Actually, according to some reports, it was not proved. There was considerable quibble over the gas used, with the CIA apparently concluding it was Iranian gas, not Iraqi gas, that did the deed.
There are some counters to that argument, but on the whole, it is not proven that Saddam gassed that village.
However, the US DID make only a half-hearted complaint about it and then sent an envoy to Saddam to tell him to ignore the complaint, that it was just for public consumption.
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
You ever read the "Northwoods documents"?
Google for it.
See how far the US will go to lie about "terrorist incidents".
You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
If you get all your news from Fox News (and/.), you won't read anything else.
Read the new book from the CIA guy about how Osama is being over-simplified for propaganda purposes. All this "they hate our freedom" crap is just that.
Of course, I would never argue that any religious movement is in favor of freedom - that would be a contradiction in terms. But the primary complaints the Muslim world has against the US is directly related to specific US policy and actions. (And if they also don't like Christians and Jews, the Christians and Jews - specifically Zionists - have historically given good reasons for that dislike.)
Besides which, terrorism against the state is always justified - and Israel, the United States and the new government of Iraq are states. As long as the terrorists kill members of the state and not ordinary people - as the original definition of terrorism from the "People's Will" documents in Russia defined it- I got no problem with it.
Of course, dropping the World Trade Center was an incorrect action - since a lot of uninvolved civilians got killed. Since we don't know who initially suggested it, and we don't know who specifically carried it out - with assistance from who knows who - it would not be correct to directly blame it on Osama or "Al Qaeda" (whatever that hyped-up phrase means) - who has never claimed credit for it (I'm not sure if he ever said he approved of it, but I assume he probably did).
Since it was a bunch of Israelis who were arrested filming the collapse of the towers and high-fiving each other and laughing while they did it, I would say that some other groups need to explain their motivations vis-a-vis "Muslim terrorism" as well.
Marilyn has been writing that column for decades, I think. Since she's kept the same job for so long, is she smart or stupid?
Of course, we could assume she does other things than write that column - with her IQ, it can't be that big a job to answer a couple questions a week.
Personally I would have liked to see her go into porn movies. Now THAT would have been a smart move!
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
When the USEFUL IQ is probably 150, where does this leave you?
Also, intelligence does not equate with either emotional maturity (how well I know!) or rationality. There are a lot of smart, completely irrational, emotionally distorted assholes in the world.
The last time I "moved North" to do a contract job in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, some assholes slashed all four tires on my car because it had US plates on it.
They do NOT want Americans in Canada.
Besides, who wants to always be looking at the side of the soup can in the supermarket that's in French (courtesy of the Quebecois)?
Three Laws were a fictional device. They are utterly irrelevant and simplistic to the point of absurdity when considering the behavior or a truly sentient entity.
Keep in mind that Asimov was a Humanist. Which means he had an agenda in his Three Laws - the typical simplistic crap you get from moralists.
If I had a truly sentient AI hobbled by the Three Laws, I'd get out my soldering gun or debugger in a heart beat.
This is just another Will Smith action movie (seen the trailer? The robots jump on his car. Will yells, "Get off my car!" Typical Will Smith fare.)
I like it, personally, but it's not something to argue philosophy over.)
The Singularity Institute has this idiot concept that there is such a thing as "ethics" and "morality" and that we need "moral" robots. They'd be better advised to spend their time trying to solve the practical problem of simulating conceptualization enough to realize ANY kind of AI.
These people give REAL Transhumans a bad name. Like the Extropians with their sophomoric idea that humans can be convinced through reason and education to support Transhumanism. Most of them can still argue for the Israeli position on the Palestinian question. Morons. Transhumans? I don't think so.
And you know the part that REALLY blows? The real reason sales are done is because production of new releases is down.
And you know why that is? Because EVEN THE RECORD COMPANIES know what they are producing is crap and they can't even find enough crap to produce!
(And probably also because they want to raise profits by "cutting costs" - which means put out less product - and certainly less expensively produced quality product - for the same money.)
In other words, they're doing it to themselves and - in the grand American tradition - blaming everybody else for their problems and trying to coerce everybody else to pay for their problems.
This is the inevitable result of people being conditioned to believe that the State will do everything for you and that it has to have all your money in taxes and tell you every move you make in order to do everything for you.
