At the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian Japanese lives.
That's what happens when your Emperor and your military piss off America.
Not exactly. That's what happens when you kill enough of us that we take notice, and then refuse to surrender after we've firebombed your happy little asses back into the Stone Age.
Honestly, it seems up in the air as to whether the A-bombs were necessary historically speaking, and some of the estimates and data have apparently been lost to time/are still classified.
Not at all. Go read up on the fire raids the lead up to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They caused far more total destruction and loss of life than those two atom bombs did... and that still wasn't enough to force an unconditional surrender. To the Germans, who were willing to acknowledge that they'd fucking lost the war it was a no-brainer, but the Japanese were a much tougher nut to crack.
Boy, well that sure worked well with Germany post WWI.
One of the more uninformed remarks. Look, after World War I the Allies essentially bankrupted Germany with war reparations. That left Germans prime targets for the first demagogue to come along. After the Second World War, we did exactly the opposite... rather than destroying what remained of their economy we rebuilt it. The two situations are simply not comparable.
I'm not sure why parent was modded Flamebait but he's right. The soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are just as dead as those killed in WWII or any other war or"police action." Believe me, all states of war are equal when you're on the wrong end of an enemy weapon.
Nonsense. Let me put it this way: when it comes to armed conflict, SIZE DOES MATTER. Sure, you're just as dead no matter what... but World War II produced a lot more dead than Iraq and Afghanistan (and I'm not even counting what happened to the German Jewish population.) Look at the thousands upon thousands of Allied soldiers buried all across Europe, the loss of civilian lives... and then tell me that you can in any way compare that conflict to any more recent "war".
Let's hope a real nuclear war never arises. No, I don't count Hiroshima and Nagasaki... Fatman and Littleboy are toys in comparison to modern weapons.
Why is it that everyone focuses on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, completely ignoring the months of fire raids that preceeded Fatman and Littleboy? Those raids caused far more devastation than both atom bombs put together. The effects were made infinitely more dramatic because of the Japanese habit of building their homes out of what was essentially paper.
Furthermore, after having been burned to a crisp, they still wouldn't grant an unconditional surrender. The only thing left was a bloody ground assault... or The Bomb. So we nuked them. Then, after absorbing not one but two nukings, the Japanese military still wouldn't surrender! it was Hirohito himself who had to finally call a halt.
Your history is a bit... off. The GP is correct: if you don't want a war (or want to stop one) you eliminate the enemy's capacity to wage it. The truth is, World War II changed the face of war forever, and it wasn't the atom bomb that did it. It was the long-range bomber. All major conflicts leading up to the Big One were fought with little ability to affect the other side's manufacturing base. You could cut his lines of supply... but there was no way to reach out and attack his means of production. That meant that most conflicts were between military personnel and involving military targets. Civilian areas could be occupied or overrun, but were generally not blown to pieces.
The long-range bomber allowed direct attacks upon factories, transportation hubs, storage facilities and other paraphenalia of a modern industrial economy. This had the effect of involving the civilian population, who had previously remained distant from actual warfare (until a nation's defenses were overrun and an occupation began.) Germany and Japan both built their military machines using civilian workers and production facilities, who became legitimate targets once the ability to hit them was available.
You know what? We deduce the existence of peace because there are intervals between wars. Peace is an ideal, and like most ideals it is rarely, if ever, fully realized. Not for long, anyway. You're also wrong about why we never had future attacks from Japan. They'd have done it if they could... we just wouldn't let them arm themselves, made them allies, and we provided for their defense. Some allies they turned out to be, using the capabilities we gave them to successfully attack our manufacturing sector. Don't underestimate the Japanese: yes, we rebuilt their their industrial engine after the War (just as we did for Germany) but our generosity came back to haunt us.
Yeah, those bloodsuckers will happily take your premiums year after year, until you actually start to cost them money. Then they find ways to get rid of you. Now, Federal Law in the U.S. says they can't just drop you arbitrarily, but they can jack your premiums up to the point where you can no longer pay. That happened to my Dad: he paid Aetna for decades and hardly used them... then when he became seriously ill they ramped up his premiums to about $20,000 a year, so we had give them up, and of course nobody else would insure him for less. Fortunately (and I use the term loosely) he suffered total renal failure and ended up on dialysis. That's one of the few medical conditions that will automatically give you Medicare at any age (he was 62 when he died.) If you're in any kind of a similar situation, man, I feel for you.
What truly torques me into a preztel are the routine conflicts-of-interest and general corruption/collusion between insurance companies and medical suppliers. It's really obscene... and billions could be saved (along with many lives) if insurance carriers would spend a little money trying to reduce waste and outright fraud. For example, I had a girlfriend whose father had to go in for an MRI at one point. Fairly routine, except that the hospital billed their insurance for two MRIs, both listed as being on the same day at the same time. One could say, well, hell, it's not your own money at stake, but when you have a lifetime cap and are getting old... well. So her mother calls the insurance company (repeatedly) to complain about this fraudulent billing (at the time an MRI was very expensive.) She was told (repeatedly!) that "we have to go by what the hospital says."
in part because of the marinisma/machismo culture which inculcates the women and girls with a very strong sense of responsibility for care-giving in the family which transfers pretty well into doing it professionally too.
Honestly, that's not been my experience with Filipino nurses in the U.S. I spent several years caring for my father: he was in and out of a number of different hospitals. There were several institutions where the Filipino staff had essentially taken over the entire nursing operation. There were few left who were white, black, Chinese or anything else. I wouldn't have minded that so much, if they hadn't proven to be among the most uncaring, hostile, and sometimes outright incompetent nurses I'd ever encountered. The language barrier alone was almost insurmountable, and don't tell me it's because I don't speak their language.
Your mileage may, of course, vary. I'm not trying to speak for everyone, or say that all Filipino nurses are horrible. It's just what I personally experienced.
I've been tapping and tapping, and all I got for my trouble was a broken fingernail.
This is why you should leave it to the professionals. I bet you just went ahead and arrogantly acted like an expert without even buying a proper pair of tap shoes.
No, I just figured the ground would warm up when I tapped it.
No, safe harbour applies to "common carriers" they are not a common carrier once they control what can and cant be sent over the network.
{sigh} No, you're repeating a common bit of misinformation. ISPs are not common carriers, unless they want to be. They don't, because they do not want the associated regulatory burden, even though it would guarantee them immunity from any criminal acts resulting from the use of their equipment. See, the big telcos are simultaneously phone companies (which have common carrier status) and data services (which received an exemption and are not.) Granted, modern packet-switching technology has blurred the line between data and telephony, but the law hasn't caught up with the times yet.
Safe Harbor applies primarily to Web service providers, not telephony carriers. If they comply with a DMCA takedown request they are immune from prosecution. If they don't, they they may have to fight it in court. In most cases, they play it safe by simply removing the offending material, even if the takedown notice was improper. This has caused a lot of problems, because Congress really didn't think this through (or maybe they did, and deliberately created a profit center for their IP lawyer friends.)
Well, at least they're honest about seeing settlement fee as a revenue stream, unlike the **AA.
Except, they fail to explain that, after all your customers realize you've been selling them out, you'll be left with no customers to either sell your service to *or* extort settlement fees from.
Well, here's the thing. Not everybody cares about such things, because millions upon millions of broadband users just get mail and do some light browsing. They wouldn't know how to use Gnutella or Bit Torrent if their lives depended upon it.
What is going to happen, if this kind of "service" proves popular amongst ISPs, is collateral damage. Remember, all of this depends upon the ISP maintaining an accurate log of what IP address is assigned to what user account and when. Errors in logs are not uncommon, and human error is involved when responding to legal requests. Hell, a malfunction or configuration error in a router's clock/calendar can invalidate this "evidence." So, my thinking is that there's going to be some innocent people crucified here. That's already been the case in many RIAA lawsuits to date (i.e. suing people who don't have a Internet connection, don't even have a computer, or are conveniently dead) and it's already well-established that an IP address does not correlate directly to the actual person committing copyright infringement. I mean, more than one person can use a given computer, you know, and you can't tell who is using it at any given time.
This is just an example of a company trying to capitalize on the current legal climate. Unfortunately, they're offering a service that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of both the ISP and its customers. The question is, would a money-hungry Internet Service Provider (say, Comcast) be able to see that fact? Would it even care?
I'd say not. The idea of monetizing their customers by selling them out is probably irresistible. That's especially appealing if said customers don't even know what happened.
that's sounds exactly like what the RIAA wants folks to think.
So does the MPAA. Every goddamn commercial DVD has that stupid message saying "the FBI investigates criminal copyright infringement", and well they should. However, your copying a DVD and handing it to a friend does not constitute criminal copyright infringement.
Well, not yet. They are trying to criminalize it, and I suspect they'll probably succeed.
All the encryption in the world won't stop you from getting a DMCA notice. In America, you can sue anyone for any reason. All they need to sue you is an IP address. So if they join a tracker and see your IP address, they'll send your ISP a note.
Most people find it easier to just pay their extortion fee than go to court.
Well, first off a swarming protocol like Bit Torrent generally isn't the best way to get small files like MP3s and the like. For that, something like a Gnutella client is more appropriate. There's no centralized tracker there: everything is distributed. Secondly, Ray Beckerman has pointed out that all the RIAA lawsuits he's aware of are because people were sharing (i.e. distributing) music files, not downloading them.
Someone, somewhere is going to be looking at computer hard drives, CDs, DVDd, etc. If they do not find any infringing materials there is no evidence and the matter drops.
Not so, my friend. Look at the RIAA's behavior these past few years... they go after the alleged infringer's hard drive, the hard drives of anyone that the infringer might have known, etc. They've even looked at emails and private documents on said drives, then subpoenaed people they find referenced there. Lack of evidence does not stop the RIAA from ongoing legal harassment because legitimate redress of grievance is not the object.
They don't care if you actually infringed or not, and have said that in open court. Proof of actual infringement is not required, according to the RIAA. When will people stop assuming that the media companies are in any way interested in justice, in facts, in reality? Because they're not.
Slashdot Mirror
At the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian Japanese lives.
That's what happens when your Emperor and your military piss off America.
Not exactly. That's what happens when you kill enough of us that we take notice, and then refuse to surrender after we've firebombed your happy little asses back into the Stone Age.
Honestly, it seems up in the air as to whether the A-bombs were necessary historically speaking, and some of the estimates and data have apparently been lost to time/are still classified.
Not at all. Go read up on the fire raids the lead up to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They caused far more total destruction and loss of life than those two atom bombs did ... and that still wasn't enough to force an unconditional surrender. To the Germans, who were willing to acknowledge that they'd fucking lost the war it was a no-brainer, but the Japanese were a much tougher nut to crack.
Boy, well that sure worked well with Germany post WWI.
One of the more uninformed remarks. Look, after World War I the Allies essentially bankrupted Germany with war reparations. That left Germans prime targets for the first demagogue to come along. After the Second World War, we did exactly the opposite ... rather than destroying what remained of their economy we rebuilt it. The two situations are simply not comparable.
I'm not sure why parent was modded Flamebait but he's right. The soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are just as dead as those killed in WWII or any other war or"police action." Believe me, all states of war are equal when you're on the wrong end of an enemy weapon.
Nonsense. Let me put it this way: when it comes to armed conflict, SIZE DOES MATTER. Sure, you're just as dead no matter what ... but World War II produced a lot more dead than Iraq and Afghanistan (and I'm not even counting what happened to the German Jewish population.) Look at the thousands upon thousands of Allied soldiers buried all across Europe, the loss of civilian lives ... and then tell me that you can in any way compare that conflict to any more recent "war".
... Fatman and Littleboy are toys in comparison to modern weapons.
Let's hope a real nuclear war never arises. No, I don't count Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Why is it that everyone focuses on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, completely ignoring the months of fire raids that preceeded Fatman and Littleboy? Those raids caused far more devastation than both atom bombs put together. The effects were made infinitely more dramatic because of the Japanese habit of building their homes out of what was essentially paper.
... or The Bomb. So we nuked them. Then, after absorbing not one but two nukings, the Japanese military still wouldn't surrender! it was Hirohito himself who had to finally call a halt.
... off. The GP is correct: if you don't want a war (or want to stop one) you eliminate the enemy's capacity to wage it. The truth is, World War II changed the face of war forever, and it wasn't the atom bomb that did it. It was the long-range bomber. All major conflicts leading up to the Big One were fought with little ability to affect the other side's manufacturing base. You could cut his lines of supply ... but there was no way to reach out and attack his means of production. That meant that most conflicts were between military personnel and involving military targets. Civilian areas could be occupied or overrun, but were generally not blown to pieces.
... we just wouldn't let them arm themselves, made them allies, and we provided for their defense. Some allies they turned out to be, using the capabilities we gave them to successfully attack our manufacturing sector. Don't underestimate the Japanese: yes, we rebuilt their their industrial engine after the War (just as we did for Germany) but our generosity came back to haunt us.
