If Schumi had an actual driver as a team mate then he might not be able to dominate the sport, which neither he, nor Ferrari, nor most of the nations of Italy and Germany want to see. It is widely rumoured/reported that Schumacher's contract used to actually stipulate that the second driver not compete with him. He's not going to 'put his foot down' any time soon. Plus, if he cared what others thought of him he wouldn (a) have crashed into Hill in a championship decider, (b) have crashed into Villeneuve in a championship decider, or (c) be upholding the EU mandated standards for stereotypical teutonic arrogance.
Of course, almost all other F1 fans would love to see Villeneuve or Montoya or Button driving the other Ferrari... it would almost bring back the glory days of two brilliant maniacs driving each other off the road week after week, a la Mansell, Prost, Senna and co.
Some sports do this to great effect. Here in Australia we play our own version of football and each team is strictly limited in how much money can be spent on player salaries each year. This means teams can either have lots of reasonably good players, some great players and some bad players, or lots of great players if they are prepared to get paid a bit less (which they are, in many cases). It is very effective in evening out the sport, though - while there are some perennial power teams and strugglers, most teams can turn their fortunes around in a few seasons. We also have a preferential draft system that gives priority to the teams that come last - not the American way, for sure, but effective nonetheless.
Regarding F1, I think there should be a hard limit on spending, not on drivers but on technology. It would still be a technology competition - but part of the restriction would be 'who can build the best car for 100 million a year?'
Even though, as Toyota is ably demonstrating, money does not guarantee success, a lack of money certainly guarantees failure. Look at Jordan - a few years ago they were in a position of potentially winning races and getting on the podium regularly, and now they are pathetically trailing behind as the big teams engage in a technological arms race. As many people have opined this past two years, it's not that the Williams is getting worse, it's more that the Ferrari is that much better than it was. You only need to look at the laptimes year by year to see that - for example, last race the records were blown away despite the FIA's numerous speed-reduction rules. Sauber is another good example. They basically drive a cut down, out of date Ferrari - and they get whipped by the current Ferrari.
I can't believe anyone thinks it's right to spend hundreds of dollars on this kind of crap when there are billions of people around the world living in poverty. This idiot should take his next pay packet and sponsor a child in Africa or something.
IE does lots of annoying as hell things with tables and images that are quite simply WRONG and really, really frustrating.
Case in point - the other day I'm putting together a page with high graphical content using tables with heights and widths specified in pixels and no text content whatsoever. Mozilla (and Opera) renders this page fine; IE decides to insert a 2 pixel space under an image that (a) resizes the parent table by 2 pixels and (b) cannot be removed using standard HTML. After tearing my hair out I eventually found a way to use CSS to force the accursed MS Hellbeast to render my table correctly - but I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO. My HTML was fine; IE was not.
This is just a small example, but this kind of thing happens all the frickin time. Search for '"internet explorer" +html problem' if you really want to know the truth, and come back when you have a clue.
Excellent points about IE being its own standard. What's more, it is highly questionable what incentive Microsoft has to fix these problems - after all, most medium-to-large sized businesses are going to design sites that work with IE as a minimum, and Netscape/Mozilla/W3C as an afterthought if we're lucky.
Therefore I feel some responsibility must move to web designers. If designers do backflips to ensure IE compatibility then they simply allow MS to get away with it. In some cases it would be better to allow minor visual glitches and include a recommendation that the site be viewed with a 'W3C compliant browser such as Mozilla'. The same response could be sent to anyone who complains.
If I were a large, non-MS software/IT company, I would be pushing for the upholding of the standards very hard. If ISO can get huge companies to spend billions getting certified, surely the IT industry can spend some cash to uphold a very basic set of standards for HTML.
They don't make the laws, they just use them in their client's interests.
Blame the politicians, who write the laws. Most of all, BLAME YOURSELF for letting the politicians write the laws without fear of retribution from you, the voter. Australians should stop whining about how other people are responsible for the ills in their country, get of their backsides and DO something about it. Politicians are affected by the public, believe it or not. If enough backbench Coalition MPs get enough letters and complaints from their constituents, they will start piling the pressure on Howard to back out of the deal while he still can. Look at the amount of noise the sugar farmers managed to make - other Australians could make just as much of a fuss about other parts of the deal.
Yes, IAAL, an Australian one too. I will not benefit from all of Australia's IP being hauled off in a big boat to the US any more than you will.
Trust me, if it's anything like the Australian offer YOU DON'T WANT IT.
Unless you want to be sued over the name 'Maple Syrup' until you acknowledge (a) that it is the eternal copyright of Disney-Time-Warner-General-Motors-Northrop Manufacturing Concern Inc. New York and (b) that the Canadian syrup will be marked 'Imitation UnAmerican Syrup Substitute.'
We are currently having to ridiculous disputes with the US over brand names. One is over the name 'Dockers', which is a football team here named after dock workers (the team is based in a port city). They have been sued by the US clothing company Dockers for selling football tops under the name 'Dockers,' because Dockers USA holds the trademark for clothing of that name.
The second is over the name 'ugg boots', which has been the traditional name for sheepskin boots in Australia since time immemorial, and has now been trademarked by some American jerk company who is tring to prohibit us from using it.
It all reminds me of the crazy Italians, who are trying to go around the world banning people from using the name 'Italian Food' or 'Italian Restaurant' unless they certify the business in question is acceptably Italian according to their standards of Italian-ness. At some point there should be boundaries between countries that still count for something...
Are you kidding? I bet 'Big Brother' counts as 500 hours a week of 'Australian made programming' for Channel 10. I would much rather see re-runs of Seinfeld and Futurama than that crap!
In one sense (and I can't believe I'm saying this, because I'm actually anti the FTA) it could be good for locally made TV. It would force a (somewhat) higher standard than the crap we get at the moment.
I mean, seriously, how many good Australian comedies are there? Australian thriller/drama type shows? Basically we can do kids programming and that's about it.
"An examination of some of the shortcomings of a trade agreement between the U.S. and Australia does not effect most people directly."
Of course it does, and the IP law parts of it certainly affect them a hell of a lot more than the provisions about sugar, for example, which have had the bulk of the coverage in the media including incessant front pages for several weeks a few months ago.
The problem is people are too lazy to try to understand the finer details, even when they are very important details. On top of which, there is only a very weak consumer advocacy movement in Australia, there is no Nader-type crusader to draw attention to such issues, and only a few interest groups (Electronic Frontiers Australia being one, but they never seem to get any media play).
People with your attitude are actually the problem. We are going to trade away our own laws, developed over hundreds of years through the British common law and then locally since federation, in exchange for the lowering of a few tariffs on manufactured goods, and you think its 'boring' to have to think about it.
We do actually allow copying for backup purposes, that is, to protect the original.
On the other hand, our courts have been very reluctant to build any kind of doctrine around IP law at all. Unlike other areas of Australian law where the High Court has struggled for decades to give us the rights that our constitution does not, they have been basically silent on this issue.
Bender: "Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two." Fry [comforting]: "It was just a dream, Bender. There's no such thing as two."
Who would've thought they could make a show with lots of binary jokes in it and still make it the funniest thing on TV?
One of my favourite scenes is the hippie universe:
Freakworth: "Dig it! All of you fitting in this box is like, seriously freaked up." Farnsworth: "Nonsense! Why, there's a whole universe in there." Freakworth: "Dude. There's a universe in all of us." Freak Amy: "Right on, professor Freakworth." [Professor Freakworth proffers a flower to Professor Farnsworth] Farnsworth: "Get a job!"
WHY FOX WHYYYYY?????
There are murmurs that Matt G is trying to resurrect Futurama on the Cartoon Network... let us pray that it is so.
There are so many things wrong with your arguments it's not even funny, it's scary.
"everyone would bitch about the inaction of America to 'right wrongs' et al."
How do you know this? What wrongs have you actually righted without acting on UN or NATO authority since the end of the Cold War, or even during the Cold War? Just because people were pissed off that America didn't enter WWII, when the entire world was in danger of being taken over by a crazed dictator, until you actually got attacked doesn't mean 'everyone would bith about' the US interfering less with their domestic and regional affairs today, 60 years later.
"Everyone wants a piece of us, we can't satisfy everyone."
Incorrect. Most of the world would be happy if you just stayed in your own country, traded fairly with us, acted through the UN for collective security like a normal country and basically did nothing special other than make a contribution to making the world a better place comensurate with your wealth and power.
"We can't return to an isolationist stand like pre-WW2 days, so we're pretty much guarenteed to piss somebody off."
There is a difference between pig-headed isolationism and rolling back the current octopus-like arms of influence and power that the U.S. uses to interfere in virtually every aspect of world affairs.
