Um. No. Nobody in Iraq was well-treated except the inner echelon of the Baath party. It was a brutal, totalitarian state.
The US may be claiming that democracy is its goal, but few in the outside world believe that claim.
Twenty-six million Afghans believe it. According to Gallup, two out of three Iraqis believe it. We could give a shit about anybody else.
People see the occupiers as the 'bad guys' largely because they committed the supreme crime against international law - an unprovoked war of aggression.
1. What "international law" is that, exactly? You can't just make something up and call it "international law."
2. There was nothing unprovoked about it. If you believe that, you're ignorant of the period between 1991 and 2003.
3. There was nothing aggressive about it. Our military commanders wouldn't even let their subordinates fly American flags over secured areas.
Are the Iraqi resistance worse that the occupiers of Fallujah?
I don't recall any Coalition forces kidnapping people, torturing them and sawing off their heads, so I'm gonna say "yes."
The plan for Afganistan, in contrast, came from the CIA internally, who not so coincidently happened to have one.
Wow. I don't know how many ways to keep saying this: You are not telling the truth. You are either wrong or lying. The Afghanistan war plan came from CENTCOM, not from Langley. The exact same group of people, led by Gen. Franks and his J-2 and J-3, formulated both plans.
Are you just an idiot, or are you waging some sort of half-assed disinformation campaign?
Re:That's the way it should work.
on
Colin Powell Resigns
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Rumsfeld has a different view and does things like hand out promotions based on proper ideology as opposed to ability.
Kay, that's demonstrably false.
He pulled a bullshit plan to bring peace and democracy to Iraq from a nobody Colonel who suggested it could be done with as few as 50,000 troops.
Um. What? The plan (OPLAN 1003V) was based on the post-Desert Storm plan (OPLAN 1003) that had been sitting in a drawer for twelve years. When it became clear that Iraq wasn't going to comply with international disarmament demands and demands to stop supporting terrorism, the Secretary ordered CINCCENTCOM to dust off the plan and revise it based on lessons learned in Afghanistan. That's what he did, with the support of a staff of hundreds at CENTCOM headquarters in Florida. The revised plan called for troop levels of around 235,000 men.
So everything you said there was wrong. The only part you got write were the words "plan" and "Iraq."
With Iran, I think that they know that they need to at least secure a facility to enrich uranium against US munitions
That is a practical impossibility.
it's a far more sensible option for a totalitarian state drowning in revenue from $50 dollar a barrel oil.
Um. Iran has about $22 billion in foreign reserves. That's hardly "drowning."
Be honest. You really don't have the first clue about any of this stuff, do you?
Well, at least you didn't pull a Ted Rall and call her Bush's "house nigga." There's something to be said for being less of a shithead than the other guy.
Re:Has anything like this happened before?
on
Colin Powell Resigns
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Badnarik, Cobb, and Nader are gathering funding for a recount
Who?
(Yes, I'm being facetious. I think you understand my point, though, yes?)
the discrepancy between exit polls and actual results was larger than usual
The discrepancy between end-of-day exits and actual results was actually very small. The discrepancy between mid-day exits and actual results was exactly what you'd expect it to be: weighted toward the Democrats. Democrats vote early, you see. But even then, the differences were well within the margin of error.
So no, the 2004 presidential election was not remotely disputed.
You don't seem to be aware that she is currently position the National Security Advisor -- i.e., the person who should have known about 9/11 before it happened.
Kinda unclear about what NSA's job really is, huh?
Re:Has anything like this happened before?
on
Colin Powell Resigns
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· Score: 3, Insightful
A close/disputed election
The margin of victory this year was 34 votes. That's really not all that close. Compare to 2000. Also, this election was not remotely disputed.
with the administration massively changed between terms?
Cabinet-level officers serve at the pleasure of the president. They come and go frequently. Second-term Cabinets usually end up being very different from first-term Cabinets.
Is there any precedent for what we're seeing, and what did it mean last time?
There is extensive precedent, and all it means is that serving in the Cabinet is hard work.
Commander in Chief, US Central Command is a far more important position than SecDef right now. SecDef is an administrator who has very little to do with actual military planning. As a member of the NSC he has oversight, but he's not really involved in either the theater-level strategy or the execution.
Of course, from recent rumblings in Iran, it looks like CINCCENTCOM might get to take a little time off. The mullahs are making noises like they've extracted their heads from their asses and are making wise decisions. Whether it's all just a part of a new cheat-and-retreat strategy remains to be seen.
