Yeah, the most hippy-infested liberal suburb of the most liberal city in the U.S. voted down a medical marijuana bill, only it turns out they didn't keep enough data to verify the election results (like you could ever trust the data saved on a Diebold machine anyway). Nothing suspicious there at all...
But, instant win attacks, loss-of-functionality attacks (losing an arm), mid-air combos, taunting to regain health, unique control scheme that was actually pretty good, very low emphasis on projectile attacks, etc. etc. Not to mention being the first weapons-based vs. fighter, before Samurai Shodown which usually gets the honour. Though SS was a much better game...
Yeah, you're right about all that -- and I didn't know it came out before Samurai Showdown. And I disparaged the controls, but for the feel not the concept. The 5-button limb-based control scheme was great. It just felt sluggish. Basically it's like you said: They polished the graphics and the gore instead of polishing the game play. Call that the Mortal Kombat effect, since people were gathering around the MK cabinets at the arcade even though the vastly superior but less violent SF2 Turbo cabinet was five feet away. The developers probably thought it was the best way to get their game exposure.
Based on those numbers and my own experience, my question is: Instead of trying to "fix" all these broken IT projects, why not just shit-can them before you've spent X many man-years on them? So many of them fail, but the failure of the project does not cause the failure of the company. In other words, they were non-essential to begin with and whatever benefit they might have added is offset by their cost. Dump em.
Kinda like when my company decided to replace their functional but distinct HR, travel, and inventory database systems with a single "enterprise" system that cost $millions per quarter, and ended up being far less usable and reliable than what we had before, with the supposed benefits of integration never appearing because we canned the project after a year and a half because we didn't have the money to pour into it anymore. Not naming names, but to purchase this vendor's system you would have to be "a fool or dupe".
Should this project have been fixed? Or never started at all? You decide.
This is what politicians really mean when they refer to the draft being "infeasible": if you were to suddenly interest a large portion of the country in our foreign policy adventures by putting their loved ones in harm's way, guess what! No more frivolous wars. In fact we probably wouldn't have fought any major conflicts since WWII.
The draft didn't prevent us from getting involved in Korea or Vietnam, so there goes that theory.
In fact I think a major reason we didn't roll straight from Iraq into Iran was because there was no way our volunteer army could handle it, and they couldn't simply draft more troops.
You remember that old hippy saying "What if they had a war, and nobody showed up?" Well that's what a volunteer army is like -- if nobody wants to go to war, nobody signs up, and there's no army to fight the war with. Granted the government makes military service financially appealing, especially to poor kids who couldn't afford college without a GI Bill grant. Unfortunate, but the end result is that they still have less cannon fodder than they would if they could simply grab them from the populace. And they would, make no mistake about it.
True enough. Though Time Killers was a great game in spite of its flaws, not a game whose flaws became a part of why the game was enjoyable.
I have to give it a lot of props just for not being a Street Fighter clone at a time when such were ubiquitous and universally crappy. Not only was Time Killers better than your average SF clone, it was more original. I really enjoyed touches like the way wounds would appear on your character when they got hit, and who didn't love walking up to their stunned opponent and proceeding to literally carve them into pieces? The way blood would spurt out of your shoulder stump when you tried to attack with a missing limb? Or having both arms lopped off and trying to kick and head butt the opponent to death for a "limbless victory"?
Unfortunately despite a lot of promise, poor and unresponsive controls are what kept it from becoming famous. All the characters felt awkward and slow. And it's the smoothness and responsivness of SFII that really made it a great game. So sadly, Time Killers isn't so bad its good, it's so good that what's bad about it is unforgivably bad.
In theory that's a great idea. In practice, Congress would just start writing laws on stationary that had "Enabled by the Commerce Clause" pre-printed at the bottom, since that's their catch-all for everything.
Oh I understood that part. I was simply responding to your argument ad absurdum of taking away all police tools capable of abuse so they have nothing but a whistle. Most police tools that can be abused can also be subject to oversight so we do not need to take those tools away.
And if you understand what was already said, that police installing spyware is only acceptable if a warrant is obtained first, and Checkpoint cannot distinguish between police spyware installed with a warrant and without, then the answer to this conundrum is obvious: Checkpoint must detect police spyware. The police may not have a tool that does not contain oversight. They may not install spyware without a warrant. If this makes installing spyware more difficult for them because anti-spyware will detect their tools, then tough, that's the way a free country works.
I'm against abuses of power too, but anything can be used to abuse power. If you take away 100% of the ability to abuse, you end up with policemen walking a beat with little more than a whistle to do their jobs! The trick is to recognize the potential, demand oversight and employ extremely strict punishment to prevent abuse so the tools are allowed to be used in a legal manner.
Yah, no kidding. That's why he said it was okay if they had a warrant, i.e. with court oversight. Those first two sentences comprise nothing but a strawman.
