Kodak has lost more than that by infringing one patent. They were the loser in the largest patent lawsuit the world has ever seen, Polaroid v Kodak.
Polaroid had a patent on instant film development, yet they waited to file their lawsuit until Kodak had built new factories to build instant cameras, and actually had the product in stores. That way, when the lawsuit finally happened, Kodak was out not only $billion + in damages, but also more billions of investment and hiring that they then couldn't used.
Obviously, that damaging incident taught Kodak the power of patent abuse, and they've sworn to never again be on the losing side of it.
That could be a very clever attack. When mono was first proposed, naysayers assaulted it: "Don't waste your time! Microsoft will wait until your project works, then reveal patents that make your implementation illegal!". The nascent Mono team responded that Microsoft had promised not to enforce patents against them.
But now, if Kodak has patents that Mono infringes, they might go shut it down without prodding from Microsoft.
(Just another sign of why software patents are bad in general)
Absolutely. That's what we've been saying all along: the atomic bombings of Japan were really blows against the USSR, not Japan.
The morality of killing people from one weak nation to scare off another, stronger nation...
I don't even know what to say to that. Have you ever in your life studied military history?
Yes. That's why the Pentagon hired me.
My claim that Japan, on the day before the Hiroshima strike, posed no material threat to any Ally is absolutely true. Had Japan been left alone at that point, they would've eventually been easily conquered by absolutely anyone who wanted the territory.
To guarantee a country's submission, you need to occupy it
Meaningless. Japan was no longer a threat, regardless of if they submitted. There are no oil wells or iron mines in Japan, and they had no stockpiles of fuel or steel. Without them, you cannot become a threat to the rest of the world.
If the Allies had just pulled back and ignored Japan, the only threat they'd present would be wooden sailing ships.
The Japanese weren't likely to submit,
False. They had already repeatedly asked to surrender. Ever since Germany gave up, Japan knew it's position was hopeless. The idea that "Japan refused to surrender" is a myth created by the USA to justify the Hiroshima strike.
and a land campaign would have been brutal.
Possibly, but it wouldn't have involved any USA troops. Stalin had offered to supply 100% of the invasion's ground forces.
we needed something to subtly convey to them that further movement westward
Yes, exactly. That's what is meant by "start the Cold War"
going to build a radiological bomb to use on the west coast too
Yeah, have fun paddling from Okinawa to Los Angelos.
They also had jet fighters, and had made significant improvements to the Nazi designs.
No they weren't. Japan only had cheap me-262 knockoffs, whose only "improvement" was foldable wings... which was required to fit them into houses to hide from bombers, because of the Americans' total air domination.
Japan at that time didn't even have fuel oil. So even if they'd had good weapons (and they didn't), there'd be no way to even idle the engines.
real-time video analysis, then you not only deserve to win the game, but you'd deserve a Nobel prize
It's not that hard. The analysis software doesn't have to totally understand the scene, just pinpoint a few common features and aim directly at them.
For example, a lot of games will draw the names of other online players floating over their heads. Those names are in a fixed-size font, in a color selected to highly contrast with the background. Detecting those names from a video signal would be hard, but well within standard techniques.
Of course, that wouldn't be enough to get you a fully automonous bot; only an auto-aimer that requires manual control to drive it through the game. (However, many games also have a topdown minimap in the corner, from which XY position could be easily learned...)
Didn't the 8-bit-nes of the NES limit it to 256 colors, while jumping to 16-bit bumped that limit up to like 65,000?
No and no. I wish my old NES had 256 color! The NES was limited to 25 colors, and the 16-bit Super Nintendo could only display 256.
For everyday programming purposes, though, moving from 8 to 16 bit integers is a gigantic step forward. You can actually manipulate the Mario's onscreen horizontal position in one opcode, without needing to separate out the arithmetic. The jump from 16->32 bit was less important, but still convenient. Going from 32->64 is an even more minor change.
No. Livestock can be kept on the same farms they're worked at. That's all slaves are.
I thought your argument was that slave owners didn't care about the health of the slaves...but fine, 72 hour workweek, that comes to $6.22/hr-
No, because your numbers for rent and food are hugely inflated. However, even if it was $6.22/hour, that still beats minimum wage, because the price goes up for hours beyond 8.