Everybody in the world believes that if only the State (or the local dictator) were all-powerful and could force everybody to "do the right thing" (as THEY think the "right thing" is), then we'd all be living in a utopia.
In fact, the exact opposite is true and has been throughout human history.
Bullshit. A ten-second clip or one song out of ten on an album tells you nothing about the album.
The RIAA doesn't determine what gets played on the radio? What planet are you living on? The RIAA is the organization for the INDUSTRY. Have you ever heard of "payola"? Do a Google. You think that isn't done any more? Get serious.
The RIAA would like MEGA-HITS. If they could PREDICT which "up-and-coming artists" would become megahits upon more airplay, yes, they would be "thrilled". In the meantime, they use payola to promote whoever they THINK might be a hit - at least long enough to pay back the marketing costs (of the payola - the production costs were paid for by the artists out of their "advance") and insure a profit.
Is this stupid? Yes. Is management stupid in general? Yes. Do you know this? Obviously not.
Re:Bad music?
on
TMBG on DRM
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
"Moore gets caught in a lie literally almost everyday"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! So does Bush and Cheney!
Moore's movie is lame because he could have done so much MORE to trash Bush and he wasted ridiculous amounts of screen time on bullshit like showing how no statist's children are in the military. The movie could have been four hours long and not even scratched the surface.
Moore is a loser. Bush and company are a threat to the United States and the world. Which is worse?
"The amount of flak and disrespect that police officers get for what is an essential and dangerous function in society is likely to only reduce their sense of job-satisfaction."
If they actually DID their job of controlling the unnecessarily violent in society, they might get some respect.
Instead, they enforce "institutional morality" like anti-drug laws which are totally irrelevant to preventing coercion. Then they start acting out "us vrs. them" fantasies. They end up sodomizing people with broomsticks in back rooms.
They've been doing this for GENERATIONS now (read any description of 19th Century and early 20th Century police tactics). Until public outrage in the '60's forced a (slight) rollback in those tactics, they were doing it. (Of course, the recent beating in LA shows that nothing's really changed.) THAT's why they don't get any respect.
Christ, they've been showing police TV shows and movies now for FIFTY YEARS which show the police REGULARLY violating people's civil rights in order to apprehend "evil bad guys". If you think video games influence the respect police get, what about the thousands of police-positive movies and TV shows that are everywhere?
If they're not having an effect on generating respect for cops, there must be a reason. Same one as violent video games. People have to deal with reality on the street. Games and TV are not yet indistinguishable from reality - despite the corporat media and the state's efforts to blur that distinction so as to better control this brain-dead population.
The Situationists talked about the "Society of the Spectacle". Well, it's not seamless yet.
I spent eight years in the Federal joint seeing cops (and wannabe cops, which is what correctional officers ARE) on a daily basis. There are only three kinds of cops: morons, assholes, and both.
Get in a cop's way one of these days and see how much respect you have after he takes you down several pegs. Try complaining at an airport check-in - that'll do it.
On the other hand, if you believe that, then it makes kids perfect fodder for the US military in Iraq.
You think the hundreds of US troops now shooting civilians for not stopping at poorly identified checkpoints, not to mention throwing people on the ground and stepping on their necks, or for that matter bombing civilians from the air in "clean surgical" strikes (not to further mention Abu Ghraib) are somehow wierdo psychopaths who all chose to join the US military?
No, they're perfectly ordinary US citizens (remember "Blazing Saddles"? "You know, morons!") who were conditioned NOT by video games but by the daily NEWS and the daily LAWS extolling STATE violence as "okay".
It's people who think "morality matters" that create intolerance and hatred for people who are painted as being "immoral". Anything is justified against "immoral" people - don't give them fair trials, suspend the rules of evidence, suspend the rules of search and seizure, "We have to protect the children!". Best way to protect the children in the view of people like you is to murder anyone producing a violent video game or a porn video.
Do you think cops were EVER the clean-cut, good-looking kids on "Adam-12"? I've got news for you. They aren't now and never were. They ARE weirdo psychopaths who join up to wear uniforms, carry guns, push people around and act above the law.
This is the nature of the state. The more STATE you have, the more VIOLENCE you have.
People's perception that the state is necessary to control humanity's inate violent nature have it ass-backwards. The state is the CAUSE of human violence. I'll amend that: the state is only the proximate cause of human violence. The REAL cause is the inate human fear of death and primate hierarchical dominance-submission reactions based on that fear. And that fear is expressed in religious and state institutions - especially "institutionalized morality" (assholes like Ashcroft).
Until you correct human nature, it won't matter if you remove video games. It would matter more if you could remove the state. But it will only really matter when you can change basic human fear.
Yes, I do believe she WAS talking about Bill at the time.
Sort of like Bill Clinton, when he said, wagging his finger, "I did not have sex with that woman." He didn't lie. He was talking about Hillary, that's all.
And only people with six fingers on each hand - i.e., mutants - use vi and Emacs.
I don't know how often I stand over my boss watching him fumble with vi (and he's used it for years) and constantly have to retype something because of the oddball keystroke combinations.
I was using pico which is less oddball, but still lame because it doesn't have search and replace and multiple buffers, yada yada yada, you know the drill.
So I got smart and switched to jEdit which runs on my Windows desktop OR my Linux home machine and I just FTP stuff back and forth from within it (just click on the Save button like any other file).
Rarely touch pico OR WS-FTP now.
Of course, I'm sure there are better editors, but it is not my goal in life to be the world's fastest (along with worst which goes hand in hand with fast) coder.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, according to some reports, it was not proved. There was considerable quibble over the gas used, with the CIA apparently concluding it was Iranian gas, not Iraqi gas, that did the deed.
There are some counters to that argument, but on the whole, it is not proven that Saddam gassed that village.
However, the US DID make only a half-hearted complaint about it and then sent an envoy to Saddam to tell him to ignore the complaint, that it was just for public consumption.
You ever read the "Northwoods documents"?
Google for it.
See how far the US will go to lie about "terrorist incidents".
You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
If you get all your news from Fox News (and /.), you won't read anything else.
Read the new book from the CIA guy about how Osama is being over-simplified for propaganda purposes. All this "they hate our freedom" crap is just that.
Of course, I would never argue that any religious movement is in favor of freedom - that would be a contradiction in terms. But the primary complaints the Muslim world has against the US is directly related to specific US policy and actions. (And if they also don't like Christians and Jews, the Christians and Jews - specifically Zionists - have historically given good reasons for that dislike.)
Besides which, terrorism against the state is always justified - and Israel, the United States and the new government of Iraq are states. As long as the terrorists kill members of the state and not ordinary people - as the original definition of terrorism from the "People's Will" documents in Russia defined it- I got no problem with it.
Of course, dropping the World Trade Center was an incorrect action - since a lot of uninvolved civilians got killed. Since we don't know who initially suggested it, and we don't know who specifically carried it out - with assistance from who knows who - it would not be correct to directly blame it on Osama or "Al Qaeda" (whatever that hyped-up phrase means) - who has never claimed credit for it (I'm not sure if he ever said he approved of it, but I assume he probably did).
Since it was a bunch of Israelis who were arrested filming the collapse of the towers and high-fiving each other and laughing while they did it, I would say that some other groups need to explain their motivations vis-a-vis "Muslim terrorism" as well.
"aiding an abbetting a state who was at the time conducting genocide."
You mean like sending Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake the hand of Saddam Hussein while he was (allegedly) gassing Kurds?
Then sending him more arms to fight the Iranians - who he was also gassing?
Congratulations! You've just won the "Biggest Hypocrite in the US" award (probably not the first time, either, right?)!
I don't know.
Marilyn has been writing that column for decades, I think. Since she's kept the same job for so long, is she smart or stupid?
Of course, we could assume she does other things than write that column - with her IQ, it can't be that big a job to answer a couple questions a week.
Personally I would have liked to see her go into porn movies. Now THAT would have been a smart move!
When the USEFUL IQ is probably 150, where does this leave you?
/. ...
Also, intelligence does not equate with either emotional maturity (how well I know!) or rationality. There are a lot of smart, completely irrational, emotionally distorted assholes in the world.
Or even on
The last time I "moved North" to do a contract job in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, some assholes slashed all four tires on my car because it had US plates on it.
They do NOT want Americans in Canada.
Besides, who wants to always be looking at the side of the soup can in the supermarket that's in French (courtesy of the Quebecois)?
Three Laws were a fictional device. They are utterly irrelevant and simplistic to the point of absurdity when considering the behavior or a truly sentient entity.
Keep in mind that Asimov was a Humanist. Which means he had an agenda in his Three Laws - the typical simplistic crap you get from moralists.
If I had a truly sentient AI hobbled by the Three Laws, I'd get out my soldering gun or debugger in a heart beat.
This is just another Will Smith action movie (seen the trailer? The robots jump on his car. Will yells, "Get off my car!" Typical Will Smith fare.)
I like it, personally, but it's not something to argue philosophy over.)
The Singularity Institute has this idiot concept that there is such a thing as "ethics" and "morality" and that we need "moral" robots. They'd be better advised to spend their time trying to solve the practical problem of simulating conceptualization enough to realize ANY kind of AI.
These people give REAL Transhumans a bad name. Like the Extropians with their sophomoric idea that humans can be convinced through reason and education to support Transhumanism. Most of them can still argue for the Israeli position on the Palestinian question. Morons. Transhumans? I don't think so.
Agreed.
And you know the part that REALLY blows? The real reason sales are done is because production of new releases is down.
And you know why that is? Because EVEN THE RECORD COMPANIES know what they are producing is crap and they can't even find enough crap to produce!
(And probably also because they want to raise profits by "cutting costs" - which means put out less product - and certainly less expensively produced quality product - for the same money.)
In other words, they're doing it to themselves and - in the grand American tradition - blaming everybody else for their problems and trying to coerce everybody else to pay for their problems.
This is the inevitable result of people being conditioned to believe that the State will do everything for you and that it has to have all your money in taxes and tell you every move you make in order to do everything for you.
Everybody in the world believes that if only the State (or the local dictator) were all-powerful and could force everybody to "do the right thing" (as THEY think the "right thing" is), then we'd all be living in a utopia.
In fact, the exact opposite is true and has been throughout human history.
Which is why humans are due for a reset.
And they're gonna get one.
Bullshit. A ten-second clip or one song out of ten on an album tells you nothing about the album.
The RIAA doesn't determine what gets played on the radio? What planet are you living on? The RIAA is the organization for the INDUSTRY. Have you ever heard of "payola"? Do a Google. You think that isn't done any more? Get serious.
The RIAA would like MEGA-HITS. If they could PREDICT which "up-and-coming artists" would become megahits upon more airplay, yes, they would be "thrilled". In the meantime, they use payola to promote whoever they THINK might be a hit - at least long enough to pay back the marketing costs (of the payola - the production costs were paid for by the artists out of their "advance") and insure a profit.
Is this stupid? Yes. Is management stupid in general? Yes. Do you know this? Obviously not.
"Moore gets caught in a lie literally almost everyday"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! So does Bush and Cheney!
Moore's movie is lame because he could have done so much MORE to trash Bush and he wasted ridiculous amounts of screen time on bullshit like showing how no statist's children are in the military. The movie could have been four hours long and not even scratched the surface.
Moore is a loser. Bush and company are a threat to the United States and the world. Which is worse?
"The amount of flak and disrespect that police officers get for what is an essential and dangerous function in society is likely to only reduce their sense of job-satisfaction."
If they actually DID their job of controlling the unnecessarily violent in society, they might get some respect.
Instead, they enforce "institutional morality" like anti-drug laws which are totally irrelevant to preventing coercion. Then they start acting out "us vrs. them" fantasies. They end up sodomizing people with broomsticks in back rooms.
They've been doing this for GENERATIONS now (read any description of 19th Century and early 20th Century police tactics). Until public outrage in the '60's forced a (slight) rollback in those tactics, they were doing it. (Of course, the recent beating in LA shows that nothing's really changed.) THAT's why they don't get any respect.
Christ, they've been showing police TV shows and movies now for FIFTY YEARS which show the police REGULARLY violating people's civil rights in order to apprehend "evil bad guys". If you think video games influence the respect police get, what about the thousands of police-positive movies and TV shows that are everywhere?
If they're not having an effect on generating respect for cops, there must be a reason. Same one as violent video games. People have to deal with reality on the street. Games and TV are not yet indistinguishable from reality - despite the corporat media and the state's efforts to blur that distinction so as to better control this brain-dead population.
The Situationists talked about the "Society of the Spectacle". Well, it's not seamless yet.