Which explains why it's tied to the filesystem rather than using a general hook at the vnode layer to allow the same functionality to be implemented regardless of the filesystem in use.
Wow. Check it out. Everything you said here is completely 100% wrong.
Spotlight is filesystem-independent. It runs as a set of daemons and stores its metadata database in a hidden directory called ".Metadata" at the root level of the volume.
All your "could be" talk is basically a summary of how Spotlight works.
For instance, I would bet that Boston (where I live) has a higher IQ then the middle of nowhere in Texas.
Only if you're talking about the sum, not the average.
Intelligence quotient --IQ --was originally conceived as a measure of raw potential, not of education. Testing it has always been problematic, but that's the idea.
If you think that Boston has a higher average IQ than, say, Midland, Texas, you're assuming that people who live in Boston are just naturally smarter. And there's absolutely no evidence to support that fact. It's just pure prejudice on your part, nasty and mean-spirited.
Um. No. Ova contain exactly half of the building blocks necessary to create a baby.
Ramming a coathanger into a 2nd trimester fetus is one thing - harvesting stem cells from an 8-week embryo is something else entirely.
Why?
It isn't a forgone conclusion that it's unethical.
No, it's not. Nor is it a foregone conclusion that it's ethical. It's a topic of debate. And while the jury is still out, it's wise to be conservative (pardon the choice of words) about it.
Government should only spend on those key areas where it is required (National Defense, for example), and it should spend within its means.
That's not a conservative value. That's a libertarian value. Be careful not to confuse them.
Government's power over the individual should be limited.
Um. That's not a conservative value either. In fact, that's not a value at all; it's a normative statement. I think what you might be getting at is that conservatives value personal responsibility and equality of opportunity. But if that's the case, then you should be soapboxing in favor of Bush, not against him.
Government should limit it's involvement in economic activity. It should try to stay out of the way of business, as much as possible.
True.
Fiscally, he cuts taxes, but then spends millions on social programs.
The alternative is to not cut taxes and spend millions on social programs. Abolishing welfare is not something we have the political will as a country to do right now.
Individually, we now have few rights than we have ever had.
That's blatantly false.
Economically, the President has subsidized thousands of individuals and companies that should have gone out of business (from Farmers to the Steel Industry to Airlines).
We subsidize farmers because we like cheap food. I don't want to pay four dollars for a potato. Do you? And if you'll recall Bush lifted the steel import tariffs. As for the airlines, what would you have done? Let the industry collapse in the wake of 9/11?
How would you define a conservative?
Conservatives believe in personal responsibility. Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Conservatives believe in strong foreign policy and in not compromising national sovereignty. Conservatives believe that small business is key to a healthy economy, and that the best way to attain prosperity is to cut taxes, and the best way out of a revenue shortfall is to grow our way out by stimulating the economy.
There's no way a conservative could ever look at John Kerry and see anything other than the opposite of all that.
No, it's much more complex than that. What you call "embryos" are actually zygotes, fertilized eggs that are frozen for possible future implantation.
Human embryonic stem cells are harvested from blastocysts, which are very young embryos. In order to turn a zygote in to a blastocyst you have to let it grow.
That's the key difference. Harvesting embryonic stem cells is, ethically, equivalent to letting a baby grow only to kill it and use it for experimentation.
Medical ethics is important. It's better to be overly cautious in the face of hard ethical questions to give time for the philosophers to catch up with the engineers.
Particularly in this case, since the results from tests involving embryonic stem cells have, to date, been so utterly dismal.
Wow. Only on Slashdot can a post that upbraids Bush for not being conservative enough and lauds Kerry for being "a strong leader" be given approval rather than being laughed off the page.
Do you even know what the word "conservative" means? Can you even name three conservative values?
My all-time favorite Semour Cray quote is this one, possibly apocryphal: "A supercomputer is a tool for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems."
Slashdot Mirror
"Captive?" You obviously haven't seen the videotape. Incidentally, John Kerry was decorated for doing exactly the same thing when he was in Vietnam.
We our really polite at times before killing people.
Your woeful mangling of our language notwithstanding, this is a uniquely American tradition that goes back a few years.
women were well treated
Um. No. Nobody in Iraq was well-treated except the inner echelon of the Baath party. It was a brutal, totalitarian state.
The US may be claiming that democracy is its goal, but few in the outside world believe that claim.
Twenty-six million Afghans believe it. According to Gallup, two out of three Iraqis believe it. We could give a shit about anybody else.