And illegal labor is supported by tax dollars-
Slavery is also supported by taxation. You don't need to spend as much on well-armed, redundant overseers, because in the event of a major discipline problem, the police will come protect you from angry slaves.
they can survive because none of the welfare forms check for citizenship, only residenc
You really think the government hands out welfare to sturdy 22 year-old unattached males?
Too bad that. I just tested it with OpenOffice 1.1.2. I created file1.sxw, added a few lines, and saved that as file1b.sxw. Then I loaded file1.sxw again, added a few different lines, and saved that as file1c.sxw. Selecting Edit-Changes-MergeDocuments on any combination just tells me "Could not merge documents".
Maybe there's a secret trick to getting it to work- but if it's not fairly obvious, it's not good enough.
Since oo.o is plain XML, this is practically a diff->merge->patch procedure as we do in cvs or rcs.
Be better if you had a diff tool that was aware of XML syntax. There's structure there beyond just ascii files, and mistakes will be made unless it's taken into account.
However, an XML level tool would still be inferior to application-level.
What else do you want?
Handholding. Shouldn't need to do version tracking mentally, with separate filename representing user1's latest, user2's latest, and each blend between them. It should all happen hidden inside a GUI.
AC: Please. We used our superweapon before they used one of theirs, and before they built another.
Haha! Japan might've built a "superweapon"? They never even achieved semi-automatic rifles. The M-1 Garand was a superweapon as far as they were concerned.
Now i can do a quick check to find out whether it's safe for me to make loudmouthed comments about abortion and gay marriage in a public place,
Well, that depends on whether you want listeners to agree with you, which varies according to your objectives.
If you're trolling for flames, then you need a hostile audience. But if you're karma-whoring for modpoints, then it should be people who'll nod along to each sentence.
It was only in 2000 that the USA got colors attached to each party. It happened during the televised results of the Presidential election (and the several day's worth of televised argueing about the outcome)
All 5 major TV stations showed a map of which states were won by whom. Naturally, they did it in the 3 colors of the USA flag, and naturally white (blank) was used for undecided. At that time, 4/5 stations choose red for Republican. In the arguments that followed, "going red" became a shorthand for voting Republican (or at least declaring that way).
Why did they happen to choose red=Republican? Maybe for alliteration (both start with R). Maybe because red reminds us of war, and Republicans are more pro-war? Maybe because blue is the color of depression, and Democrats are more pessimistic? Some of all those things, probably.
Public schools in Oregon are paid for by local property taxes.
I don't know Oregon, but are you saying they really don't accept ANY federal funding? And that to secure that funding, they don't attempt to match federally-imposed standards of operation?
I think that if Oregon was defying NCLB, I'd have heard about it.
Portland, OR, a similar closet will cost you $600/month here.
No. You must be using a hyperbolic definition of closet, when I mean an actual 12x10 room. And go aways from the city, accept substandard construction in the corner of another property, and it comes down to $6/month. Considering that the slaves can live right in their workplace, it drops to zero. (The employer needed to rent a workplace anyhow)
Now I don't want to pay $11,500/year to hire a free overseer to make this slave work
No. An overseer is the most cost-effective way. You'd really need 2 fulltime overseers, and to make that cost-effective, you'd need 30+ slaves. But that's no problem (even though the overseers should get more than $12k/yr).
Trasnportation costs an additional $20/month at today's energy prices if you use public transit.
Hahaha! Transportation for slaves? Ha ha ha. Good one. Part of "slavery" is "no freedom", which means you can't go anywhere.
That quadruples our cost, to $23280/year, or $63.79/day, or $3.98/hr/slave.
You assumed slaves work 16 hour days 7 days per week. It'd be more efficient to go 12/6, to preserve health.
However, all this math of yours avoids looking at undeniable ground level facts. Do you deny that USA employers are occasionally punished for operating "sweatshops"? Slavery would be like a legalized sweatshop, only moreso.
Now remember, any service person in the United States who *may* recieve tips is only required, at minimum wage, to be paid $2.13/hr.
Slaves wouldn't be appropriate for tippable jobs. You want them on farms and factories, not anyplace where they can interact with customers. The only slaves that'd work in foodservice would be personal maids, who don't get tips. (And that'd be a job for female slaves only, starting at age 12)
So, the wage they're competing against is actually $6/hr. And by your own computation, slaves are cheaper than that. (I disagree with the $3.98 figure- I would've said rent & food is less expensive, but assumed fewer total hours worked)
Because the cost of living is so much cheaper elsewhere
Because the standard of living is so much higher in the USA. Slaves would not get the lifestyle that free people demand.
