;-)
Do you want to stop most war? Disprove the existance of God beyond all doubt and argument. That will be a glorious day for humanity.
Yeah, getting little things like "facts" wrong tends to be a common theme amongst those who take pleasure in blaming the US for everything.
Incorrectly stating a date is not "facts", it's details. When it happened is not relevant to this debate. But I'm not defending someone elses post, nor should it be valid critism of the central point here.
The UK came up with the plan and pursued it, the US agreed to assist. So why, pray tell, is the US the country being blamed?
Who said the UK wasn't to blame? It was the UKs idea but "agreed to assist" grossly downplays the USA's involvement. The CIA did most of the work, managed by Americans.
Ofcourse, the revisionist historians who see this as some blatant power-grab, or the removal of a "democratic" regime for political purposes, all fail to acknowledge the realities of that time period.
How much hypocracy can you get in one sentance? You refer to the time period (start of the cold war); how could this be anything other than a "power grab"? It's a power grab if the soviets take the country and it's exactly the same when you do it. The entire cold war was one big power grab; the later invention of the ICBM changed all that of course. Back then, power was territory. Turkey, Afganistan, Cuba, they all had conflicts due to these cold war power grabs. They also had short-range missles stationed on them, pointing at the enemy. But hey, the US had the Iranian peoples best interest in mind all along, right?
Back then Global Communism under a totalitarian USSR was much more threatening and terrifying than the prospect of a Global Islamist Caliphate is today.
Bull. This is before the legacy of Stalin. Prior to that asshat, there was no reason to fear Communism. The fact that you capitalise "Global Communism" suggests that you disagree with me on this for ideological reasons. If Stalin wanted to promote Communism, he'd have been better off never being born!
By the way, there is no threat of a "Global Islamist Caliphate". Never was. All we have here is a bunch of people screaming "get out of my country" then after 40 years of that some fly some planes into some buildings. They have no desire to take over the world. They don't want the whole world to be islamic (well, a couple do, but we have our own Christian equivalents in Fallwell etc). Their goals are clear and stated every other month. Get out of the middle east. Stop dicking around with their goverments. Stop supporting repressive brutal dictatorships. Never once have I seen Al Qaida say "global islam" or anything along those lines.
A revolution in an Iran increasingly leaning towards communism (and sharing a border with the USSR) was a logical way to avoid more intense warfare later on. And, as history shows, NATO nations won the Cold War without having to fight much.
Complete conjecture. Would Iran being communist be any worse than the current state of affairs? Without a time machine we cannot answer that. I'd argue that the cold war turning into real war was always unlikely, due to the M.A.D. brought about by the nukes. The 1953 revolution in Iran is largely responsible for the anti-US feeling over there. It could be argued that the majority of terror has roots in this event.
As for the rest of your nonsense, the time for diplomacy in Iraq came and passed in the 1990's. Sadam survived one war, years of inspections and negotiations, followed by years of sanctions. Negotiating any more at that point was sheer lunacy.
No, thinking that invading was an improvement was lunacy. I'll argree that the situation was pretty dire over there with Saddam in charge. But I'd like to see anyone make a convincing argument that the current situation is better. Or that it will be better in five years. You do realise that we are now there forever? We have built 15 or so permament bases. Most of the US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (long term deterent stationing) have been moved to Iraq. And the his
When the USA and USSR agreed to decommission stockpiles, much of what was decommissioned was due for end-of-life anyway. Many fuel systems and payload setups have limited shelf lives, we are talking about some pretty nasty chemical propelants here. In the arms treaties, both sides got rid of their older stuff. It was a good move politically, but it didn't do much strategically.
How about those breakdowns within those who are in power And Protestant/Catholic essentally believe in the same things anyway*, certainally not to the extent of the differences in the islamic religions.
* offer null and void in Northern Ireland due to local historical reasons.
I would hardly say that the replacment of Iraq's then-current government and military could be considered wiping the country off the map. In contrast, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's made statements that Israel is a stain in the Islamic world and should be wiped off the map.
I'd hardly say that's what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually said. You can't pick holes in someones arguments based on wording they used, then followup with a deliberate misquote.
The last time I checked, the most torturous thing Bush did was share his bad grammar with the world.
Are you nuts? Iraq was in planning since 1998. 9/11 had nothing to do with it and only provided (misguided) justification to the US population. The net result is way more unstabability and little things, like the first ever suicide bombing in the WHOLE of Western Europe (2005).
He's a liar and a thief. On 9/12/2001, the whole world was knocking at the USA's door asking "do you need any help? just ask, you know we are here if you need us.". By 2005, he'd managed to turn most of the world against the USA. That's an outstanding feat.
Not only that, but according to these figures, the amount the US spends is half of their own discretionary spending budget on warfare.