People see the occupiers as the 'bad guys' largely because they committed the supreme crime against international law - an unprovoked war of aggression.
1. What "international law" is that, exactly? You can't just make something up and call it "international law."
2. There was nothing unprovoked about it. If you believe that, you're ignorant of the period between 1991 and 2003.
3. There was nothing aggressive about it. Our military commanders wouldn't even let their subordinates fly American flags over secured areas.
Are the Iraqi resistance worse that the occupiers of Fallujah?
I don't recall any Coalition forces kidnapping people, torturing them and sawing off their heads, so I'm gonna say "yes."
No more lies, please. Speak truth or shut up.
You could do a better job of being informed.
Given (1) what we're talking about and (2) what I do every day, I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that you're mistaken about that.
The plan for Afganistan, in contrast, came from the CIA internally, who not so coincidently happened to have one.
Wow. I don't know how many ways to keep saying this: You are not telling the truth. You are either wrong or lying. The Afghanistan war plan came from CENTCOM, not from Langley. The exact same group of people, led by Gen. Franks and his J-2 and J-3, formulated both plans.
Are you just an idiot, or are you waging some sort of half-assed disinformation campaign?
Rumsfeld has a different view and does things like hand out promotions based on proper ideology as opposed to ability.
Kay, that's demonstrably false.
He pulled a bullshit plan to bring peace and democracy to Iraq from a nobody Colonel who suggested it could be done with as few as 50,000 troops.
Um. What? The plan (OPLAN 1003V) was based on the post-Desert Storm plan (OPLAN 1003) that had been sitting in a drawer for twelve years. When it became clear that Iraq wasn't going to comply with international disarmament demands and demands to stop supporting terrorism, the Secretary ordered CINCCENTCOM to dust off the plan and revise it based on lessons learned in Afghanistan. That's what he did, with the support of a staff of hundreds at CENTCOM headquarters in Florida. The revised plan called for troop levels of around 235,000 men.
So everything you said there was wrong. The only part you got write were the words "plan" and "Iraq."
With Iran, I think that they know that they need to at least secure a facility to enrich uranium against US munitions
That is a practical impossibility.
it's a far more sensible option for a totalitarian state drowning in revenue from $50 dollar a barrel oil.
Um. Iran has about $22 billion in foreign reserves. That's hardly "drowning."
Be honest. You really don't have the first clue about any of this stuff, do you?
Well, at least you didn't pull a Ted Rall and call her Bush's "house nigga." There's something to be said for being less of a shithead than the other guy.
Badnarik, Cobb, and Nader are gathering funding for a recount
Who?
(Yes, I'm being facetious. I think you understand my point, though, yes?)
the discrepancy between exit polls and actual results was larger than usual
The discrepancy between end-of-day exits and actual results was actually very small. The discrepancy between mid-day exits and actual results was exactly what you'd expect it to be: weighted toward the Democrats. Democrats vote early, you see. But even then, the differences were well within the margin of error.
So no, the 2004 presidential election was not remotely disputed.
You don't seem to be aware that she is currently position the National Security Advisor -- i.e., the person who should have known about 9/11 before it happened.
Kinda unclear about what NSA's job really is, huh?
A close/disputed election
The margin of victory this year was 34 votes. That's really not all that close. Compare to 2000. Also, this election was not remotely disputed.
with the administration massively changed between terms?
Cabinet-level officers serve at the pleasure of the president. They come and go frequently. Second-term Cabinets usually end up being very different from first-term Cabinets.
Is there any precedent for what we're seeing, and what did it mean last time?
There is extensive precedent, and all it means is that serving in the Cabinet is hard work.
Commander in Chief, US Central Command is a far more important position than SecDef right now. SecDef is an administrator who has very little to do with actual military planning. As a member of the NSC he has oversight, but he's not really involved in either the theater-level strategy or the execution.
Of course, from recent rumblings in Iran, it looks like CINCCENTCOM might get to take a little time off. The mullahs are making noises like they've extracted their heads from their asses and are making wise decisions. Whether it's all just a part of a new cheat-and-retreat strategy remains to be seen.
I have a volume with nothing on it except 60 GB of AAC files. The metadata folder for that volume is 14 MB.
Which explains why it's tied to the filesystem rather than using a general hook at the vnode layer to allow the same functionality to be implemented regardless of the filesystem in use.
Wow. Check it out. Everything you said here is completely 100% wrong.
Spotlight is filesystem-independent. It runs as a set of daemons and stores its metadata database in a hidden directory called ".Metadata" at the root level of the volume.