Look, do you know that close to 1 million illegal immigrants work in the USA, for less than minimum wage?
They do this willingly, and find that it's not only enough to survive, but even to wire some cash home to Mama. If your argument was correct, then there would be no illegal imigrant labourers in the USA.
Many USA employers like to pick illegal workers when possible, because they know those people are unwilling to complain to the police about bad treatment (either unsafe conditions, or violations of minimum wage or workweek laws, or whatever). If slavery was legal, slaves would be even more exploitable than those guys.
Free, legal workers: $6/hour legal minimum.
Unauthorized immigrant laborors: $2.00/hour accepted minimum (often more, sometimes less). Workers unlikely to report unsafe / unfair conditions, and survive on a squalid standard of living. Low levels of skill and trust makes them unsuitable for many jobs.
Slaves: No wage required, but needs must be provided. Even if slaves report unsafe/unsanitary/violent conditions, police have no obligation to respond. Even less usable for complex or self-directed tasks, but there's still a lot they can be put to.
There is an economic argument that slaves are unprofitable or obselete, although it's not based on competition with free workers- but with industrial automation.
The problem isn't with the EC itself, it is with, as with voting in all other levels of government, plurality voting and winner-take-all.
Sigh. One more time: The EC causes states to be winner-take-all.
The EC rules allow each state to decide how to chose electors. Given (a) that a state can either give them all to one candidate, or split between candidates (b) each state is controlled by one political party (at a time) (c) the party controlling a state's legislature is almost always the one that the people will vote for for president (d) members of the same party support each other
Why would a state ever decide to split it's vote? The Democrats/Republicans controlling California/Texas know that splitting their vote will make it easier for the hated Bush/Kerry to win- so why would they willingly do that?
You say "That [Zionists] started it". I'll leave you with three quotes. First, from the UN security council on Feb. 16, 1948 :
You list 2 quotes showing that the Arabs were resisting UN orders by attacking Israel. So what?
That only supports my position. The Zionists conquered Israel by using their position as recent (near) victims of Nazism to convince the dominant military force (Britain of the UN) to assign Israel to them. They cleared Arabs from the areas they were given, touching off a struggle that has broiled ever since.
It's still "conquest" regardless of whether you do the fighting yourself, or convince a much stronger nation to do it for you.
And finally, Azzam Pasha, the secretary-general for the Arab League declared on May 14,
That was retaliation- the continuation of a fight that started in 1948.
But I doubt you'll ever be convinced that any blame of the conflict should fall on any Arabs, it's much easier to just blame "the Zionists".
There was no conflict before the Zionists began their plans to remove Arabs from Israel.
However, I assign blame to the theists, both Jewish and Muslim, whose superstitous attachment to certain regions in Israel causes them both to inordinately value it. In cases of religiously-based conflict, I have little sympathy for either side.
AC: Why do you and the rest of the Arab League turn a silent eye on Arab atrocities and only accuse Israel?
They're probably not really Arabs, but just Americans. USA citizens should pay more attention to the activities of countries their government supports, because they are in some way helping with any wrongdoingings committed.
Where would you "ship" the Israelis if they shouldn't be in Israel?
In 1947, fresh after WWII, Jews could've moved anywhere they wanted, with a universal super-refugee status. For example, they could've gone to Utah or Arizona, and settled a desert land no better or worse than Israel itself.
They didn't, of course, because of religious reasons. The only reasons to live in Israel are theocratic ones (same goes for Arabs). If "safety of the people" was the concern, then a low-population part of the USA would be a better choice.
Your ignorance of the history of Israel and the Palestinian conflict is profound.
Yet another Slashdotter accuses someone of something he goes on to commit himself.
They had that chance in 1948, and they blew it. They could have told their Arab neighbors, "leave our Jewish neighbors alone."
So the Zionists convince the British Empire to evict the Arabs from Israel, and you think those victims should've argued in defense of their attackers?
Right next door, there is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - not even a democracy -- yet I don't hear you bewailling and moaning that fact?