Eisenhower touched on this in his leaving speach. He was concerned that WW2 had set in motion a new wave of US industry; weaponry. He believed that it had the potential to corrupt the country. He was essentially right; the arms industry is one of the most influential industries around now.
I get that point of view from reading a history book, not propaganda. Perhaps it is you that is exposed to the propaganda? Perhaps these countries have genuine reasons to fear you? The hatred/mistrust of the USA is a very grass-roots thing. Most 9-11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, which is generally considered to be a US ally.
these people honestly think you're demon worshippers who have come to rape their children (or something similar).
That's because it's essentially true. Rape, Abu-graib, the UK soldiers killing the kids last month; these things are all well documented parts of war that crop up in every large conflict. Whether it's Ruskies in Berlin in 1945 or Marines in Vietnam in the 60s/70s, the story is usually the same. Combat psychology is well known now and the reasons behind the breakdown in morality are largely understood. A facinating experiment to read up on is The Milgram Experiment, which showed that (consistently) greater than 60% of people are capable of torturing someone to death given the right situation.
And we were raping their children in Abu Graib. We did it in front of their parents as a form of torture. Those photographs (and video apparently) will likely never be released to the public as they are way too fucked up for most people to deal with.
He got the date wrong. Look it up if you want. Operation Ajax, 1953. It's not exactly a secret or anything, however they don't teach it in school and I don't think the movie is out yet. This is one of the cornerstones of why some islamists have issues with the USA.
And it wasn't a popular revolution. Popular revolutions by definition do not involve outside funding and state-sponsored terrorist campaigns.
The overthrowing of a democratically elected government in 1953 Iran was the first of MANY such operations. The US has overthrown more democracies that it has "created". It's all about the magical word..."socialist". Elect one of them and you are Fuxored.
Threatening to build nuclear weapons in 5 years isn't a normal reaction from those who are afraid of an imminent threat.
Iran is making no such threat. We are the ones talking of them building nukes in five years, not them.
So it looks like another war might be neccesary after all. You figured they'd have learned from Iraq's example, but common sense seems to be in short supply in the middle east.
another? Which previous war was also "neccesary". This I can't wait to hear...
Common sense? You clearly haven't been following the news. Numerous leaked memos and whistle-blowers have come forward to prove that the Iraq invasion was going to proceed regardless of any diplomacy. Any "diplomacy" you saw was to placate YOU and the international community. The PNAC have been planing that one since 1997. These plans involve using Iraq as a gateway to the middle east. Irans recent nuclear sabre-rattling has nothing to do with the fact that the PNAC has their sights on them. They've had their crosshairs aimed for several years, they are just looking for a justification to do it now.
Often I wonder how great nations allow bad things to happen. How populations can turn a blind eye to what is going on in their name. Your ignorance has helped me understand this problem greatly. Thank you, thank you very much.
Hardly, "discrete brown packaging" and "dial-home DRM" are mutually exclusive. Most pr0n fans prefer anonyminity. Would you want DRM Barnyard Antics showing up on your account as a daily viewing?
That itself is obscene. One creates life, the other takes it away. Which should be more culturally acceptible?
TV aside, you're wrong there. Ever heard of the phrase "jumpers for goalposts"? Perhaps not, it may be a UK-only thing. Anyhow, soccer is one of the most accessible sports out there. All you need is a ball and something to mark the goals, which is more than enough for kids to develop a lasting interest. Hell, a year or so ago some friends and I were on a country road in a minibus. The road was blocked a mile away due to an accident. We got the ball and had a kick-around in the field next to the road. Most of us were over 30 and many have kids.
On the other hand, some of us did play a little American Football when we were younger. I also played the Madden series a bit. Your football is way less accessible, there's far steeper learning curve. Watch soccer for five minutes and there isn't really much else to know. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, tactics, formations, the "flow" of the game, but it's enjoyable even on a surface layer.
They are spying on you in your own home. Your phone records are being datamined for one, and that's just a recent story. By it's very definition datamining is "without cause". How can you have just cause against a cross-referenced number in the database?
Echelon is real. It sifts through your web / email / fax and phone calls. Numerous governments have admited to it's presence. Many of the listening sites are known. Details have been leaked about it. It passed beyond the tinfoil hat realm a long time ago. It's been involved in commercial espionage, both for and against companies of allied countries. The recent talk of phone records and wiretaps makes me squirm. It's been going on for years.
Of course things are different from 1984, especially regarding technology. Mind you, according to lots of other literature from the age, we should be reading this discussion on the moon. But in many ways, 1984 was spot on:
You could go on and on, but don't listen to me, I'm not much of a writer. Others have made my point in a much better way, there's been numerous comparison articles on the subject over the years.