I tell you one thing though. Except for the MS astro turfers most people here never claimed open source was un american or a cancer or communist. How you can claim that MS loves open source and this community is beyond me. Just listen to their leaders for gods sake.
There are several possibilities that Microsoft may be pursuing.
They have finally recognized that open-source is the 'wave of the future', and that we have already reached critical mass. As such, we are the next dominant distribution method of software, and we will spread to other areas. Basic corporate mission: survive and profit. If Microsoft intends to survive and profit, they must join us. So it's an application of a much older adage, 'If you can\'t beat \'em, join \'em'.
They realize that there are many in the open source community that support them, and/or are hanging on the fence. If they lose them, then Microsoft could be in a bit of a spot, because those are valuable developers.
An extension of the last one: An attempt to divide the community. Many in the community (I, for one) will welcome their overtures into the community. Many more will fight over what it all means. In the process, Microsoft could do some damage to the community itself with this tactic. United we stand, divided we roll slowly down the hill, or something like that.
There are other possibilities I haven't enumerated because I'm too lazy, and others still that I haven't thought of.
The bottom line is, we should accept them into the community, insofar as they participate, and only that far. As they participate more, they gain more acceptance, and so forth. We should encourage them to keep up the good work and give up more code. Maybe by doing so, we'll eventually get all of Windows under IBM's CPL, eh? We have nothing to lose by treating them right, insofar as they are participating and following the rules. We have much to lose by fighting them over it and excluding them from our l33t c0mmun1ty.
If we fight them, then we give them another weapon to use against us, while accepting them actually takes weapons away from them, without arming ourselves anymore than we're already armed. From any viewpoint I try to look at this, there's only one course of action that is clear, and it's that we should be supportive of their movements into open source, and the fact that they have chosen a real OSI-certified license. GPL would be nice, don't get me wrong. But CPL is good enough for us to accept IBM, right? (yes yes, I realize IBM also has a great deal of GPL code out there, and if Microsoft is serious in participating, then they too will have a lot of GPL code out there eventually)
There are two highways across NEw MExico that are guaranteed to show you nothing but *shit*. I-40 and I-10. (Where the hell is I20 anyway?) I-25 has some nice places, but not many. Had you driven across the Valley of Fire (or whatever that damn volcanic plain is called) you'd have said "Wow, this place is really hot! I thought Texas was hot, but check this out!"
Of course, had you driven I-25 through Santa Fe, or 54 down through Alamogordo, or 70 into Ruidoso, you'd have had a hard time leaving the state. Those Apache babes, man..... wow.
That stuff really pisses me off.:( Everybody knows New Mexico is part of the Republic of Texas. *Everybody*. Sheesh.
Seriously, I was shocked to hear that New Mexico was adding USA to the license plates. I asked "Why? Aren't all the states in the USA? Why does New MExico have to say so?"
These days, I live in the Northwest, and I find that when I tell people I used to live in New MExico, they say "You don't look Mexican at all! Do you speak spanish?"
I just say "Si, yo quiero Taco Bell, puto. Margarita vas y tu es El Bendejo, now suck my dick". Nobody ever catches the last four words of that. Nobody.;)
Seems to me that the kernel should be able to load Win executables, rather than having a separate app for it. Have you tried to get Linus et al to accept a patch that'll make Linux understand Microsoft's executable format? It already knows a.out and ELF, why not throw in the win one as well? If not, do you have any justification for keeping the executable loader in a separate, user-space application?
Um, how complicated can your taxes be that you can't just follow the directions provided? I've submitted a quarter-inch worth of paperwork with no problems, done by hand by myself. Conversely, how big of a hurry can you possible be to get your refund (assuming a refund, because nobody's in a hurry to pay, right?) that you've already waited half a year just to be able to start the paperwork. File early (like in early February) and you get your return quick quick quick...
Bah. Only if your kid is a fscking wuss. My 3 year old is currently hacking on some kernel code. Even my 1 year old writes complex AI algorithms!
Your kids are definitely pussies, man. My 3 year old just build a full-fledged android. My 1 year old coded the AI. The thing's indistinguishable from Yakov Smirnov! Keeps saying "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, kid makes YOU!"