As I already explained, this focus on Israel is not because they're uniquely bad, but because they claim to be better than that. Yes, I do hold them to higher standards. Saudi Arabia doesn't claim to be a land of freedom or enlightenment, so it isn't worth the time to point out that they're not.
Somehow I hear no calls for the transformation of the Pakistani state?
If you don't hear those calls, you're not listening very hard. However, that is understandable, because people are much more vocal about the Palestine situtation because it's the ongoing cause of major violence today (as well as grave risks in the future). If Saudi Arabia ruled over any significant populations of other religions, then you'd probably hear some complaints from that too.
How about Kuwait?
Why don't you allow people to talk about one country without listing off their opinion on every other nation in the world? For the record, I was a prime opponent to Operation Desert Storm, because it placed US troops in defense of non-democratic states.
And that resource is... ? Inquiring minds want to know.
Water. Fresh, drinkable, water. That's the most important thing for anyone living in the desert. (Unless you have enough oil to sell to people who can provide you with water products)
It's a little like the Chinatown situation, where a rich, powerful community on the seacoast drains poorer inland towns of the water they need to survive.
Note also that the much Israelies' use of water is for religous purposes, and not for any sensible reason. (They believe that farming the desert is a sacred calling, and thus spend enormous amounts of water to grow their own food, when it'd be cheaper overall to ship it in from Europe. They value a sense of self-sufficiency over Palestinian lives)
Israel was attacked by Palestinians (and Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, etc) before the occupation.
No. The Zionists attacked the Arab Israelis (soon to be renamed "Palestinians") in 1948. They started it.
What was Israel supposed to do at this point?
Any thief would defend his ill-gotten gains.
The entire existence of the Zionist state called Israel is based on an aggressive conquest of Arab lands. All conflict since then is revolves around the land they seized for wholely religious reasons.
Yes, the Zionists are fighting to protect the existence of Israel- an existence that depends on conquest.
Slashdot Mirror
How can 3 patents be worth 1.06$ billion dollars?
Kodak has lost more than that by infringing one patent. They were the loser in the largest patent lawsuit the world has ever seen, Polaroid v Kodak.
Polaroid had a patent on instant film development, yet they waited to file their lawsuit until Kodak had built new factories to build instant cameras, and actually had the product in stores. That way, when the lawsuit finally happened, Kodak was out not only $billion + in damages, but also more billions of investment and hiring that they then couldn't used.
Obviously, that damaging incident taught Kodak the power of patent abuse, and they've sworn to never again be on the losing side of it.
yes, but mono has not
That could be a very clever attack. When mono was first proposed, naysayers assaulted it: "Don't waste your time! Microsoft will wait until your project works, then reveal patents that make your implementation illegal!". The nascent Mono team responded that Microsoft had promised not to enforce patents against them.
But now, if Kodak has patents that Mono infringes, they might go shut it down without prodding from Microsoft.
(Just another sign of why software patents are bad in general)
I wish you would have said that in the first place.
Well, how many times must I link you back to the original post before you read it?
"We dropped the bomb to start the Cold War."
Communist Japan. And it would have come to that.
Absolutely. That's what we've been saying all along: the atomic bombings of Japan were really blows against the USSR, not Japan.
The morality of killing people from one weak nation to scare off another, stronger nation...
I don't even know what to say to that. Have you ever in your life studied military history?
Yes. That's why the Pentagon hired me.
My claim that Japan, on the day before the Hiroshima strike, posed no material threat to any Ally is absolutely true. Had Japan been left alone at that point, they would've eventually been easily conquered by absolutely anyone who wanted the territory.
To guarantee a country's submission, you need to occupy it
Meaningless. Japan was no longer a threat, regardless of if they submitted. There are no oil wells or iron mines in Japan, and they had no stockpiles of fuel or steel. Without them, you cannot become a threat to the rest of the world.
If the Allies had just pulled back and ignored Japan, the only threat they'd present would be wooden sailing ships.
The Japanese weren't likely to submit,
False. They had already repeatedly asked to surrender. Ever since Germany gave up, Japan knew it's position was hopeless. The idea that "Japan refused to surrender" is a myth created by the USA to justify the Hiroshima strike.
and a land campaign would have been brutal.
Possibly, but it wouldn't have involved any USA troops. Stalin had offered to supply 100% of the invasion's ground forces.
we needed something to subtly convey to them that further movement westward
Yes, exactly. That's what is meant by "start the Cold War"
going to build a radiological bomb to use on the west coast too
Yeah, have fun paddling from Okinawa to Los Angelos.
They also had jet fighters, and had made significant improvements to the Nazi designs.
No they weren't. Japan only had cheap me-262 knockoffs, whose only "improvement" was foldable wings... which was required to fit them into houses to hide from bombers, because of the Americans' total air domination.
Japan at that time didn't even have fuel oil. So even if they'd had good weapons (and they didn't), there'd be no way to even idle the engines.
AC: As in England, the more liberal party used red and the more conservative party (at the time, the Democrats) used blue.
Build a time machine. Go back to 1999. Find a USA voter. Ask him "Do you live in a red state or a blue state?"
He will have NO IDEA what you mean.
real-time video analysis, then you not only deserve to win the game, but you'd deserve a Nobel prize
It's not that hard. The analysis software doesn't have to totally understand the scene, just pinpoint a few common features and aim directly at them.
For example, a lot of games will draw the names of other online players floating over their heads. Those names are in a fixed-size font, in a color selected to highly contrast with the background. Detecting those names from a video signal would be hard, but well within standard techniques.
Of course, that wouldn't be enough to get you a fully automonous bot; only an auto-aimer that requires manual control to drive it through the game. (However, many games also have a topdown minimap in the corner, from which XY position could be easily learned...)
Didn't the 8-bit-nes of the NES limit it to 256 colors, while jumping to 16-bit bumped that limit up to like 65,000?
No and no. I wish my old NES had 256 color! The NES was limited to 25 colors, and the 16-bit Super Nintendo could only display 256.
For everyday programming purposes, though, moving from 8 to 16 bit integers is a gigantic step forward. You can actually manipulate the Mario's onscreen horizontal position in one opcode, without needing to separate out the arithmetic. The jump from 16->32 bit was less important, but still convenient. Going from 32->64 is an even more minor change.
Diminishing returns.
In Oregon, land use zoning prevents such uses-
No. Livestock can be kept on the same farms they're worked at. That's all slaves are.
I thought your argument was that slave owners didn't care about the health of the slaves...but fine, 72 hour workweek, that comes to $6.22/hr-
No, because your numbers for rent and food are hugely inflated. However, even if it was $6.22/hour, that still beats minimum wage, because the price goes up for hours beyond 8.
And illegal labor is supported by tax dollars-
Slavery is also supported by taxation. You don't need to spend as much on well-armed, redundant overseers, because in the event of a major discipline problem, the police will come protect you from angry slaves.
they can survive because none of the welfare forms check for citizenship, only residenc
You really think the government hands out welfare to sturdy 22 year-old unattached males?
you merge it with oo.o merge capabilities.
Too bad that. I just tested it with OpenOffice 1.1.2. I created file1.sxw, added a few lines, and saved that as file1b.sxw. Then I loaded file1.sxw again, added a few different lines, and saved that as file1c.sxw. Selecting Edit-Changes-MergeDocuments on any combination just tells me "Could not merge documents".
Maybe there's a secret trick to getting it to work- but if it's not fairly obvious, it's not good enough.
Since oo.o is plain XML, this is practically a diff->merge->patch procedure as we do in cvs or rcs.
Be better if you had a diff tool that was aware of XML syntax. There's structure there beyond just ascii files, and mistakes will be made unless it's taken into account.
However, an XML level tool would still be inferior to application-level.
What else do you want?
Handholding. Shouldn't need to do version tracking mentally, with separate filename representing user1's latest, user2's latest, and each blend between them. It should all happen hidden inside a GUI.
AC: Please. We used our superweapon before they used one of theirs, and before they built another.
Haha! Japan might've built a "superweapon"? They never even achieved semi-automatic rifles. The M-1 Garand was a superweapon as far as they were concerned.
Now i can do a quick check to find out whether it's safe for me to make loudmouthed comments about abortion and gay marriage in a public place,
Well, that depends on whether you want listeners to agree with you, which varies according to your objectives.
If you're trolling for flames, then you need a hostile audience. But if you're karma-whoring for modpoints, then it should be people who'll nod along to each sentence.
Shouldn't that be the other way around?