For most Linux systems, GNU utilities comprise the most important core software after the kernel itself. Very few programs actually see the kernel, but almost all of them use libc. Calling the entire OS "GNU/Linux" makes as much sense as calling it "Linux", both referring only to core software that makes the system work, but of course I prefer "Linux" by itself for aesthetic and convenience reasons.
Obviously a Linux system without any GNU software would not be called GNU/Linux by RMS.
Which means GNU/Linux would be useful for distinguishing between such a GNU-free system and other Linuces. not that I'll be using it anyway.
How many civilians and true enemy combatants have been killed against the 4000 soldiers that have been lost? I would say the fighting strategy is extremely both ineffectual and inefficient against the U.S.
I'd say about 10-20x times that many guerilla fighters have been killed, which is perfectly normal for successfull guerilla campaigns, in fact if the conventional force has a kill ratio of less than 10 to 1 then they will almost certainly lose -- see Israel vs Hezbollah. Now also keep in mind that the guerillas in Iraq have not just been targeting U.S. forces, but also the nascent Iraqi police and army forces against which they have a much higher kill count. One suicide bomber taking out 50 police recruits spells bad news for a self-supporting Iraqi government.
It isn't efficient, and it requires long-term thinking because it isn't fast, but you had better believe it is effectual. We wouldn't even be talking about pulling troops from Iraq were it not for the insurgency. When we pull the troops out without the insurgency being defeated, they will -- correctly -- call it a victory.
Guerrilla fighting simply doesn't work.
Tell that to the Algerians. Or the Vietnamese. Guerilla tactics do work, history has shown this time and time again, in fact the only time they don't work is when the force they are fighting against is willing to use genocide as a counter-insurgency tactic. If the political will to do so isn't there, then eventually the guerillas will win. Not always, the guerillas can screw things up just as surely as the larger force can. But against a skilled and determined guerilla force, there's no military victory to be had, at least when you're invading in the name of Freedom.
Best case scenario it causes the U.S. to say it's not worth it to prevent further civil war so we leave and cut off all economic ties and impose sanctions so no other country will trade and then the country starves because they can't or perhaps simply won't be peaceful.
That's what we did when Saddam was in power, and it didn't stop other countries from trading with Iraq. Now, though, it seems likely that Iran is going to be the ally of whatever post-occupation government takes over, and Iran already laughs at our sanctions.
Perhaps in an optimal situation civil war wouldn't break out and the sides would come together without U.S. interference and then the secure region will prosper and the rest of the country will prosper and then the whole deal can be reintegrated.
The best case is that we leave, and the factions within Iraq join to fight the foreign forces that have been trying to play the two sides against each other and against us. Sunni militias have already started to join us in anti-al Qaeda operations, which gives me some hope for this idea that could possibly return some unity. But it isn't going to happen under occupation.
I must agree with the GP (to an extent). The feuds between factions in Iraq are very old. Some can be traced back to the time of Muhammad, others probably originate with somebody sleeping with someone else's wife thousands of years ago. Saddam only controlled the feuds by violent suppression. Take that away, and they all come back.
Saddam didn't control the feuds with violent suppression. Sure, he controlled the country that way and prevented any significant uprisings that way, but violent suppression is not going to cause a Sunni and Shia who otherwise would have killed each other to marry! And intermarriage was quite common, as were Sunnis and Shias working together and living together and Saddam didn't force them to do so. In other words, at least in Iraq, the Sunni/Shiite rift was not as inherently violent as you may now suppose.
In fact the sectarian violence that seems to define Iraq now, and which you may have predicted to occur as soon as Saddam was out of power, didn't really kick up significantly until 2006. That's when the cycle of killing--reprisal killing--re-reprisal killing took off, starting in particular with the bombing of the Shia mosque. Before that there had been what appeared to be targeted killings, but on a much smaller scale and more importantly without the violent reaction -- leaders of both sects urging calm and peace, not retribution, in an effort to not create a huge rift where there hadn't been before.
Now, though, things are much worse, and formerly integrated neighborhoods have become segregated because one sect or the other is too at risk from insurgents knocking on their doors. I've even seen photographs of Sunnis and Shiites signing over the deeds to their houses to each other so that they can move their families. The very fact that they can peacably cooperate to deal with this new terrible circumstance just shows that Iraq wasn't this way, and didn't have to be this way.
Ultimately I think both al Qaeda and Iran are responsible for causing this, each has significant reasons to want to create a rift between people in Iraq, both to get one sect or the other to align with them, and to disrupt our efforts in the country. And, yes, I put some blame on the U.S. planners in particular the Sec. of Defense for completely and utterly failing to predict or prepare to counter these influences.
Simple -- the nature of warfare has changed from full-fledged battles between the armies of nation-states to asymetrical warfare. Korea was a more or less traditional war. Vietnam was part traditional war, but mostly guerilla. Iraq I was simply an abberation -- a conventional military, but morale was so low on one side that the battle ended rapidly. The number of casualties in the actual full-on fighting in Iraq I and Iraq II were both quite high, but their durations were short. Now we're in the guerilla warfare phase of Iraq II, the slow bleeding phase, and of course it's going to kill less people per day than a conventional war. Just like guerilla warfare always has, because it isn't about massed armored assault and artillery barrages, it's about snipers picking off patrols one by one when the opportunity arises.
Really, the march of technology has not directly caused an increase or decrease in deaths, at least not in the large scale. What has changed is not the technology, but the politics. It's the nature of the wars, not the nature of the war machines, that has resulted in lower death counts.
So you see nothing wrong with being the standard bearer for "family values" and the "sanctity of marriage" and cheating on your wife?
Wrong? Sure. Hypocritical? Maybe in the strict definition of the word, but as the negative-connotation form, not really. To me, hypocrisy is not having a moral standard that you fail to live up to. To me, if your moral standard is such that you always abide by it, your moral standard is not challenging enough to be called morality.
To bring religion into this, I don't think Jesus ever called someone a hypocrite for merely failing to follow the moral example of Judaism.
You don't see anything particularly hypocritical about wanting Clinton to resign over an extramarital affair but doing the usual "I've been forgiven, so stay out of my family's business" tap dance when he's caught having one?
Now that to me is the essence of hypocrisy: To claim the ability to judge others for their moral transgressions when you yourself cannot live up to the same standard. To set oneself up as a moral authority when such is not deserved.
To quote Jesus: "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
So yes. Everyone who pointed their finger at Clinton and said he must pay for his sins, while they themselves have committed the same sin, was a huge fucking hypocrite.
What you may have meant is that proseletyzing and evangelizing aren't welcomed in schools because many Americans, including many Christian Americans, don't want those things in schools--they think that spiritual matters belong at home or in the church, not in the building kids go to to learn the three Rs.
Yeah, the modern form of "persecution" is "not allowed to shove their religion down the throats of everyone else". Enforcing separation of Church and State is "persecution".
The thing is that Christianity has built within it a strong concept of being Christian as a burden, and that one should remain devout even in the face of persecution and that doing so is a brave and spiritually uplifting thing to do. So many are desperate to have their "cross to bear" and claim they are persecuted. But of course when Christians are 85% of the population actual persecution is hard to come by. None of these people saying they're being persecuted have any idea what real persecution is like. Back when this concept of shouldering the burden of persecution was written about, admitting you were Christian could result in you being fed to the lions for the amusement of the Roman people. At various times and places throughout history Christians have also been persecuted -- like the U.S.S.R. Ironically the Separation Clause was written in part because of the various Protestant sects that were fleeing the oppression of the Church of England. But this was never the case in the United States, so now the 1st Ammendment is seen as an obstacle to creating a state religion, and that's "persecution".
I'm a Christian, and I've been persecuted more for being part Puerto Rican even though I don't really look it. The only "persecution" I've ever received is people who discover I'm Christian and assume I'm the kind of asshole who is going to try to shove my religion down their throats. Once they find out I'm not, I can usually even have religious discussions with no issues.
In my mind there's not much more pathetic than a male WASP whining about being persecuted.
but isn't pounds (as in lbs.) a measurement of weight
According to Wikipedia, "pounds" originally and still may refer to force (weight). However the "pound avoirdupois", avoirdupois being the system used in the United States, is defined to be a measure of mass.
And on that note, how is having 300 lbs (or mass-equivalent) less gear going to keep you from hopping off the moon into outerspace forever? Didn't the extra mass come in handy to keep people from flying away?
Escape velocity from the moon is 2.4 km/s. I don't think that merely weighing 1/6th as much as you do on earth would allow you to launch yourself at that speed. The astronauts would be able to leap even farther than they could in the bulky spacesuits, though.
I don't think it's unreasonable at all, for the reasons you point out.
On the other hand, I'm not going to call it GNU/Linux, I'm going to call it Linux simply for my own convenience. As far as I'm concerned, "Linux" as it is used today implies a GNU-based system.
It's full of restrictions, and restrictions are not free. Go ahead and try to deny that, you'll just make GWB jealous.
Haha. Okay, this will be easy. The 13th Ammendment restricts you from owning slaves. Therefore the 13th Ammendment made you less free? Or did it make everyone more free? In order to ensure that everyone is free, we must all be restricted from taking freedom from others. This is a simple principle.
GPLv2 was designed to make software users free by preventing anyone from taking away their freedom. The only restrictions GPLv3 adds are to close loopholes that allowed people distributing GPLv2 software to not grant the freedom to users that the GPLv is supposed to protect. If there was a legal loophole that still allowed for slavery, I hope you wouldn't consider closing it becoming less free.
The saddest part being that he possibly did by posting on the Yahoo! financial forums.
Honestly, I have never in my life seen a more concentrated pool of sheer idiocy and poor financial advice than what you see in those forums. There's only two groups of people who post there: Complete idiots, and people trying to game the stock market through lies and manipulation. And no, they aren't mutually exclusive groups.
Anyone who takes portfolio advice from the yahoo forums should have all their money taken away and given to me. What? I can dream can't I?
Considering the GPL starts with a non-legalese description of the moral philosophy behind the GPL, I find it hard to fathom how anyone could think the FSF was from the beginning "injecting their personal morality into the laws governing open source software". Duh, the whole existence of the Free Software movement and the GPL is due to RMS' moral views on software and the rights of users.
And while I may not agree completely with the language of GPLv3, it still seems perfectly consistant with the moral view that RMS has been expressing since the 80s. Every new thing in GPLv3 is there to try to close a loophole that allowed someone to not grant the rights RMS believes users should have. I have no idea how Linus can call them hypocrits. I was with him more when he was simply saying that it was misguided.
Linus is a smart guy, and he wisely avoids the morality/politics of the FSF most of the time. But he ain't perfect and his decisions to sacrifice principles for practicality can come back to bite him -- see Bitkeeper for a poignant example of how "choose the best tool for the job" but ignoring the license and how that affects the tool's usefulness is the wrong way to be pragmatic and apolitical.
You're kidding. It's listed for $538, more than double list.
It's not double list, because "list" for the console + 3 games + wiimote + nunchuck isn't $250, now is it?
But they have jacked up the price from when I got it, because at that time it was the same as buying a console, 3 games at $50, $40 wiimote and $20 nunchuck. Since I was getting nothing I wouldn't have bought individually anyway, the only extra cost for me was shipping and handling.
Now looking at it, they added brain age, defeating the "choice" aspect, and still jacked the price up besides. I'm not kidding, it used to be a good bundle.
And no, I don't need an extra controller.
You're weird, but okay. A friend who first pointed out the walmart bundle got it, and then returned the parts he didn't want to a walmart brick-and-mortar store, something you can't do with many other bundles. So that could be an option... or at least, would have been had they not bumped the price.
When Nintendo can get the supply up enough that I can buy it off the shelf without a ripoff bundle, then I'll get it.
I wouldn't hold my breath. I wanted to do the same thing but gave up after 6 months of calling every store in town. By the time increased manufacturing capacity affects their availability at retail, it'll be time for the holiday rush and then you can say goodbye to buying one until 2008 unless you like getting into brawls with soccer moms.
On the plus side, there will probably be more games in the used and discount bins.
Wal-mart's website has a good bundle that lets you select what games and accessories you want rather than forcing a pre-selected crap pile on you. It comes with an extra wiimote -- you did want two controllers right? -- so getting another nunchuck makes sense, and then I got 3 games I would have bought if I'd gotten a wii at retail anyway. Check your favorite wii tracker to see if they have it in stock.
You didn't read Scenario #2. The killer was obviously guilty, and the evidence proved it regardless of the method of acquisition.
In the real world you don't get to declare that the truth is absolutely that the killer was guilty therefore any method of convicting them is valid. You are begging the question, saying that because the evidence proved the killer was guilty, the illegally obtained evidence was valid to prove that the killer was guilty. In reality, illegally obtained evidence is faulty evidence, and should be thrown out because it denies the accused of a fair trial. You cannot use an unfair trial to prove that the accused was guilty and therefore the trial was fair.
Also, in the reality of Scenario #2 the cop still wouldn't be punished significantly. Even if we increased the penalties, it wouldn't make the conviction of the accused fair.
The current system isn't broken, it is vastly superior to the one you propose in terms of protecting our rights.
You're kidding, right? Knowing that the criminal will walk free if they don't follow the procedure designed to protect the rights of the accused to a tee is the only reason the police don't perform illegal searches, beat confessions out of people, plant evidence, and basically do whatever the hell they want to get the person they think is guilty.
You think the threat of losing their job is a motivating factor? A police officer can subdue a suspect, handcuff them with their hands behind their back, sit on them, and then proceed to beat the crap out of them and get little more than reprimand. They won't get fired for violating procedure either. But having the creep walk free, laughing? That's motivation.
And once you've allowed the police to start violating procedure but maintain the conviction, how do you actually know that the evidence is accurate? The whole point of the 4th Ammendment and all of the procedures for evidence is not just to protect some hypothetical right to a fair trial, it's to ensure that the trial is actually fair and that the evidence is on the up-and-up. It's not like once you've "proven" the suspect is guilty that you can retro-actively deny them their right to a fair trial. A trial with illegally obtained evidence is an unfair trial.
I shudder to think of all the times someone could have been convicted based on illegal evidence in decades past, which would be fine with you, only to later have them exonerated by later valid evidence. This already happened many times with our current rules of evidence and the invention of DNA testing. It would be much, much worse if we allowed convictions based on illegal evidence to stand.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the most hippy-infested liberal suburb of the most liberal city in the U.S. voted down a medical marijuana bill, only it turns out they didn't keep enough data to verify the election results (like you could ever trust the data saved on a Diebold machine anyway). Nothing suspicious there at all...
But, instant win attacks, loss-of-functionality attacks (losing an arm), mid-air combos, taunting to regain health, unique control scheme that was actually pretty good, very low emphasis on projectile attacks, etc. etc. Not to mention being the first weapons-based vs. fighter, before Samurai Shodown which usually gets the honour. Though SS was a much better game...
Yeah, you're right about all that -- and I didn't know it came out before Samurai Showdown. And I disparaged the controls, but for the feel not the concept. The 5-button limb-based control scheme was great. It just felt sluggish. Basically it's like you said: They polished the graphics and the gore instead of polishing the game play. Call that the Mortal Kombat effect, since people were gathering around the MK cabinets at the arcade even though the vastly superior but less violent SF2 Turbo cabinet was five feet away. The developers probably thought it was the best way to get their game exposure.
Based on those numbers and my own experience, my question is: Instead of trying to "fix" all these broken IT projects, why not just shit-can them before you've spent X many man-years on them? So many of them fail, but the failure of the project does not cause the failure of the company. In other words, they were non-essential to begin with and whatever benefit they might have added is offset by their cost. Dump em.
Kinda like when my company decided to replace their functional but distinct HR, travel, and inventory database systems with a single "enterprise" system that cost $millions per quarter, and ended up being far less usable and reliable than what we had before, with the supposed benefits of integration never appearing because we canned the project after a year and a half because we didn't have the money to pour into it anymore. Not naming names, but to purchase this vendor's system you would have to be "a fool or dupe".
Should this project have been fixed? Or never started at all? You decide.
This is what politicians really mean when they refer to the draft being "infeasible": if you were to suddenly interest a large portion of the country in our foreign policy adventures by putting their loved ones in harm's way, guess what! No more frivolous wars. In fact we probably wouldn't have fought any major conflicts since WWII.
The draft didn't prevent us from getting involved in Korea or Vietnam, so there goes that theory.
In fact I think a major reason we didn't roll straight from Iraq into Iran was because there was no way our volunteer army could handle it, and they couldn't simply draft more troops.
You remember that old hippy saying "What if they had a war, and nobody showed up?" Well that's what a volunteer army is like -- if nobody wants to go to war, nobody signs up, and there's no army to fight the war with. Granted the government makes military service financially appealing, especially to poor kids who couldn't afford college without a GI Bill grant. Unfortunate, but the end result is that they still have less cannon fodder than they would if they could simply grab them from the populace. And they would, make no mistake about it.
True enough. Though Time Killers was a great game in spite of its flaws, not a game whose flaws became a part of why the game was enjoyable.
I have to give it a lot of props just for not being a Street Fighter clone at a time when such were ubiquitous and universally crappy. Not only was Time Killers better than your average SF clone, it was more original. I really enjoyed touches like the way wounds would appear on your character when they got hit, and who didn't love walking up to their stunned opponent and proceeding to literally carve them into pieces? The way blood would spurt out of your shoulder stump when you tried to attack with a missing limb? Or having both arms lopped off and trying to kick and head butt the opponent to death for a "limbless victory"?
Unfortunately despite a lot of promise, poor and unresponsive controls are what kept it from becoming famous. All the characters felt awkward and slow. And it's the smoothness and responsivness of SFII that really made it a great game. So sadly, Time Killers isn't so bad its good, it's so good that what's bad about it is unforgivably bad.
In theory that's a great idea. In practice, Congress would just start writing laws on stationary that had "Enabled by the Commerce Clause" pre-printed at the bottom, since that's their catch-all for everything.
Oh I understood that part. I was simply responding to your argument ad absurdum of taking away all police tools capable of abuse so they have nothing but a whistle. Most police tools that can be abused can also be subject to oversight so we do not need to take those tools away.
And if you understand what was already said, that police installing spyware is only acceptable if a warrant is obtained first, and Checkpoint cannot distinguish between police spyware installed with a warrant and without, then the answer to this conundrum is obvious: Checkpoint must detect police spyware. The police may not have a tool that does not contain oversight. They may not install spyware without a warrant. If this makes installing spyware more difficult for them because anti-spyware will detect their tools, then tough, that's the way a free country works.
I'm against abuses of power too, but anything can be used to abuse power. If you take away 100% of the ability to abuse, you end up with policemen walking a beat with little more than a whistle to do their jobs! The trick is to recognize the potential, demand oversight and employ extremely strict punishment to prevent abuse so the tools are allowed to be used in a legal manner.
Yah, no kidding. That's why he said it was okay if they had a warrant, i.e. with court oversight. Those first two sentences comprise nothing but a strawman.
What are you doing posting on slashdot instead of fighting AIDS or Famine? Hypocrite.
For most Linux systems, GNU utilities comprise the most important core software after the kernel itself. Very few programs actually see the kernel, but almost all of them use libc. Calling the entire OS "GNU/Linux" makes as much sense as calling it "Linux", both referring only to core software that makes the system work, but of course I prefer "Linux" by itself for aesthetic and convenience reasons.
Obviously a Linux system without any GNU software would not be called GNU/Linux by RMS.
Which means GNU/Linux would be useful for distinguishing between such a GNU-free system and other Linuces. not that I'll be using it anyway.
How many civilians and true enemy combatants have been killed against the 4000 soldiers that have been lost? I would say the fighting strategy is extremely both ineffectual and inefficient against the U.S.
I'd say about 10-20x times that many guerilla fighters have been killed, which is perfectly normal for successfull guerilla campaigns, in fact if the conventional force has a kill ratio of less than 10 to 1 then they will almost certainly lose -- see Israel vs Hezbollah. Now also keep in mind that the guerillas in Iraq have not just been targeting U.S. forces, but also the nascent Iraqi police and army forces against which they have a much higher kill count. One suicide bomber taking out 50 police recruits spells bad news for a self-supporting Iraqi government.
It isn't efficient, and it requires long-term thinking because it isn't fast, but you had better believe it is effectual. We wouldn't even be talking about pulling troops from Iraq were it not for the insurgency. When we pull the troops out without the insurgency being defeated, they will -- correctly -- call it a victory.
Guerrilla fighting simply doesn't work.
Tell that to the Algerians. Or the Vietnamese. Guerilla tactics do work, history has shown this time and time again, in fact the only time they don't work is when the force they are fighting against is willing to use genocide as a counter-insurgency tactic. If the political will to do so isn't there, then eventually the guerillas will win. Not always, the guerillas can screw things up just as surely as the larger force can. But against a skilled and determined guerilla force, there's no military victory to be had, at least when you're invading in the name of Freedom.
Best case scenario it causes the U.S. to say it's not worth it to prevent further civil war so we leave and cut off all economic ties and impose sanctions so no other country will trade and then the country starves because they can't or perhaps simply won't be peaceful.
That's what we did when Saddam was in power, and it didn't stop other countries from trading with Iraq. Now, though, it seems likely that Iran is going to be the ally of whatever post-occupation government takes over, and Iran already laughs at our sanctions.
Perhaps in an optimal situation civil war wouldn't break out and the sides would come together without U.S. interference and then the secure region will prosper and the rest of the country will prosper and then the whole deal can be reintegrated.
The best case is that we leave, and the factions within Iraq join to fight the foreign forces that have been trying to play the two sides against each other and against us. Sunni militias have already started to join us in anti-al Qaeda operations, which gives me some hope for this idea that could possibly return some unity. But it isn't going to happen under occupation.
I must agree with the GP (to an extent). The feuds between factions in Iraq are very old. Some can be traced back to the time of Muhammad, others probably originate with somebody sleeping with someone else's wife thousands of years ago. Saddam only controlled the feuds by violent suppression. Take that away, and they all come back.
Saddam didn't control the feuds with violent suppression. Sure, he controlled the country that way and prevented any significant uprisings that way, but violent suppression is not going to cause a Sunni and Shia who otherwise would have killed each other to marry! And intermarriage was quite common, as were Sunnis and Shias working together and living together and Saddam didn't force them to do so. In other words, at least in Iraq, the Sunni/Shiite rift was not as inherently violent as you may now suppose.
In fact the sectarian violence that seems to define Iraq now, and which you may have predicted to occur as soon as Saddam was out of power, didn't really kick up significantly until 2006. That's when the cycle of killing--reprisal killing--re-reprisal killing took off, starting in particular with the bombing of the Shia mosque. Before that there had been what appeared to be targeted killings, but on a much smaller scale and more importantly without the violent reaction -- leaders of both sects urging calm and peace, not retribution, in an effort to not create a huge rift where there hadn't been before.
Now, though, things are much worse, and formerly integrated neighborhoods have become segregated because one sect or the other is too at risk from insurgents knocking on their doors. I've even seen photographs of Sunnis and Shiites signing over the deeds to their houses to each other so that they can move their families. The very fact that they can peacably cooperate to deal with this new terrible circumstance just shows that Iraq wasn't this way, and didn't have to be this way.
Ultimately I think both al Qaeda and Iran are responsible for causing this, each has significant reasons to want to create a rift between people in Iraq, both to get one sect or the other to align with them, and to disrupt our efforts in the country. And, yes, I put some blame on the U.S. planners in particular the Sec. of Defense for completely and utterly failing to predict or prepare to counter these influences.
Simple -- the nature of warfare has changed from full-fledged battles between the armies of nation-states to asymetrical warfare. Korea was a more or less traditional war. Vietnam was part traditional war, but mostly guerilla. Iraq I was simply an abberation -- a conventional military, but morale was so low on one side that the battle ended rapidly. The number of casualties in the actual full-on fighting in Iraq I and Iraq II were both quite high, but their durations were short. Now we're in the guerilla warfare phase of Iraq II, the slow bleeding phase, and of course it's going to kill less people per day than a conventional war. Just like guerilla warfare always has, because it isn't about massed armored assault and artillery barrages, it's about snipers picking off patrols one by one when the opportunity arises.
Really, the march of technology has not directly caused an increase or decrease in deaths, at least not in the large scale. What has changed is not the technology, but the politics. It's the nature of the wars, not the nature of the war machines, that has resulted in lower death counts.
So you see nothing wrong with being the standard bearer for "family values" and the "sanctity of marriage" and cheating on your wife?
Wrong? Sure. Hypocritical? Maybe in the strict definition of the word, but as the negative-connotation form, not really. To me, hypocrisy is not having a moral standard that you fail to live up to. To me, if your moral standard is such that you always abide by it, your moral standard is not challenging enough to be called morality.
To bring religion into this, I don't think Jesus ever called someone a hypocrite for merely failing to follow the moral example of Judaism.
You don't see anything particularly hypocritical about wanting Clinton to resign over an extramarital affair but doing the usual "I've been forgiven, so stay out of my family's business" tap dance when he's caught having one?
Now that to me is the essence of hypocrisy: To claim the ability to judge others for their moral transgressions when you yourself cannot live up to the same standard. To set oneself up as a moral authority when such is not deserved.
To quote Jesus: "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
So yes. Everyone who pointed their finger at Clinton and said he must pay for his sins, while they themselves have committed the same sin, was a huge fucking hypocrite.
What you may have meant is that proseletyzing and evangelizing aren't welcomed in schools because many Americans, including many Christian Americans, don't want those things in schools--they think that spiritual matters belong at home or in the church, not in the building kids go to to learn the three Rs.
Yeah, the modern form of "persecution" is "not allowed to shove their religion down the throats of everyone else". Enforcing separation of Church and State is "persecution".
The thing is that Christianity has built within it a strong concept of being Christian as a burden, and that one should remain devout even in the face of persecution and that doing so is a brave and spiritually uplifting thing to do. So many are desperate to have their "cross to bear" and claim they are persecuted. But of course when Christians are 85% of the population actual persecution is hard to come by. None of these people saying they're being persecuted have any idea what real persecution is like. Back when this concept of shouldering the burden of persecution was written about, admitting you were Christian could result in you being fed to the lions for the amusement of the Roman people. At various times and places throughout history Christians have also been persecuted -- like the U.S.S.R. Ironically the Separation Clause was written in part because of the various Protestant sects that were fleeing the oppression of the Church of England. But this was never the case in the United States, so now the 1st Ammendment is seen as an obstacle to creating a state religion, and that's "persecution".
I'm a Christian, and I've been persecuted more for being part Puerto Rican even though I don't really look it. The only "persecution" I've ever received is people who discover I'm Christian and assume I'm the kind of asshole who is going to try to shove my religion down their throats. Once they find out I'm not, I can usually even have religious discussions with no issues.
In my mind there's not much more pathetic than a male WASP whining about being persecuted.
but isn't pounds (as in lbs.) a measurement of weight
According to Wikipedia, "pounds" originally and still may refer to force (weight). However the "pound avoirdupois", avoirdupois being the system used in the United States, is defined to be a measure of mass.
And on that note, how is having 300 lbs (or mass-equivalent) less gear going to keep you from hopping off the moon into outerspace forever? Didn't the extra mass come in handy to keep people from flying away?
Escape velocity from the moon is 2.4 km/s. I don't think that merely weighing 1/6th as much as you do on earth would allow you to launch yourself at that speed. The astronauts would be able to leap even farther than they could in the bulky spacesuits, though.
I don't think it's unreasonable at all, for the reasons you point out.
On the other hand, I'm not going to call it GNU/Linux, I'm going to call it Linux simply for my own convenience. As far as I'm concerned, "Linux" as it is used today implies a GNU-based system.
It's full of restrictions, and restrictions are not free. Go ahead and try to deny that, you'll just make GWB jealous.
Haha. Okay, this will be easy. The 13th Ammendment restricts you from owning slaves. Therefore the 13th Ammendment made you less free? Or did it make everyone more free? In order to ensure that everyone is free, we must all be restricted from taking freedom from others. This is a simple principle.
GPLv2 was designed to make software users free by preventing anyone from taking away their freedom. The only restrictions GPLv3 adds are to close loopholes that allowed people distributing GPLv2 software to not grant the freedom to users that the GPLv is supposed to protect. If there was a legal loophole that still allowed for slavery, I hope you wouldn't consider closing it becoming less free.
The saddest part being that he possibly did by posting on the Yahoo! financial forums.
Honestly, I have never in my life seen a more concentrated pool of sheer idiocy and poor financial advice than what you see in those forums. There's only two groups of people who post there: Complete idiots, and people trying to game the stock market through lies and manipulation. And no, they aren't mutually exclusive groups.
Anyone who takes portfolio advice from the yahoo forums should have all their money taken away and given to me. What? I can dream can't I?
Considering the GPL starts with a non-legalese description of the moral philosophy behind the GPL, I find it hard to fathom how anyone could think the FSF was from the beginning "injecting their personal morality into the laws governing open source software". Duh, the whole existence of the Free Software movement and the GPL is due to RMS' moral views on software and the rights of users.
And while I may not agree completely with the language of GPLv3, it still seems perfectly consistant with the moral view that RMS has been expressing since the 80s. Every new thing in GPLv3 is there to try to close a loophole that allowed someone to not grant the rights RMS believes users should have. I have no idea how Linus can call them hypocrits. I was with him more when he was simply saying that it was misguided.
Linus is a smart guy, and he wisely avoids the morality/politics of the FSF most of the time. But he ain't perfect and his decisions to sacrifice principles for practicality can come back to bite him -- see Bitkeeper for a poignant example of how "choose the best tool for the job" but ignoring the license and how that affects the tool's usefulness is the wrong way to be pragmatic and apolitical.
You're kidding. It's listed for $538, more than double list.
It's not double list, because "list" for the console + 3 games + wiimote + nunchuck isn't $250, now is it?
But they have jacked up the price from when I got it, because at that time it was the same as buying a console, 3 games at $50, $40 wiimote and $20 nunchuck. Since I was getting nothing I wouldn't have bought individually anyway, the only extra cost for me was shipping and handling.
Now looking at it, they added brain age, defeating the "choice" aspect, and still jacked the price up besides. I'm not kidding, it used to be a good bundle.
And no, I don't need an extra controller.
You're weird, but okay. A friend who first pointed out the walmart bundle got it, and then returned the parts he didn't want to a walmart brick-and-mortar store, something you can't do with many other bundles. So that could be an option... or at least, would have been had they not bumped the price.
When Nintendo can get the supply up enough that I can buy it off the shelf without a ripoff bundle, then I'll get it.
I wouldn't hold my breath. I wanted to do the same thing but gave up after 6 months of calling every store in town. By the time increased manufacturing capacity affects their availability at retail, it'll be time for the holiday rush and then you can say goodbye to buying one until 2008 unless you like getting into brawls with soccer moms.
On the plus side, there will probably be more games in the used and discount bins.
Heh. Like those television adds that say "call in the next 20 minutes and we'll give you an extra bottle of Holyshit Sauce free!"
Wal-mart's website has a good bundle that lets you select what games and accessories you want rather than forcing a pre-selected crap pile on you. It comes with an extra wiimote -- you did want two controllers right? -- so getting another nunchuck makes sense, and then I got 3 games I would have bought if I'd gotten a wii at retail anyway. Check your favorite wii tracker to see if they have it in stock.
You didn't read Scenario #2. The killer was obviously guilty, and the evidence proved it regardless of the method of acquisition.
In the real world you don't get to declare that the truth is absolutely that the killer was guilty therefore any method of convicting them is valid. You are begging the question, saying that because the evidence proved the killer was guilty, the illegally obtained evidence was valid to prove that the killer was guilty. In reality, illegally obtained evidence is faulty evidence, and should be thrown out because it denies the accused of a fair trial. You cannot use an unfair trial to prove that the accused was guilty and therefore the trial was fair.
Also, in the reality of Scenario #2 the cop still wouldn't be punished significantly. Even if we increased the penalties, it wouldn't make the conviction of the accused fair.
The current system isn't broken, it is vastly superior to the one you propose in terms of protecting our rights.
You're kidding, right? Knowing that the criminal will walk free if they don't follow the procedure designed to protect the rights of the accused to a tee is the only reason the police don't perform illegal searches, beat confessions out of people, plant evidence, and basically do whatever the hell they want to get the person they think is guilty.
You think the threat of losing their job is a motivating factor? A police officer can subdue a suspect, handcuff them with their hands behind their back, sit on them, and then proceed to beat the crap out of them and get little more than reprimand. They won't get fired for violating procedure either. But having the creep walk free, laughing? That's motivation.
And once you've allowed the police to start violating procedure but maintain the conviction, how do you actually know that the evidence is accurate? The whole point of the 4th Ammendment and all of the procedures for evidence is not just to protect some hypothetical right to a fair trial, it's to ensure that the trial is actually fair and that the evidence is on the up-and-up. It's not like once you've "proven" the suspect is guilty that you can retro-actively deny them their right to a fair trial. A trial with illegally obtained evidence is an unfair trial.
I shudder to think of all the times someone could have been convicted based on illegal evidence in decades past, which would be fine with you, only to later have them exonerated by later valid evidence. This already happened many times with our current rules of evidence and the invention of DNA testing. It would be much, much worse if we allowed convictions based on illegal evidence to stand.