All your "could be" talk is basically a summary of how Spotlight works.
I mean, the thing is only going to appeal to pregnant women and George W Bush supporters ...
Wow. They're going to make a fortune.
For instance, I would bet that Boston (where I live) has a higher IQ then the middle of nowhere in Texas.
Only if you're talking about the sum, not the average.
Intelligence quotient --IQ --was originally conceived as a measure of raw potential, not of education. Testing it has always been problematic, but that's the idea.
If you think that Boston has a higher average IQ than, say, Midland, Texas, you're assuming that people who live in Boston are just naturally smarter. And there's absolutely no evidence to support that fact. It's just pure prejudice on your part, nasty and mean-spirited.
Third. Kerry got 53,692,218 votes. In 1984, Ronald Reagan got 54,455,472.
This one was de-bunked by 1:30 this morning. It's a bullet-proof vest.
One of these days, Im going to get fairly active in politics, probably libertarian.
If that's not a textbook example of irony, I've never seen one.
So does my load on a petri dish full of ova.
Um. No. Ova contain exactly half of the building blocks necessary to create a baby.
Ramming a coathanger into a 2nd trimester fetus is one thing - harvesting stem cells from an 8-week embryo is something else entirely.
Why?
It isn't a forgone conclusion that it's unethical.
No, it's not. Nor is it a foregone conclusion that it's ethical. It's a topic of debate. And while the jury is still out, it's wise to be conservative (pardon the choice of words) about it.
For those Slashdotters who don't know, a blastocyst is a ball of undifferentiated cells.
No, the cells in a blastocyst are not undifferentiated. That's how we can get stem cells from them.
Government should only spend on those key areas where it is required (National Defense, for example), and it should spend within its means.
That's not a conservative value. That's a libertarian value. Be careful not to confuse them.
Government's power over the individual should be limited.
Um. That's not a conservative value either. In fact, that's not a value at all; it's a normative statement. I think what you might be getting at is that conservatives value personal responsibility and equality of opportunity. But if that's the case, then you should be soapboxing in favor of Bush, not against him.
Government should limit it's involvement in economic activity. It should try to stay out of the way of business, as much as possible.
True.
Fiscally, he cuts taxes, but then spends millions on social programs.
The alternative is to not cut taxes and spend millions on social programs. Abolishing welfare is not something we have the political will as a country to do right now.
Individually, we now have few rights than we have ever had.
That's blatantly false.
Economically, the President has subsidized thousands of individuals and companies that should have gone out of business (from Farmers to the Steel Industry to Airlines).
We subsidize farmers because we like cheap food. I don't want to pay four dollars for a potato. Do you? And if you'll recall Bush lifted the steel import tariffs. As for the airlines, what would you have done? Let the industry collapse in the wake of 9/11?
How would you define a conservative?
Conservatives believe in personal responsibility. Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Conservatives believe in strong foreign policy and in not compromising national sovereignty. Conservatives believe that small business is key to a healthy economy, and that the best way to attain prosperity is to cut taxes, and the best way out of a revenue shortfall is to grow our way out by stimulating the economy.
There's no way a conservative could ever look at John Kerry and see anything other than the opposite of all that.
Balanced Budget.
No, that's not a conservative value. That's an economic policy goal, and it's one that not all conservatives agree about.
Protecting American Jobs
No, that's the opposite of the conservative position. Conservatives are for open markets and free trade.
Not being involved in needless foreign wars.
Careful. Your biases are showing.
No, it's much more complex than that. What you call "embryos" are actually zygotes, fertilized eggs that are frozen for possible future implantation.
Human embryonic stem cells are harvested from blastocysts, which are very young embryos. In order to turn a zygote in to a blastocyst you have to let it grow.
That's the key difference. Harvesting embryonic stem cells is, ethically, equivalent to letting a baby grow only to kill it and use it for experimentation.
Medical ethics is important. It's better to be overly cautious in the face of hard ethical questions to give time for the philosophers to catch up with the engineers.
Particularly in this case, since the results from tests involving embryonic stem cells have, to date, been so utterly dismal.
Wow. Only on Slashdot can a post that upbraids Bush for not being conservative enough and lauds Kerry for being "a strong leader" be given approval rather than being laughed off the page.
Do you even know what the word "conservative" means? Can you even name three conservative values?
My all-time favorite Semour Cray quote is this one, possibly apocryphal: "A supercomputer is a tool for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems."