As someone who would actually like to see wildlife and the environment preserved for this and future generations; the gun nuts, and their "let's save it now, so I can kill it later" brand of 'conservation', are allies I would happily do without.
> Many of our founding fathers literally equated taxation > without permission as THEFT...
Nope.
You've confused "permission" with representation. In fact, one of the more famous undertakings of George Washington's administration was when he put down the "whiskey rebellion", a violent insurrection staged by Pennsylvanian farmers and distillers over a tax on alcohol.
Eh, The AC above is somewhat off base, but he's still right.
I'm studying Japanese in school myself. I'm still very much a beginner, but have a good grasp of, at least, the structure of the language. Akintayo DOESN'T translate nicely into anything in either of my 111 or 112 texts. And it appears that the AC's translation came from one of those babelfish-type sites. Toss in a couple of mindless cut-and-pastes from wikipedia (It was actually the intruding gaijin that were killed under Tokugawa, not whatever hapless Japanese who came into contact with them.), and presto, instant flame.
But what I CAN do, pretty much without fail, is recognize nihongo that's been transliterated into romaji. And the AC's defiantly right there.
And just because my low-level texts don't have the real meaning of akintayo, doesn't mean it isn't there, in a higher-level vocabulary. In fact, the fact that those translation engines DO work, even if they work badly*, does suggest that the AC, though something of an asshole, IS ultimately right.
* The one included with OS X's Sherlock returns: "It is to open it is".
> Fact: Shatner is too old to play Kirk in the Enterprise timeline > without some serious higgledy-piggledy with said timeline.
> Probability: Yet Another Time Travel Adventure! YATTA!
But there *IS* a nice in-continuity answer. And, yes, it does involve time-travel.
Remember the episode of DS9 where they go back in time to "The Trouble With Tribbles"? When Sisko was explaining themselves to those "temporal investigation" guys, remember the recoil when Sisko mentioned Kirk's name? Kirk apparently held the record for the number of "temporal incursions". I remember seeing a website, once, where somebody went through all the episodes and movies, counted the time travel incidents, and came up well short of the figure in DS9. So there's PLENTY of opportunity for Shatner, and the 1701 to pay a visit to Dr. Beckett.
And Shatner has long since hit the point where old people don't get older, they just get fatter instead. He looks, now, like a kind of chunky version of Kirk, circa ST5 or ST6.
Non-competes are frequently bunk anyway. They're illegal in some states; unenforceable in others; and rarely, if ever, enforced in still more. Mostly, they're there to intimidate the ignorant or unresourceful.
A cursory google would seem to indicate that Minnesota is one of the states that allow non-competes to be enforced. But all he really has to do is move to California or Texas (What do you suppose the odds are that WD could use him in one or the other or either?).
Both states forbid pretty much all non-competes. And the courts in both are fairly famous for telling out-of-staters to buzz off when they try to harass local workers over these sorts of things.
Lets say you *DO* relocate to somewhere in BFE for that "good job"....
And then the company goes belly-up (like my last few tech jobs), or the company does another round of layoffs, or it's just not the job for you.
Unless you had a seriously kickass savings (which wasn't even usually true BEFORE we all started dipping into them to tide us through these doldrums), you're now *TRAPPED*, out in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, in a one-company town, with little chance of escape, and few or no options.
Whereas by staying in San Francisco; by not running away in failure, by riding the recession out here; yeah, I'm stretching it on a low-paying "survival job". But once things get back to normal, I'll be right back in the middle of things, and I'll have the freedom to take a chance on a job that might not work out. And if I DO pick another sub-par company, a new job will be waiting for me a five-minute walk down the block.
AND, aside from some of the fancier clubs and restaurants I don't frequent on my current budget, I get to keep most of the rest of the advantages of living in The City; and that's something that's hard to put a price on, but very VERY valuable.
I SOOOO almost want to like Firefly. It had some good concepts, some pretty good acting (except for the part of Mal "I'm so desperately trying to be Harrison Ford, but failing at every opportunity" Reynolds), some excellent writing, and it actually acknowledged that some people might speak something other than English in space. (I particularly liked how they would just swear in french or Mandarin, to get around the prissy fucks at the FCC.)
My roommates have actually developed a fascination with the show, and have its whole run on a couple of bootleg DVDs. I keep ALMOST getting sucked in. I keep ALMOST wanting to sit down and watch the whole damn thing with them......... EXCEPT for the fact that Joss Whedon feels the need to continually hit us over the head with the fact that his favorite episode of Star Trek was obviously the one where Kirk and company get sent back in time to the gunfight at the OK Corral! I keep ALMOST settling in, and enjoying Firefly as some pretty good SciFi, when Whedon shatters the whole suspension of disbelief thing, and shunts into "cows in space"... over and over and over again! It's enough to make me want to throw rotten produce at the TV!
Ugh... Forget that damn episode of Star Trek, for fucks sake, and make a SCIENCE FICTION show!
Oh yeah... one other thing that jolts me right out of SciFi land... the score... and ESPECIALLY that opening theme. They're worse than the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. They're so horribly, stupendously bad, that even that wretched opening theme to Enterprise is lofty and inspirational by comparison. Here's to hoping that, with a motion picture budget, they can actually afford John Williams, or at least Jerry Goldsmith.
Glaring errors, to be sure, but as good as Buffy and Angel turned out; it's too bad that Firefly wasn't given some more time to be fixed and hit it's stride.
"Tax Evasion" is what the government busts you for when the government is too incompetent to make the real charges stick (For example, it's what Al Capone actually went to prison for.), or if they don't want to go through the bother, or if what you REALLY did "wrong" is too embarrassing, inconvenient, or not actually illegal.
> do you seriously not care that he was building a cannon for > saddam hussein
Look up the name "Wernher Von Braun" sometime. Probably more than anyone else except JFK, he is responsible for man going to the moon, and much of the space program we take for granted. In fact, the US space program didn't really start to go south, until after we quit relying on Von Braun's rockets, and went with that air-force-addled clusterfuck that is the space shuttle.
Now, for the final Jeopardy answer:
Wernher Von Braun worked for him before moving to America.
The thing is, while some of us don't mind variety in flavor, we mind a variety in QUALITY.
No, Starbucks isn't the best coffee around.... far from it even. Just off the top of my head, I can come up with a number of local coffee shops (which are doing quite well, Starbucks conspiracy theorists' theories aside) that offer a better cup of coffee. OTOH, I can also think of more than that which serve undrinkable swill that's worse than the worst Starbucks on its worst day.
Having lived in The City for about half a decade, I know where the superior coffee shops are (Though my favorite is actually across The Bay, in Berkeley.). I also know which ones to avoid. This knowledge comes partly from recommendations, partly from trial and error.
In a strange city/town, I don't know where the superior coffee shops are. And there are nine places that serve swill for every one that IS better than Starbucks. So, if I don't know my way around, and I don't plan on being there often/long enough to GET to know my way around.... guess where I go?
Bullshit like this (And similar examples, like the french military intruding on 802.11's frequencies) is why spectrum allocation should be taken away from individual government bureaucracies (like the FCC and its ilk), and placed into the hands of an international body. I'm of the opinion that IEEE would be ideal, since they're the body that confirms many of these standards in the first place.
And that "must accept any interference" clause should be outlawed. There should be no fscking interference in the first place. The military should stay on it's own damn part of the spectrum, and stay the hell OUT of everyone else's. Severe economic and political sanctions should be set in place for violating countries.
The thing is, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find cellphones without cameras built in. At the same time, more and more employers are asking that you carry a cellphone. See where this is going?
Myself, I don't have a camera-phone (yet) because the quality on the things is sub-par compared to my dedicated camera. My next phone probably WILL have a camera on it though, because, by then, it'll probably be standard even on the free/cheap phone that you get for renewing your contract.
And, quite frankly, pinheaded control-freak bureaucrats should not be allowed to slow the wheels of progress, simply because they have a corncob up their ass about "policy".
> Even the president and the GOP aren't taking it seriously.
The shrub itself may not have mentioned it publicly. But so far, he's had his minions:
1) Try to prevent F-9/1 from being distributed AT ALL.
2) Try to pressure theatre chains into not showing it.
3) Try to have advertisements for f-9/11 outlawed.
The conservatives appear to be absolutely DESPERATE to prevent people from seeing this film. Moore already has to travel with bodyguards, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's been receiving death threats. These aren't exactly the actions of people who "aren't taking it seriously".
cya, john
Re:To make a boot CD, some apps need a floppy driv
on
Apple Delays New iMac
·
· Score: 1
> Then how does one create a bootable CD?
1) Drag a valid system folder onto the CD image.
2) Burn CD
Of course, making a bootable OS X CD is a bit more involved... not by much though. But when the iMac first came out there WAS no OS X yet, so that didn't really matter. The above two steps were all you ever needed.
... despite the sheer bastardry of many of the cellular carriers, it's actually CHEAPER, in many instances, to own and use a cell phone than a landline; the landline carrier, in many locales being a monopoly with no incentive to be competitive, and all.
Where *I* live, there's ONE option for landline service. And if you don't like SBC, well too fucking bad. You're stuck with them, or you do without a phone. But just off the top of my head, I have SEVEN wireless options, all scrambling with each other for my business.
*MY* cellular plan is only $5/month more than what it would cost for me to have my own landline, and I get the added convenience of taking my phone with me wherever I go. And if I'm in a restaurant or theater, or simply don't want to be reached; I just put it on silent mode.
And when I do lots of long-distance calling to out-of-town friends and family, the wireless is actually CHEAPER. (Long distance is included with my airtime.)
It's an "Eastpak" grey canvas backpack that looks, on the outside, like any other generic backpack that'd otherwise just have schoolbooks and the like in it. But on the inside, there's a reinforced and padded sleeve for a laptop to be fastened into. It's served me well, both with and without the iBook inside, for almost four years now.
Substitute "breaking the law" in the parent post with: "behaving like a scumbag without the slightest shred of ethics or responsibility", and his point still stands.
You know what you and your compatriots are doing is wrong, wether it's actually illegal or not. You just don't care.
I have moved, actually. Many times. The events described took place years ago, when I was still a teenager.
Nowadays, I live in San Francisco; so skating is not much of an option. While I'd, no doubt, get quite the good workout going UP the hills here; going DOWN those beasts on my 'blades would be near-suicidal.
Skate parks are all well and good if all you are is a "trick" skater. But we weren't, really. We did the occasional jump over/through that $obstacle but most of our friendly competition was more along the lines of race from here to there... which brings up the second point:
Skate parks are completely, utterly, useless, if part of your reason for skating is to get from point $a to point $b; which was more than a small part of the reason for us.
(Disclaimer: I'm talking about 'blading in this post, not 'boarding.... that's just the kind of skating we got into.)
Yeah.... that's one that never ceased to baffle the fuck out of me. My friends and I used to skate everywhere and all the time. It was our primary way of getting around town. It was our way of getting exercise (And at the hight of our skating days, we really were in EXCELLENT shape.). It was a good way of socializing. And it was an avenue for some friendly competition. It was good, clean, HEALTHY, and harmless fun.
And we got no end of harassment from the pigs because of it.
I mean... WTF... would they prefer that we went home, sat on our asses, and played video games and did drugs? (Which was what we wound up doing, sometimes, when we'd get busted for skating. But that was usually the last choice after getting hassled more than a couple of times a day/night for skating.) Well, I guess so... that would give the pigs a chance to bust us "punk kids" for more than skating. But talk about some mixed fucking messages.
... but in the first "Rainbow Six" game, the bad guys were an organization of "eco-terrorists" that infiltrated a "good old american" biotech corporation, and used its facilities to create a virus that would destroy humanity so nature could be saved.
A plot like that is nothing, is not lifted from some right-wing propaganda rag.
The stink of the whole thing is, that dow only is the shrub a crook and a liar, he's an INCOMPETENT crook and liar.
If Nixon, or even Reagan, were running that show, we'd have found WMDs by now. That's not to say that they would have been in Iraq when we invaded, but we would have "found" them by now. The shrub isn't even competent at being the fraud that he is.
More recently in The Final Fantasy series, Square has portrayed the "peaceful, kind, gentle, treehuging" nation (Beville/Yevon) as corrupt to the core; and, in fact, as the original aggressor against the industrial nation (Zanarkand, the great machina city).
Not only that, but the surviving technological nation (the Al Bhed) is presented as being FAR more noble than the dominant anti-technology, "back to nature" one.
Slashdot Mirror
Ya know...
As someone who would actually like to see wildlife and the environment preserved for this and future generations; the gun nuts, and their "let's save it now, so I can kill it later" brand of 'conservation', are allies I would happily do without.
cya,
john
> Many of our founding fathers literally equated taxation
> without permission as THEFT...
Nope.
You've confused "permission" with representation. In fact, one of the more famous undertakings of George Washington's administration was when he put down the "whiskey rebellion", a violent insurrection staged by Pennsylvanian farmers and distillers over a tax on alcohol.
cya,
john
Eh, The AC above is somewhat off base, but he's still right.
I'm studying Japanese in school myself. I'm still very much a beginner, but have a good grasp of, at least, the structure of the language. Akintayo DOESN'T translate nicely into anything in either of my 111 or 112 texts. And it appears that the AC's translation came from one of those babelfish-type sites. Toss in a couple of mindless cut-and-pastes from wikipedia (It was actually the intruding gaijin that were killed under Tokugawa, not whatever hapless Japanese who came into contact with them.), and presto, instant flame.
But what I CAN do, pretty much without fail, is recognize nihongo that's been transliterated into romaji. And the AC's defiantly right there.
And just because my low-level texts don't have the real meaning of akintayo, doesn't mean it isn't there, in a higher-level vocabulary. In fact, the fact that those translation engines DO work, even if they work badly*, does suggest that the AC, though something of an asshole, IS ultimately right.
* The one included with OS X's Sherlock returns: "It is to open it is".
cya,
john
> Fact: Shatner is too old to play Kirk in the Enterprise timeline
> without some serious higgledy-piggledy with said timeline.
> Probability: Yet Another Time Travel Adventure! YATTA!
But there *IS* a nice in-continuity answer. And, yes, it does involve time-travel.
Remember the episode of DS9 where they go back in time to "The Trouble With Tribbles"? When Sisko was explaining themselves to those "temporal investigation" guys, remember the recoil when Sisko mentioned Kirk's name? Kirk apparently held the record for the number of "temporal incursions". I remember seeing a website, once, where somebody went through all the episodes and movies, counted the time travel incidents, and came up well short of the figure in DS9. So there's PLENTY of opportunity for Shatner, and the 1701 to pay a visit to Dr. Beckett.
And Shatner has long since hit the point where old people don't get older, they just get fatter instead. He looks, now, like a kind of chunky version of Kirk, circa ST5 or ST6.
cya,
john
A cursory google would seem to indicate that Minnesota is one of the states that allow non-competes to be enforced. But all he really has to do is move to California or Texas (What do you suppose the odds are that WD could use him in one or the other or either?).
Both states forbid pretty much all non-competes. And the courts in both are fairly famous for telling out-of-staters to buzz off when they try to harass local workers over these sorts of things.
cya,
john
Lets say you *DO* relocate to somewhere in BFE for that "good job"....
And then the company goes belly-up (like my last few tech jobs), or the company does another round of layoffs, or it's just not the job for you.
Unless you had a seriously kickass savings (which wasn't even usually true BEFORE we all started dipping into them to tide us through these doldrums), you're now *TRAPPED*, out in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, in a one-company town, with little chance of escape, and few or no options.
Whereas by staying in San Francisco; by not running away in failure, by riding the recession out here; yeah, I'm stretching it on a low-paying "survival job". But once things get back to normal, I'll be right back in the middle of things, and I'll have the freedom to take a chance on a job that might not work out. And if I DO pick another sub-par company, a new job will be waiting for me a five-minute walk down the block.
AND, aside from some of the fancier clubs and restaurants I don't frequent on my current budget, I get to keep most of the rest of the advantages of living in The City; and that's something that's hard to put a price on, but very VERY valuable.
cya,
john
I SOOOO almost want to like Firefly. It had some good concepts, some pretty good acting (except for the part of Mal "I'm so desperately trying to be Harrison Ford, but failing at every opportunity" Reynolds), some excellent writing, and it actually acknowledged that some people might speak something other than English in space. (I particularly liked how they would just swear in french or Mandarin, to get around the prissy fucks at the FCC.)
..... EXCEPT for the fact that Joss Whedon feels the need to continually hit us over the head with the fact that his favorite episode of Star Trek was obviously the one where Kirk and company get sent back in time to the gunfight at the OK Corral! I keep ALMOST settling in, and enjoying Firefly as some pretty good SciFi, when Whedon shatters the whole suspension of disbelief thing, and shunts into "cows in space"... over and over and over again! It's enough to make me want to throw rotten produce at the TV!
My roommates have actually developed a fascination with the show, and have its whole run on a couple of bootleg DVDs. I keep ALMOST getting sucked in. I keep ALMOST wanting to sit down and watch the whole damn thing with them....
Ugh... Forget that damn episode of Star Trek, for fucks sake, and make a SCIENCE FICTION show!
Oh yeah... one other thing that jolts me right out of SciFi land... the score... and ESPECIALLY that opening theme. They're worse than the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. They're so horribly, stupendously bad, that even that wretched opening theme to Enterprise is lofty and inspirational by comparison. Here's to hoping that, with a motion picture budget, they can actually afford John Williams, or at least Jerry Goldsmith.
Glaring errors, to be sure, but as good as Buffy and Angel turned out; it's too bad that Firefly wasn't given some more time to be fixed and hit it's stride.
cya,
john
> I'd hardly call Aliens a "testosterone-fest" considering the
> main character is a woman.
Well, you have to admit, she *IS* rather mannish.
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)
cya,
john
Bah....
"Tax Evasion" is what the government busts you for when the government is too incompetent to make the real charges stick (For example, it's what Al Capone actually went to prison for.), or if they don't want to go through the bother, or if what you REALLY did "wrong" is too embarrassing, inconvenient, or not actually illegal.
cya,
john
> do you seriously not care that he was building a cannon for
> saddam hussein
Look up the name "Wernher Von Braun" sometime. Probably more than anyone else except JFK, he is responsible for man going to the moon, and much of the space program we take for granted. In fact, the US space program didn't really start to go south, until after we quit relying on Von Braun's rockets, and went with that air-force-addled clusterfuck that is the space shuttle.
Now, for the final Jeopardy answer:
Wernher Von Braun worked for him before moving to America.
cya,
john
The thing is, while some of us don't mind variety in flavor, we mind a variety in QUALITY.
No, Starbucks isn't the best coffee around.... far from it even. Just off the top of my head, I can come up with a number of local coffee shops (which are doing quite well, Starbucks conspiracy theorists' theories aside) that offer a better cup of coffee. OTOH, I can also think of more than that which serve undrinkable swill that's worse than the worst Starbucks on its worst day.
Having lived in The City for about half a decade, I know where the superior coffee shops are (Though my favorite is actually across The Bay, in Berkeley.). I also know which ones to avoid. This knowledge comes partly from recommendations, partly from trial and error.
In a strange city/town, I don't know where the superior coffee shops are. And there are nine places that serve swill for every one that IS better than Starbucks. So, if I don't know my way around, and I don't plan on being there often/long enough to GET to know my way around.... guess where I go?
cya,
john
Bullshit like this (And similar examples, like the french military intruding on 802.11's frequencies) is why spectrum allocation should be taken away from individual government bureaucracies (like the FCC and its ilk), and placed into the hands of an international body. I'm of the opinion that IEEE would be ideal, since they're the body that confirms many of these standards in the first place.
And that "must accept any interference" clause should be outlawed. There should be no fscking interference in the first place. The military should stay on it's own damn part of the spectrum, and stay the hell OUT of everyone else's. Severe economic and political sanctions should be set in place for violating countries.
cya,
john
The thing is, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find cellphones without cameras built in. At the same time, more and more employers are asking that you carry a cellphone. See where this is going?
Myself, I don't have a camera-phone (yet) because the quality on the things is sub-par compared to my dedicated camera. My next phone probably WILL have a camera on it though, because, by then, it'll probably be standard even on the free/cheap phone that you get for renewing your contract.
And, quite frankly, pinheaded control-freak bureaucrats should not be allowed to slow the wheels of progress, simply because they have a corncob up their ass about "policy".
cya,
john
> Even the president and the GOP aren't taking it seriously.
The shrub itself may not have mentioned it publicly. But so far, he's had his minions:
1)
Try to prevent F-9/1 from being distributed AT ALL.
2)
Try to pressure theatre chains into not showing it.
3)
Try to have advertisements for f-9/11 outlawed.
The conservatives appear to be absolutely DESPERATE to prevent people from seeing this film. Moore already has to travel with bodyguards, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's been receiving death threats. These aren't exactly the actions of people who "aren't taking it seriously".
cya,
john
> Then how does one create a bootable CD?
1)
Drag a valid system folder onto the CD image.
2)
Burn CD
Of course, making a bootable OS X CD is a bit more involved... not by much though. But when the iMac first came out there WAS no OS X yet, so that didn't really matter. The above two steps were all you ever needed.
cya,
john
... despite the sheer bastardry of many of the cellular carriers, it's actually CHEAPER, in many instances, to own and use a cell phone than a landline; the landline carrier, in many locales being a monopoly with no incentive to be competitive, and all.
Where *I* live, there's ONE option for landline service. And if you don't like SBC, well too fucking bad. You're stuck with them, or you do without a phone. But just off the top of my head, I have SEVEN wireless options, all scrambling with each other for my business.
*MY* cellular plan is only $5/month more than what it would cost for me to have my own landline, and I get the added convenience of taking my phone with me wherever I go. And if I'm in a restaurant or theater, or simply don't want to be reached; I just put it on silent mode.
And when I do lots of long-distance calling to out-of-town friends and family, the wireless is actually CHEAPER. (Long distance is included with my airtime.)
cya,,
john
I actually got mine at Target for $30.
It's an "Eastpak" grey canvas backpack that looks, on the outside, like any other generic backpack that'd otherwise just have schoolbooks and the like in it. But on the inside, there's a reinforced and padded sleeve for a laptop to be fastened into. It's served me well, both with and without the iBook inside, for almost four years now.
cya,
john
> people in the military, nearly all would hesitate before killing
> Americans.
Two words that prove you're wrong:
Kent State
cya,
john
Substitute "breaking the law" in the parent post with: "behaving like a scumbag without the slightest shred of ethics or responsibility", and his point still stands.
You know what you and your compatriots are doing is wrong, wether it's actually illegal or not. You just don't care.
cya,
john
> Perhaps you should move?
I have moved, actually. Many times. The events described took place years ago, when I was still a teenager.
Nowadays, I live in San Francisco; so skating is not much of an option. While I'd, no doubt, get quite the good workout going UP the hills here; going DOWN those beasts on my 'blades would be near-suicidal.
cya,
john
Skate parks are all well and good if all you are is a "trick" skater. But we weren't, really. We did the occasional jump over/through that $obstacle but most of our friendly competition was more along the lines of race from here to there... which brings up the second point:
Skate parks are completely, utterly, useless, if part of your reason for skating is to get from point $a to point $b; which was more than a small part of the reason for us.
cya,
john
Yeah.... that's one that never ceased to baffle the fuck out of me. My friends and I used to skate everywhere and all the time. It was our primary way of getting around town. It was our way of getting exercise (And at the hight of our skating days, we really were in EXCELLENT shape.). It was a good way of socializing. And it was an avenue for some friendly competition. It was good, clean, HEALTHY, and harmless fun.
And we got no end of harassment from the pigs because of it.
I mean... WTF... would they prefer that we went home, sat on our asses, and played video games and did drugs? (Which was what we wound up doing, sometimes, when we'd get busted for skating. But that was usually the last choice after getting hassled more than a couple of times a day/night for skating.) Well, I guess so... that would give the pigs a chance to bust us "punk kids" for more than skating. But talk about some mixed fucking messages.
cya,
john
... but in the first "Rainbow Six" game, the bad guys were an organization of "eco-terrorists" that infiltrated a "good old american" biotech corporation, and used its facilities to create a virus that would destroy humanity so nature could be saved.
A plot like that is nothing, is not lifted from some right-wing propaganda rag.
The stink of the whole thing is, that dow only is the shrub a crook and a liar, he's an INCOMPETENT crook and liar.
If Nixon, or even Reagan, were running that show, we'd have found WMDs by now. That's not to say that they would have been in Iraq when we invaded, but we would have "found" them by now. The shrub isn't even competent at being the fraud that he is.
cya,
john
More recently in The Final Fantasy series, Square has portrayed the "peaceful, kind, gentle, treehuging" nation (Beville/Yevon) as corrupt to the core; and, in fact, as the original aggressor against the industrial nation (Zanarkand, the great machina city).
Not only that, but the surviving technological nation (the Al Bhed) is presented as being FAR more noble than the dominant anti-technology, "back to nature" one.
cya,
john