Furthermore, after having been burned to a crisp, they still wouldn't grant an unconditional surrender. The only thing left was a bloody ground assault
Your history is a bit
The long-range bomber allowed direct attacks upon factories, transportation hubs, storage facilities and other paraphenalia of a modern industrial economy. This had the effect of involving the civilian population, who had previously remained distant from actual warfare (until a nation's defenses were overrun and an occupation began.) Germany and Japan both built their military machines using civilian workers and production facilities, who became legitimate targets once the ability to hit them was available.
You know what? We deduce the existence of peace because there are intervals between wars. Peace is an ideal, and like most ideals it is rarely, if ever, fully realized. Not for long, anyway. You're also wrong about why we never had future attacks from Japan. They'd have done it if they could
You think Obama is going to bring about change?
Ha. The way things are going, I'll be happy if he leaves me some. Change, that is.
Oh come on, that's just juvenile.
Oh, come on ... this is SLASHDOT! 99% of what you read here is juvenile to one degree or another. The other 1% is what keeps you coming back.
I welcome another 1-4% of the world to my hell.
Yeah, those bloodsuckers will happily take your premiums year after year, until you actually start to cost them money. Then they find ways to get rid of you. Now, Federal Law in the U.S. says they can't just drop you arbitrarily, but they can jack your premiums up to the point where you can no longer pay. That happened to my Dad: he paid Aetna for decades and hardly used them ... then when he became seriously ill they ramped up his premiums to about $20,000 a year, so we had give them up, and of course nobody else would insure him for less. Fortunately (and I use the term loosely) he suffered total renal failure and ended up on dialysis. That's one of the few medical conditions that will automatically give you Medicare at any age (he was 62 when he died.) If you're in any kind of a similar situation, man, I feel for you.
... and billions could be saved (along with many lives) if insurance carriers would spend a little money trying to reduce waste and outright fraud. For example, I had a girlfriend whose father had to go in for an MRI at one point. Fairly routine, except that the hospital billed their insurance for two MRIs, both listed as being on the same day at the same time. One could say, well, hell, it's not your own money at stake, but when you have a lifetime cap and are getting old ... well. So her mother calls the insurance company (repeatedly) to complain about this fraudulent billing (at the time an MRI was very expensive.) She was told (repeatedly!) that "we have to go by what the hospital says."
What truly torques me into a preztel are the routine conflicts-of-interest and general corruption/collusion between insurance companies and medical suppliers. It's really obscene
Unbe-fucking-leivable.
in part because of the marinisma/machismo culture which inculcates the women and girls with a very strong sense of responsibility for care-giving in the family which transfers pretty well into doing it professionally too.
Honestly, that's not been my experience with Filipino nurses in the U.S. I spent several years caring for my father: he was in and out of a number of different hospitals. There were several institutions where the Filipino staff had essentially taken over the entire nursing operation. There were few left who were white, black, Chinese or anything else. I wouldn't have minded that so much, if they hadn't proven to be among the most uncaring, hostile, and sometimes outright incompetent nurses I'd ever encountered. The language barrier alone was almost insurmountable, and don't tell me it's because I don't speak their language.
Your mileage may, of course, vary. I'm not trying to speak for everyone, or say that all Filipino nurses are horrible. It's just what I personally experienced.
Except you're more likely to be eaten by a politician than a grue.
True ... but upon further reflection, I think I'd prefer the grue.
yep. that's why I like MICROS~1 spelling better.
Better yet, MICRO$-1.
This is why you should leave it to the professionals. I bet you just went ahead and arrogantly acted like an expert without even buying a proper pair of tap shoes.
No, I just figured the ground would warm up when I tapped it.
...in Utah uses GSHP for almost every school. It saves them a grundel, but takes years to pay off.
What is a grundel, and why would you want to save it?
Tapping the Earth For Home Heating and Cooling
I've been tapping and tapping, and all I got for my trouble was a broken fingernail.
...I would also point out that Bush's Crawford Ranch [snopes.com] uses a geothermal heat pump.
Ah yes ... but does Al Gore's?
this sounds like either a protection racket or entrapment, or both.
Protection racket, sure, but entrapment only applies to law enforcement.
No, safe harbour applies to "common carriers" they are not a common carrier once they control what can and cant be sent over the network.