It was only in 2000 that the USA got colors attached to each party. It happened during the televised results of the Presidential election (and the several day's worth of televised argueing about the outcome)
All 5 major TV stations showed a map of which states were won by whom. Naturally, they did it in the 3 colors of the USA flag, and naturally white (blank) was used for undecided. At that time, 4/5 stations choose red for Republican. In the arguments that followed, "going red" became a shorthand for voting Republican (or at least declaring that way).
Why did they happen to choose red=Republican? Maybe for alliteration (both start with R). Maybe because red reminds us of war, and Republicans are more pro-war? Maybe because blue is the color of depression, and Democrats are more pessimistic? Some of all those things, probably.
Public schools in Oregon are paid for by local property taxes.
I don't know Oregon, but are you saying they really don't accept ANY federal funding? And that to secure that funding, they don't attempt to match federally-imposed standards of operation?
I think that if Oregon was defying NCLB, I'd have heard about it.
No. You must be using a hyperbolic definition of closet, when I mean an actual 12x10 room. And go aways from the city, accept substandard construction in the corner of another property, and it comes down to $6/month. Considering that the slaves can live right in their workplace, it drops to zero. (The employer needed to rent a workplace anyhow)
Now I don't want to pay $11,500/year to hire a free overseer to make this slave work
No. An overseer is the most cost-effective way. You'd really need 2 fulltime overseers, and to make that cost-effective, you'd need 30+ slaves. But that's no problem (even though the overseers should get more than $12k/yr).
Trasnportation costs an additional $20/month at today's energy prices if you use public transit.
Hahaha! Transportation for slaves? Ha ha ha. Good one. Part of "slavery" is "no freedom", which means you can't go anywhere.
That quadruples our cost, to $23280/year, or $63.79/day, or $3.98/hr/slave.
You assumed slaves work 16 hour days 7 days per week. It'd be more efficient to go 12/6, to preserve health.
However, all this math of yours avoids looking at undeniable ground level facts. Do you deny that USA employers are occasionally punished for operating "sweatshops"? Slavery would be like a legalized sweatshop, only moreso.
Now remember, any service person in the United States who *may* recieve tips is only required, at minimum wage, to be paid $2.13/hr.
Slaves wouldn't be appropriate for tippable jobs. You want them on farms and factories, not anyplace where they can interact with customers. The only slaves that'd work in foodservice would be personal maids, who don't get tips. (And that'd be a job for female slaves only, starting at age 12)
So, the wage they're competing against is actually $6/hr. And by your own computation, slaves are cheaper than that. (I disagree with the $3.98 figure- I would've said rent & food is less expensive, but assumed fewer total hours worked)
Because the cost of living is so much cheaper elsewhere
Because the standard of living is so much higher in the USA. Slaves would not get the lifestyle that free people demand.
Look, do you know that close to 1 million illegal immigrants work in the USA, for less than minimum wage?
They do this willingly, and find that it's not only enough to survive, but even to wire some cash home to Mama. If your argument was correct, then there would be no illegal imigrant labourers in the USA.
Many USA employers like to pick illegal workers when possible, because they know those people are unwilling to complain to the police about bad treatment (either unsafe conditions, or violations of minimum wage or workweek laws, or whatever). If slavery was legal, slaves would be even more exploitable than those guys.
There is an economic argument that slaves are unprofitable or obselete, although it's not based on competition with free workers- but with industrial automation.
You arrogantly assumed that you knew what I meant by stability
Alright, I'm sorry that I used words according to the definitions of the English language.
I should've concentrated harder with my psychic powers to intuit that you said one thing and meant another.
before I had a chance to define it as is my perogative due to the fact
You had that chance 5 posts ago. If you want to make up new definitions for words, at least tell people about them beforehand.
The problem isn't with the EC itself, it is with, as with voting in all other levels of government, plurality voting and winner-take-all.
Sigh. One more time: The EC causes states to be winner-take-all.
The EC rules allow each state to decide how to chose electors. Given
(a) that a state can either give them all to one candidate, or split between candidates
(b) each state is controlled by one political party (at a time)
(c) the party controlling a state's legislature is almost always the one that the people will vote for for president
(d) members of the same party support each other
Why would a state ever decide to split it's vote? The Democrats/Republicans controlling California/Texas know that splitting their vote will make it easier for the hated Bush/Kerry to win- so why would they willingly do that?