"I'm sure you'll learn to blame somebody else for your troubles at some point (maybe your *own* polititions? Nah, that would require you to do something. Much easier to bitch about the 'yanks' isn't it?"
Ok, what can my 'own politicians' do about America reneging on weapons treaties? What can they do about 250 million Americans who pollute the planet in a manner that is hugely out of proportion with their number through their ridiculously extravagent consumer society? How can they control U.S. financial influence when America effectively controls the entire global market and will economically crush anyone who challenges their hegemony? How can my country make its own social and economic choices when the US has a documented history of undermining and in some cases removing governments that do not support a certain free market, centre-right wing conservative viewpoint?
Here's a clue for you: I blame America for a lot of problems because America's to blame for them. Do you really think we just like bashing you because you're so great? Hell no. Actually, I love America, I have travelled on both coasts and it's a fantastic place. But I also wish that America would truly lead, rather than trying to control. I wish that America would use its power to make the world genuinely safer by reinforcing global institutions and supporting the true sovereign rights of other nations, not by insidiously seeking to undermine the UN and any other country that seeks to make independent choices about its own future.
Bush had an historic opportunity to unite the world like never before after September 11. I think you should ask yourself, very seriously, how it is that even amongst your closest allies - Germany, Britain, France, Australia - the people instead generally fear and mistrust the US, only a couple of years later. Ignore the politicians - they have their own motives. Ordinary people in perfectly wealthy, well educated, western nations are afraid of America. I know that in Britain and Australia, the two biggest supporters of the war in Iraq, public sentiment is heavily against the US occupation and more generally people are increasingly restless about America's direction and motives. Blair will likely lose his job soon because he is closely associated among Britons with Bush and US foreign policy.
You need to understand that the reason people are so angry with you is because we want you to be the great nation you could be, we want you to lead and to raise up the poor and undemocractic parts of the world, but instead we see a nation corrupted by a faulty political process and dominated by shadowy financial and ideological interests that appear to taint everything it does, flailing around the globe wreaking havoc.
Ok, I'll make a deal with you. You reduce your financial, strategic and political influence over my country and the rest of the world to zero, and I'll stop asking you to modify your behaviour. Deal? No, I didn't think so.
This is not directed solely at the parent, but "this is how it works" is NO ANSWER.
Why can't you fix your own damn country? If you will dominate the earth you do have a certain responsibility to stop being such money hungry, corporation loving uber-capitalist, militaristic, jingoistic whores. Don't give me your bullshit about how this isn't your fault, it's the government/patent office/political system/corporations who are to blame: no, you are to blame. All of you US citizens. If this type of stuff is going on in your country, YOU have a responsibility to fix it, even if you didn't personally break it.
While you're at it please fix:
- the 'war on terror' which is apparently a carte blanche to all dictators and half-assed democracies around the world to eliminate human rights at their own discretion - international trade, which you steadfastly refuse to make even vaguely fair, especially with respect to agriculture, the only area where the developing world has any kind of competitive advantage over you - seperation of church and state: it took the world thousands of years to manage this, and you are happy to let yourselves be governed by a bunch of bible-thumping god botherers - international weapons treaties: not a problem this decade, but unchecked nuclear proliferation sure will be fun when India and China are major powers in 2020 and we find that Bush cancelled all of the significant arms control treaties - the FUCKING ENVIRONMENT. Waiting to see if we're really going to kill everything just in case we aren't is NOT LOGICAL, please stop trashing the Earth, it doesn't belong to you. At least build a dome over your own country and just trash the local environment. I'm on the other side of the world and I do NOT WANT TO BREATH IN YOUR SUV'S EXHAUST FUMES.
I will accept all flames, to quote your illustrious leader, "BRING IT ON."
"since there is an unbroken string of broken UN resolutions dating back to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait"
So when can we expect the US invasion of Israel? I assume you will agree based on your brilliant analysis that any neighbouring countries who attack Israel are not starting a war, anyway.
Or maybe you could keep your idiotically simplistic, toeing-the-party-line, neo-conservative-fuelled invective to yourself and realise that your attempt to refine the world into black and white (or should that be arab and white?), with you and Dubbya on the side of white, is part of the reason that most of the world views the United States with fear, hostility, anger and contempt at this point in history.
"If you run a busy creative design business"
on
Fix a Troubled Mac
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"If you run a busy creative design business, you've encountered your fair share of Mac problems"
Assertion: It is only possible to run a 'creative design business' with a shed load of Macs.