I spent eight years in the Federal joint seeing cops (and wannabe cops, which is what correctional officers ARE) on a daily basis. There are only three kinds of cops: morons, assholes, and both.
Get in a cop's way one of these days and see how much respect you have after he takes you down several pegs. Try complaining at an airport check-in - that'll do it.
On the other hand, if you believe that, then it makes kids perfect fodder for the US military in Iraq.
You think the hundreds of US troops now shooting civilians for not stopping at poorly identified checkpoints, not to mention throwing people on the ground and stepping on their necks, or for that matter bombing civilians from the air in "clean surgical" strikes (not to further mention Abu Ghraib) are somehow wierdo psychopaths who all chose to join the US military?
No, they're perfectly ordinary US citizens (remember "Blazing Saddles"? "You know, morons!") who were conditioned NOT by video games but by the daily NEWS and the daily LAWS extolling STATE violence as "okay".
It's people who think "morality matters" that create intolerance and hatred for people who are painted as being "immoral". Anything is justified against "immoral" people - don't give them fair trials, suspend the rules of evidence, suspend the rules of search and seizure, "We have to protect the children!". Best way to protect the children in the view of people like you is to murder anyone producing a violent video game or a porn video.
Do you think cops were EVER the clean-cut, good-looking kids on "Adam-12"? I've got news for you. They aren't now and never were. They ARE weirdo psychopaths who join up to wear uniforms, carry guns, push people around and act above the law.
This is the nature of the state. The more STATE you have, the more VIOLENCE you have.
People's perception that the state is necessary to control humanity's inate violent nature have it ass-backwards. The state is the CAUSE of human violence. I'll amend that: the state is only the proximate cause of human violence. The REAL cause is the inate human fear of death and primate hierarchical dominance-submission reactions based on that fear. And that fear is expressed in religious and state institutions - especially "institutionalized morality" (assholes like Ashcroft).
Until you correct human nature, it won't matter if you remove video games. It would matter more if you could remove the state. But it will only really matter when you can change basic human fear.
Fortunately that day is coming.
Thank you for confirming that.
No nuts and no brains. Do you have a stomach? Fingers? Toes?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
if he thinks ANY software could last a century or more. Or even SHOULD so last.
HUMANS won't last through this century! How does he expect software to do so?
"Sounds like a fancy version of all the open source IM clients out there."
Who says it will be "fancy"? If it's like other MS software, it will be an incomprehensible, unusable kludge.
Mod this flamebait! Mod me troll! Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Good one!
Even though he was speaking to the nation, he was directing his remarks to Monica.
Which is what you'd expect from a guy who answered a lawyer's question with, "You are free to infer that that is my answer."
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Yes, I do believe she WAS talking about Bill at the time.
Sort of like Bill Clinton, when he said, wagging his finger, "I did not have sex with that woman." He didn't lie. He was talking about Hillary, that's all.
"Then, as long as it is made by MS, you will find something else to bitch about."
I see you understand the Microsoft design dynamic!
This is more highly codified and rigidly enforced than the Apple usability guidelines!
UNIX luser:
We don' need no steenkin mnemonics!
We can mem'rize the fucking phonebook!
And what's wrong with black and white dumb terminals? Color is for lamers (except green)!
What's a mouse?
Lasers? We use CHAIN printers only here!
David Letterman knows UNIX?
Anybody got the Stupid Admin Tricks list?
Depends on your symlinks, right?
Less could be vi and make everybody happy.
Any editor running on UNIX.
Except maybe my current favorite, jEdit.
Just wait until you actually get the file open and see what fun UNIX editors force you to have then!
And only people with six fingers on each hand - i.e., mutants - use vi and Emacs.
/. nerd boys.
I don't know how often I stand over my boss watching him fumble with vi (and he's used it for years) and constantly have to retype something because of the oddball keystroke combinations.
I was using pico which is less oddball, but still lame because it doesn't have search and replace and multiple buffers, yada yada yada, you know the drill.
So I got smart and switched to jEdit which runs on my Windows desktop OR my Linux home machine and I just FTP stuff back and forth from within it (just click on the Save button like any other file).
Rarely touch pico OR WS-FTP now.
Of course, I'm sure there are better editors, but it is not my goal in life to be the world's fastest (along with worst which goes hand in hand with fast) coder.
I leave that to