You say "That [Zionists] started it". I'll leave you with three quotes. First, from the UN security council on Feb. 16, 1948 :
You list 2 quotes showing that the Arabs were resisting UN orders by attacking Israel. So what?
That only supports my position. The Zionists conquered Israel by using their position as recent (near) victims of Nazism to convince the dominant military force (Britain of the UN) to assign Israel to them. They cleared Arabs from the areas they were given, touching off a struggle that has broiled ever since.
It's still "conquest" regardless of whether you do the fighting yourself, or convince a much stronger nation to do it for you.
And finally, Azzam Pasha, the secretary-general for the Arab League declared on May 14,
That was retaliation- the continuation of a fight that started in 1948.
But I doubt you'll ever be convinced that any blame of the conflict should fall on any Arabs, it's much easier to just blame "the Zionists".
There was no conflict before the Zionists began their plans to remove Arabs from Israel.
However, I assign blame to the theists, both Jewish and Muslim, whose superstitous attachment to certain regions in Israel causes them both to inordinately value it. In cases of religiously-based conflict, I have little sympathy for either side.
AC: Why do you and the rest of the Arab League turn a silent eye on Arab atrocities and only accuse Israel?
They're probably not really Arabs, but just Americans. USA citizens should pay more attention to the activities of countries their government supports, because they are in some way helping with any wrongdoingings committed.
Where would you "ship" the Israelis if they shouldn't be in Israel?
In 1947, fresh after WWII, Jews could've moved anywhere they wanted, with a universal super-refugee status. For example, they could've gone to Utah or Arizona, and settled a desert land no better or worse than Israel itself.
They didn't, of course, because of religious reasons. The only reasons to live in Israel are theocratic ones (same goes for Arabs). If "safety of the people" was the concern, then a low-population part of the USA would be a better choice.
Your ignorance of the history of Israel and the Palestinian conflict is profound.
Yet another Slashdotter accuses someone of something he goes on to commit himself.
They had that chance in 1948, and they blew it. They could have told their Arab neighbors, "leave our Jewish neighbors alone."
So the Zionists convince the British Empire to evict the Arabs from Israel, and you think those victims should've argued in defense of their attackers?
Right next door, there is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - not even a democracy -- yet I don't hear you bewailling and moaning that fact?
As I already explained, this focus on Israel is not because they're uniquely bad, but because they claim to be better than that. Yes, I do hold them to higher standards. Saudi Arabia doesn't claim to be a land of freedom or enlightenment, so it isn't worth the time to point out that they're not.
Somehow I hear no calls for the transformation of the Pakistani state?
If you don't hear those calls, you're not listening very hard. However, that is understandable, because people are much more vocal about the Palestine situtation because it's the ongoing cause of major violence today (as well as grave risks in the future). If Saudi Arabia ruled over any significant populations of other religions, then you'd probably hear some complaints from that too.
How about Kuwait?
Why don't you allow people to talk about one country without listing off their opinion on every other nation in the world? For the record, I was a prime opponent to Operation Desert Storm, because it placed US troops in defense of non-democratic states.
And that resource is ... ? Inquiring minds want to know.
Water. Fresh, drinkable, water. That's the most important thing for anyone living in the desert. (Unless you have enough oil to sell to people who can provide you with water products)
It's a little like the Chinatown situation, where a rich, powerful community on the seacoast drains poorer inland towns of the water they need to survive.
Note also that the much Israelies' use of water is for religous purposes, and not for any sensible reason. (They believe that farming the desert is a sacred calling, and thus spend enormous amounts of water to grow their own food, when it'd be cheaper overall to ship it in from Europe. They value a sense of self-sufficiency over Palestinian lives)
Israel was attacked by Palestinians (and Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, etc) before the occupation.
No. The Zionists attacked the Arab Israelis (soon to be renamed "Palestinians") in 1948. They started it.
What was Israel supposed to do at this point?
Any thief would defend his ill-gotten gains.
The entire existence of the Zionist state called Israel is based on an aggressive conquest of Arab lands. All conflict since then is revolves around the land they seized for wholely religious reasons.
Yes, the Zionists are fighting to protect the existence of Israel- an existence that depends on conquest.
refuse to setting on an ABI and API for kernel level drivers,
Why does it matter? NVidia has demostrated a workaround which is perfectly functional. Any other hardware vendor can use the system too.