With all due respect, this is clearly bs, and it is the kind of attitude that really, really pisses off non-Apple users. It is perfectly possible to run a web design/publishing/graphic design/3D rendering/printing business using Windows machines, without any extra effort. There is hardware and software available for the Windows environment that is at least as good, and arguably better, than the current crop of Apple products.
Dreamweaver, Photoshop, InDesign, etc. etc. all sell well on PC, and indeed there are rumours that Adobe is strategically scaling back its investment in Apple due to low demand and poor return-on-investment in developing products for the OS9/X platforms. In other words: they make more money out of Windows sales of their software, including Photoshop, than they do from the Mac sales.
I'm not trying to take part in the holy wars here, it's just that the opening line was such a typical Apple fanboy cliche that I feel compelled to respond. Please, get over yourselves. You choose Apple. Others choose other tools. Not all graphic designers use Macs, and Apple products are not a prerequisite for running a successful design business.
It's scary that there are actually people who think like you in the world.
"as if saying an Airbus A300 crash means a Boeing 737 might crash"
It does mean a Boeing 737 might crash if an Airbus crashes - they are both complex machines doing something incredibly dangerous. The failure of one highlights the possibility that the other might also fail.
Likewise, Chernobyl highlights what could in theory happen at any nuclear reactor if it is not maintained correctly.
"fission does not touch air currents, as windmills wood"
Semantic issues of 'wood' and 'would' aside, you can't seriously be worried about windmills and tidal generators 'touching' the environment whilst at the same time advocating a process that produces extremely dangerous nuclear waste as a solution to our power problems.
"but only in the same sense that I used to believe in Santa Claus too"
Yeah, and you strike me as the kind of person who, if lucky enough to mate, will tell your kids that Santa Claus is a commie propaganda tool designed to make them believe that giving is ok.
Good to see that you can simultaneously accuse others of pigeon-holing 'nuclear' technologies as dangerous whilst at the same time you are pigeon-holing 'environmentalists' as a bunch of uninformed slackers who engage in scare tactics and become hysterical based on misiniformation.
What exactly do you think the motive of 'environmentalists' is? Do they profit personally from protecting the environment? Do they get rewarded by their god? Do they get power? Do they get fame? No - they just want to make sure that the Earth doesn't get trashed. That's all - how naively selfish of them.
If you actually bothered to talk to people about their ideas rather than getting your opinions from 'Crossfire' and GWB's press office you would find most environmentalists are well informed, intelligent people who are aware of both sides of most issues and like to make their decisions based on research and facts, rather than knee-jerk responses to words like 'nuclear.' Furthermore, many environmetnally aware people do not have a single dreadlock or peace sign anywhere on their body, maaan.
And if you think most people are dumb enough to get scared by MRI because it is 'nuclear' then may I politely suggest that if you substitute 'Americans' for 'environmentalists' you may be somewhat closer to the mark.
However, the British public is at least as anti-US, and increasingly so. There is mounting evidence that close ties to Bush are hurting Blair badly in the polls, and remember all those protests before the war?
If they had to choose one or the other, I suspect that most people in the UK would rather be European.
This codec is much better than the xvid.org one. I experienced constant crashing with the 'official' codec whenever I opened an xvid-encoded file or even browsed a folder containing said file in File Explorer; however, with the koepi codec it has been plain sailing all the way, and great image quality to boot. Should a video codec have the ability to crash whatever program is using it?
Am I the only one who finds the lack of reliable and up-to-date codec info on the net very frustrating? It's always easy to find dozens of people with the same problem as you, virtually impossible to find anyone with an accurate answer.
They might, you know, try to make sure that any contact was an inclusive process where everyone was very cautious and avoided conflict. They might even try to prevent the US from gaining a monopoly on alien technologies and materials, in direct contradiction to America's god-given right to rule the universe!
I'm sure the millions of people who have benefited from the UN would see it differently, but you and I know that any kind of cooperation between nations is just a waste of time, don't we? Sure, they probably averted the destruction of earth during the Cold War, but the destruction of Earth would have been small price to pay for the destruction of Moscow Joe.
Lousy pinko UN bastards! I'm sure glad the Iraq debacle isn't under their control, it's going so well as a US-only exercise in active diplomacy.
Slashdot Mirror
If Schumi had an actual driver as a team mate then he might not be able to dominate the sport, which neither he, nor Ferrari, nor most of the nations of Italy and Germany want to see. It is widely rumoured/reported that Schumacher's contract used to actually stipulate that the second driver not compete with him. He's not going to 'put his foot down' any time soon. Plus, if he cared what others thought of him he wouldn (a) have crashed into Hill in a championship decider, (b) have crashed into Villeneuve in a championship decider, or (c) be upholding the EU mandated standards for stereotypical teutonic arrogance.
Of course, almost all other F1 fans would love to see Villeneuve or Montoya or Button driving the other Ferrari... it would almost bring back the glory days of two brilliant maniacs driving each other off the road week after week, a la Mansell, Prost, Senna and co.
Some sports do this to great effect. Here in Australia we play our own version of football and each team is strictly limited in how much money can be spent on player salaries each year. This means teams can either have lots of reasonably good players, some great players and some bad players, or lots of great players if they are prepared to get paid a bit less (which they are, in many cases). It is very effective in evening out the sport, though - while there are some perennial power teams and strugglers, most teams can turn their fortunes around in a few seasons. We also have a preferential draft system that gives priority to the teams that come last - not the American way, for sure, but effective nonetheless.
Regarding F1, I think there should be a hard limit on spending, not on drivers but on technology. It would still be a technology competition - but part of the restriction would be 'who can build the best car for 100 million a year?'
Even though, as Toyota is ably demonstrating, money does not guarantee success, a lack of money certainly guarantees failure. Look at Jordan - a few years ago they were in a position of potentially winning races and getting on the podium regularly, and now they are pathetically trailing behind as the big teams engage in a technological arms race. As many people have opined this past two years, it's not that the Williams is getting worse, it's more that the Ferrari is that much better than it was. You only need to look at the laptimes year by year to see that - for example, last race the records were blown away despite the FIA's numerous speed-reduction rules. Sauber is another good example. They basically drive a cut down, out of date Ferrari - and they get whipped by the current Ferrari.
I can't believe anyone thinks it's right to spend hundreds of dollars on this kind of crap when there are billions of people around the world living in poverty. This idiot should take his next pay packet and sponsor a child in Africa or something.
IE does lots of annoying as hell things with tables and images that are quite simply WRONG and really, really frustrating.
Case in point - the other day I'm putting together a page with high graphical content using tables with heights and widths specified in pixels and no text content whatsoever. Mozilla (and Opera) renders this page fine; IE decides to insert a 2 pixel space under an image that (a) resizes the parent table by 2 pixels and (b) cannot be removed using standard HTML. After tearing my hair out I eventually found a way to use CSS to force the accursed MS Hellbeast to render my table correctly - but I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO. My HTML was fine; IE was not.
This is just a small example, but this kind of thing happens all the frickin time. Search for '"internet explorer" +html problem' if you really want to know the truth, and come back when you have a clue.
Excellent points about IE being its own standard. What's more, it is highly questionable what incentive Microsoft has to fix these problems - after all, most medium-to-large sized businesses are going to design sites that work with IE as a minimum, and Netscape/Mozilla/W3C as an afterthought if we're lucky.
Therefore I feel some responsibility must move to web designers. If designers do backflips to ensure IE compatibility then they simply allow MS to get away with it. In some cases it would be better to allow minor visual glitches and include a recommendation that the site be viewed with a 'W3C compliant browser such as Mozilla'. The same response could be sent to anyone who complains.
If I were a large, non-MS software/IT company, I would be pushing for the upholding of the standards very hard. If ISO can get huge companies to spend billions getting certified, surely the IT industry can spend some cash to uphold a very basic set of standards for HTML.
They don't make the laws, they just use them in their client's interests.
Blame the politicians, who write the laws. Most of all, BLAME YOURSELF for letting the politicians write the laws without fear of retribution from you, the voter. Australians should stop whining about how other people are responsible for the ills in their country, get of their backsides and DO something about it. Politicians are affected by the public, believe it or not. If enough backbench Coalition MPs get enough letters and complaints from their constituents, they will start piling the pressure on Howard to back out of the deal while he still can. Look at the amount of noise the sugar farmers managed to make - other Australians could make just as much of a fuss about other parts of the deal.
Yes, IAAL, an Australian one too. I will not benefit from all of Australia's IP being hauled off in a big boat to the US any more than you will.
Trust me, if it's anything like the Australian offer YOU DON'T WANT IT.