{sigh} No, you're repeating a common bit of misinformation. ISPs are not common carriers, unless they want to be. They don't, because they do not want the associated regulatory burden, even though it would guarantee them immunity from any criminal acts resulting from the use of their equipment. See, the big telcos are simultaneously phone companies (which have common carrier status) and data services (which received an exemption and are not.) Granted, modern packet-switching technology has blurred the line between data and telephony, but the law hasn't caught up with the times yet.
Safe Harbor applies primarily to Web service providers, not telephony carriers. If they comply with a DMCA takedown request they are immune from prosecution. If they don't, they they may have to fight it in court. In most cases, they play it safe by simply removing the offending material, even if the takedown notice was improper. This has caused a lot of problems, because Congress really didn't think this through (or maybe they did, and deliberately created a profit center for their IP lawyer friends.)
Well, at least they're honest about seeing settlement fee as a revenue stream, unlike the **AA. Except, they fail to explain that, after all your customers realize you've been selling them out, you'll be left with no customers to either sell your service to *or* extort settlement fees from.
Well, here's the thing. Not everybody cares about such things, because millions upon millions of broadband users just get mail and do some light browsing. They wouldn't know how to use Gnutella or Bit Torrent if their lives depended upon it.
What is going to happen, if this kind of "service" proves popular amongst ISPs, is collateral damage. Remember, all of this depends upon the ISP maintaining an accurate log of what IP address is assigned to what user account and when. Errors in logs are not uncommon, and human error is involved when responding to legal requests. Hell, a malfunction or configuration error in a router's clock/calendar can invalidate this "evidence." So, my thinking is that there's going to be some innocent people crucified here. That's already been the case in many RIAA lawsuits to date (i.e. suing people who don't have a Internet connection, don't even have a computer, or are conveniently dead) and it's already well-established that an IP address does not correlate directly to the actual person committing copyright infringement. I mean, more than one person can use a given computer, you know, and you can't tell who is using it at any given time.
This is just an example of a company trying to capitalize on the current legal climate. Unfortunately, they're offering a service that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of both the ISP and its customers. The question is, would a money-hungry Internet Service Provider (say, Comcast) be able to see that fact? Would it even care?
I'd say not. The idea of monetizing their customers by selling them out is probably irresistible. That's especially appealing if said customers don't even know what happened.
that's sounds exactly like what the RIAA wants folks to think.
So does the MPAA. Every goddamn commercial DVD has that stupid message saying "the FBI investigates criminal copyright infringement", and well they should. However, your copying a DVD and handing it to a friend does not constitute criminal copyright infringement.
Well, not yet. They are trying to criminalize it, and I suspect they'll probably succeed.
All the encryption in the world won't stop you from getting a DMCA notice. In America, you can sue anyone for any reason. All they need to sue you is an IP address. So if they join a tracker and see your IP address, they'll send your ISP a note.
Most people find it easier to just pay their extortion fee than go to court.
Well, first off a swarming protocol like Bit Torrent generally isn't the best way to get small files like MP3s and the like. For that, something like a Gnutella client is more appropriate. There's no centralized tracker there: everything is distributed. Secondly, Ray Beckerman has pointed out that all the RIAA lawsuits he's aware of are because people were sharing (i.e. distributing) music files, not downloading them.
Someone, somewhere is going to be looking at computer hard drives, CDs, DVDd, etc. If they do not find any infringing materials there is no evidence and the matter drops.
Not so, my friend. Look at the RIAA's behavior these past few years ... they go after the alleged infringer's hard drive, the hard drives of anyone that the infringer might have known, etc. They've even looked at emails and private documents on said drives, then subpoenaed people they find referenced there. Lack of evidence does not stop the RIAA from ongoing legal harassment because legitimate redress of grievance is not the object.
They don't care if you actually infringed or not, and have said that in open court. Proof of actual infringement is not required, according to the RIAA. When will people stop assuming that the media companies are in any way interested in justice, in facts, in reality? Because they're not.
LoL, you are talking about how they used a Monster cable and checked performance/clarity and then used a hanger and got the same result? :)
Not just Monster. Check out this $499 wonder from Denon
I hear the Nostromo has a really nasty bug.
Yeah, I hear it was written by some Mexican dude that doesn't have a green card yet.
Yep Microsoft must be kicking themselves now ;-)
(Sorry couldn't resist :-) )
Nah ... everybody knows Microsoft sucks. No amount of astroturfing will ever change that.
There's an irony that illegal business is the most honest kind.
It's not illegal where they come from. It's just illegal here ... but that's not their fault.