Unless you want to be sued over the name 'Maple Syrup' until you acknowledge (a) that it is the eternal copyright of Disney-Time-Warner-General-Motors-Northrop Manufacturing Concern Inc. New York and (b) that the Canadian syrup will be marked 'Imitation UnAmerican Syrup Substitute.'
We are currently having to ridiculous disputes with the US over brand names. One is over the name 'Dockers', which is a football team here named after dock workers (the team is based in a port city). They have been sued by the US clothing company Dockers for selling football tops under the name 'Dockers,' because Dockers USA holds the trademark for clothing of that name.
The second is over the name 'ugg boots', which has been the traditional name for sheepskin boots in Australia since time immemorial, and has now been trademarked by some American jerk company who is tring to prohibit us from using it.
It all reminds me of the crazy Italians, who are trying to go around the world banning people from using the name 'Italian Food' or 'Italian Restaurant' unless they certify the business in question is acceptably Italian according to their standards of Italian-ness. At some point there should be boundaries between countries that still count for something...
Are you kidding? I bet 'Big Brother' counts as 500 hours a week of 'Australian made programming' for Channel 10. I would much rather see re-runs of Seinfeld and Futurama than that crap!
In one sense (and I can't believe I'm saying this, because I'm actually anti the FTA) it could be good for locally made TV. It would force a (somewhat) higher standard than the crap we get at the moment.
I mean, seriously, how many good Australian comedies are there? Australian thriller/drama type shows? Basically we can do kids programming and that's about it.
"An examination of some of the shortcomings of a trade agreement between the U.S. and Australia does not effect most people directly."
Of course it does, and the IP law parts of it certainly affect them a hell of a lot more than the provisions about sugar, for example, which have had the bulk of the coverage in the media including incessant front pages for several weeks a few months ago.
The problem is people are too lazy to try to understand the finer details, even when they are very important details. On top of which, there is only a very weak consumer advocacy movement in Australia, there is no Nader-type crusader to draw attention to such issues, and only a few interest groups (Electronic Frontiers Australia being one, but they never seem to get any media play).
People with your attitude are actually the problem. We are going to trade away our own laws, developed over hundreds of years through the British common law and then locally since federation, in exchange for the lowering of a few tariffs on manufactured goods, and you think its 'boring' to have to think about it.
We do actually allow copying for backup purposes, that is, to protect the original.
On the other hand, our courts have been very reluctant to build any kind of doctrine around IP law at all. Unlike other areas of Australian law where the High Court has struggled for decades to give us the rights that our constitution does not, they have been basically silent on this issue.
"I may not know much about horses but I know a lot about doing anything for one dollar."
Actually I think this guy wasn't losing any money... RTFA...
Let's not forget Bender's nightmare...
Bender: "Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two."
Fry [comforting]: "It was just a dream, Bender. There's no such thing as two."
Who would've thought they could make a show with lots of binary jokes in it and still make it the funniest thing on TV?
But yes, what an amazing episode.
One of my favourite scenes is the hippie universe:
Freakworth: "Dig it! All of you fitting in this box is like, seriously freaked up."
Farnsworth: "Nonsense! Why, there's a whole universe in there."
Freakworth: "Dude. There's a universe in all of us."
Freak Amy: "Right on, professor Freakworth."
[Professor Freakworth proffers a flower to Professor Farnsworth]
Farnsworth: "Get a job!"
WHY FOX WHYYYYY?????
There are murmurs that Matt G is trying to resurrect Futurama on the Cartoon Network... let us pray that it is so.
There are so many things wrong with your arguments it's not even funny, it's scary.
"everyone would bitch about the inaction of America to 'right wrongs' et al."
How do you know this? What wrongs have you actually righted without acting on UN or NATO authority since the end of the Cold War, or even during the Cold War? Just because people were pissed off that America didn't enter WWII, when the entire world was in danger of being taken over by a crazed dictator, until you actually got attacked doesn't mean 'everyone would bith about' the US interfering less with their domestic and regional affairs today, 60 years later.
"Everyone wants a piece of us, we can't satisfy everyone."
Incorrect. Most of the world would be happy if you just stayed in your own country, traded fairly with us, acted through the UN for collective security like a normal country and basically did nothing special other than make a contribution to making the world a better place comensurate with your wealth and power.
"We can't return to an isolationist stand like pre-WW2 days, so we're pretty much guarenteed to piss somebody off."
There is a difference between pig-headed isolationism and rolling back the current octopus-like arms of influence and power that the U.S. uses to interfere in virtually every aspect of world affairs.
"I'm sure you'll learn to blame somebody else for your troubles at some point (maybe your *own* polititions? Nah, that would require you to do something. Much easier to bitch about the 'yanks' isn't it?"
Ok, what can my 'own politicians' do about America reneging on weapons treaties? What can they do about 250 million Americans who pollute the planet in a manner that is hugely out of proportion with their number through their ridiculously extravagent consumer society? How can they control U.S. financial influence when America effectively controls the entire global market and will economically crush anyone who challenges their hegemony? How can my country make its own social and economic choices when the US has a documented history of undermining and in some cases removing governments that do not support a certain free market, centre-right wing conservative viewpoint?
Here's a clue for you: I blame America for a lot of problems because America's to blame for them. Do you really think we just like bashing you because you're so great? Hell no. Actually, I love America, I have travelled on both coasts and it's a fantastic place. But I also wish that America would truly lead, rather than trying to control. I wish that America would use its power to make the world genuinely safer by reinforcing global institutions and supporting the true sovereign rights of other nations, not by insidiously seeking to undermine the UN and any other country that seeks to make independent choices about its own future.
Bush had an historic opportunity to unite the world like never before after September 11. I think you should ask yourself, very seriously, how it is that even amongst your closest allies - Germany, Britain, France, Australia - the people instead generally fear and mistrust the US, only a couple of years later. Ignore the politicians - they have their own motives. Ordinary people in perfectly wealthy, well educated, western nations are afraid of America. I know that in Britain and Australia, the two biggest supporters of the war in Iraq, public sentiment is heavily against the US occupation and more generally people are increasingly restless about America's direction and motives. Blair will likely lose his job soon because he is closely associated among Britons with Bush and US foreign policy.
You need to understand that the reason people are so angry with you is because we want you to be the great nation you could be, we want you to lead and to raise up the poor and undemocractic parts of the world, but instead we see a nation corrupted by a faulty political process and dominated by shadowy financial and ideological interests that appear to taint everything it does, flailing around the globe wreaking havoc.
Ok, I'll make a deal with you. You reduce your financial, strategic and political influence over my country and the rest of the world to zero, and I'll stop asking you to modify your behaviour. Deal? No, I didn't think so.
This is not directed solely at the parent, but "this is how it works" is NO ANSWER.
Why can't you fix your own damn country? If you will dominate the earth you do have a certain responsibility to stop being such money hungry, corporation loving uber-capitalist, militaristic, jingoistic whores. Don't give me your bullshit about how this isn't your fault, it's the government/patent office/political system/corporations who are to blame: no, you are to blame. All of you US citizens. If this type of stuff is going on in your country, YOU have a responsibility to fix it, even if you didn't personally break it.
While you're at it please fix:
- the 'war on terror' which is apparently a carte blanche to all dictators and half-assed democracies around the world to eliminate human rights at their own discretion
- international trade, which you steadfastly refuse to make even vaguely fair, especially with respect to agriculture, the only area where the developing world has any kind of competitive advantage over you
- seperation of church and state: it took the world thousands of years to manage this, and you are happy to let yourselves be governed by a bunch of bible-thumping god botherers
- international weapons treaties: not a problem this decade, but unchecked nuclear proliferation sure will be fun when India and China are major powers in 2020 and we find that Bush cancelled all of the significant arms control treaties
- the FUCKING ENVIRONMENT. Waiting to see if we're really going to kill everything just in case we aren't is NOT LOGICAL, please stop trashing the Earth, it doesn't belong to you. At least build a dome over your own country and just trash the local environment. I'm on the other side of the world and I do NOT WANT TO BREATH IN YOUR SUV'S EXHAUST FUMES.
I will accept all flames, to quote your illustrious leader, "BRING IT ON."
"since there is an unbroken string of broken UN resolutions dating back to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait"
So when can we expect the US invasion of Israel? I assume you will agree based on your brilliant analysis that any neighbouring countries who attack Israel are not starting a war, anyway.
Or maybe you could keep your idiotically simplistic, toeing-the-party-line, neo-conservative-fuelled invective to yourself and realise that your attempt to refine the world into black and white (or should that be arab and white?), with you and Dubbya on the side of white, is part of the reason that most of the world views the United States with fear, hostility, anger and contempt at this point in history.
"If you run a busy creative design business, you've encountered your fair share of Mac problems"
Assertion: It is only possible to run a 'creative design business' with a shed load of Macs.
With all due respect, this is clearly bs, and it is the kind of attitude that really, really pisses off non-Apple users. It is perfectly possible to run a web design/publishing/graphic design/3D rendering/printing business using Windows machines, without any extra effort. There is hardware and software available for the Windows environment that is at least as good, and arguably better, than the current crop of Apple products.
Dreamweaver, Photoshop, InDesign, etc. etc. all sell well on PC, and indeed there are rumours that Adobe is strategically scaling back its investment in Apple due to low demand and poor return-on-investment in developing products for the OS9/X platforms. In other words: they make more money out of Windows sales of their software, including Photoshop, than they do from the Mac sales.
I'm not trying to take part in the holy wars here, it's just that the opening line was such a typical Apple fanboy cliche that I feel compelled to respond. Please, get over yourselves. You choose Apple. Others choose other tools. Not all graphic designers use Macs, and Apple products are not a prerequisite for running a successful design business.
It's scary that there are actually people who think like you in the world.
"as if saying an Airbus A300 crash means a Boeing 737 might crash"
It does mean a Boeing 737 might crash if an Airbus crashes - they are both complex machines doing something incredibly dangerous. The failure of one highlights the possibility that the other might also fail.
Likewise, Chernobyl highlights what could in theory happen at any nuclear reactor if it is not maintained correctly.
"fission does not touch air currents, as windmills wood"
Semantic issues of 'wood' and 'would' aside, you can't seriously be worried about windmills and tidal generators 'touching' the environment whilst at the same time advocating a process that produces extremely dangerous nuclear waste as a solution to our power problems.
"but only in the same sense that I used to believe in Santa Claus too"
Yeah, and you strike me as the kind of person who, if lucky enough to mate, will tell your kids that Santa Claus is a commie propaganda tool designed to make them believe that giving is ok.
Good to see that you can simultaneously accuse others of pigeon-holing 'nuclear' technologies as dangerous whilst at the same time you are pigeon-holing 'environmentalists' as a bunch of uninformed slackers who engage in scare tactics and become hysterical based on misiniformation.
What exactly do you think the motive of 'environmentalists' is? Do they profit personally from protecting the environment? Do they get rewarded by their god? Do they get power? Do they get fame? No - they just want to make sure that the Earth doesn't get trashed. That's all - how naively selfish of them.
If you actually bothered to talk to people about their ideas rather than getting your opinions from 'Crossfire' and GWB's press office you would find most environmentalists are well informed, intelligent people who are aware of both sides of most issues and like to make their decisions based on research and facts, rather than knee-jerk responses to words like 'nuclear.' Furthermore, many environmetnally aware people do not have a single dreadlock or peace sign anywhere on their body, maaan.
And if you think most people are dumb enough to get scared by MRI because it is 'nuclear' then may I politely suggest that if you substitute 'Americans' for 'environmentalists' you may be somewhat closer to the mark.
Wouldn't that make episode I the "Date Rape of the Republic"?
However, the British public is at least as anti-US, and increasingly so. There is mounting evidence that close ties to Bush are hurting Blair badly in the polls, and remember all those protests before the war?
If they had to choose one or the other, I suspect that most people in the UK would rather be European.
This codec is much better than the xvid.org one. I experienced constant crashing with the 'official' codec whenever I opened an xvid-encoded file or even browsed a folder containing said file in File Explorer; however, with the koepi codec it has been plain sailing all the way, and great image quality to boot. Should a video codec have the ability to crash whatever program is using it?
Am I the only one who finds the lack of reliable and up-to-date codec info on the net very frustrating? It's always easy to find dozens of people with the same problem as you, virtually impossible to find anyone with an accurate answer.
They might, you know, try to make sure that any contact was an inclusive process where everyone was very cautious and avoided conflict. They might even try to prevent the US from gaining a monopoly on alien technologies and materials, in direct contradiction to America's god-given right to rule the universe!
I'm sure the millions of people who have benefited from the UN would see it differently, but you and I know that any kind of cooperation between nations is just a waste of time, don't we? Sure, they probably averted the destruction of earth during the Cold War, but the destruction of Earth would have been small price to pay for the destruction of Moscow Joe.
Lousy pinko UN bastards! I'm sure glad the Iraq debacle isn't under their control, it's going so well as a US-only exercise in active diplomacy.
Mankind would sooner perish than kowtow to outrageous alien demands for this McNeal... whoever he is.