Cuba is not under international orders to disarm with an authorization to use military force to get them to comply, and Cuba has not shown a willingness to use WMDs in the past.
Man, oh man, is history ever repeating itself. The only difference is that there isn't a superpower opposite the US in polarity to help out Iraq. What we just did in Iraq we would have gladly done to Cuba in 1960. In fact, we tried it. Then Cuba got some nukes from the Soviet Union, and what happened?
That's right, we couldn't pick on them any longer.
I'm so glad you mentioned Cuba, WMDs and so forth. We made invasion noises at Cuba immediately after Castro showed up, very similar to how we've been making invasion noises at Iraq for some time. Of course Saddam was looking for some way to deter us from invading his country.
Now, I'm not trying to take Saddam's side in this, I just don't think Bush should've gone in there so soon. I would have preferred giving the poor dictator more rope to hang himself with. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off is a good way to get the US in some pretty deep shit, and I'd prefer it if our president would cut it out. Also, running around trying to invade every nation for "fear of terrorism" is in fact a symptom that we have already lost the war against terror. Yep, we've already lost. We're scared shitless and firing our guns at anything that moves.
Take the red off the Texas flag Bush claims, apparently we don't have any bravery anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if people are listening to the same President Bush. Both Bush and Blair were very clear that we must act BEFORE Iraq can plan to use the weapons- BEFORE they became an immenent threat. Its too late to act if he already has a gun pointed at our head. Iraq has known terrorist connections- they have been on the State Dept list of Terror Sponsering States for 15 years. We should have acted against that threat a lot sooner than we did.
Well, it's really too bad Iraq didn't have nukes, otherwise we wouldn't have invaded. I'll restate your entire paragraph in slightly older historical terms, and then I have a question for you.
Sometimes I wonder if people are listening to the same President JFK. Both JFK and (Margaret Thatcher?) were very clear that we must act BEFORE the Soviets can plan to use the weapons- BEFORE they became an immenent threat. Its too late to act if they already has a gun pointed at our head. The Soviet Union has known terrorist connections- they have been on the State Dept list of Terror Sponsering States for 15 years. We should have acted against that threat a lot sooner than we did.
So the question is, when it is ok and when it is not ok to be a first strike nation? What specific qualifications would you offer on when it is ok to attack a nation?
I'll take the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis over wiping out an entire nation for fear of them getting nukes. At least the CMC can be understood, and it can clearly be seen how both sides acted well, and acted to save face for each other, and acted in the interest of peace, even if the MAD philosophy is a bit on the crazy side. I'd wager that if Saddam was after nukes, he wasn't after them to fire at anybody (that would be pretty dumb, and he's not *that* dumb). He was after them to keep us from invading him, as a deterrant, just like the Soviets' nukes, and more than likely just like North Korea's nukes now. Sure, they're crazy, but it doesn't take a whole lot of brainpower to figure out that unless you have a whole bunch of nukes, the development of nukes is not going to allow you to use them. THe first nation that launches nukes at somebody is going to get so totally blasted to hell (either nuclear or with conventional weapons) that it'll take a lot more than craziness to launch them.
Only problem with the linked article is that they cite Super Marios Brothers as the first game with Mario. It was, as far as I remember, the third game with Mario and Luigi. Donkey Kong was the first, the original Mario Brothers was the second, and Super Mario Brothers was the third. Right? Wait, there was a Donkey Kong Junior, wasn't there? Oh, so that makes Super Mario Brothers the fourth game.
You know, as the driver of a large, 70ish truck toting a trailer, I have to say I like your post a lot. I absolutely *hate* passing bikes on the road, because I *know* that if even part of my truck touches them someone's going to get seriously hurt.
What really irritates me about bicyclers (you know, cyclers that go both ways, heh heh) isn't the fact that I have to share the road with them. It's the fact that they have such a tendency to drift back and forth in their space without caring about other traffic. Yes, we want to get around, but many of us want to get around pretty safely, and some help from the rider is required.
So, the reason I like your post is because you're providing the help.;) In my truck, if I can't do a full-lane pass on a bike, I don't pass. My truck is just too big to properly share the road. Luckily, many of the roads in my area also have bike lanes! And that's where my complaint about cyclists wondering back and forth in their lanes comes into play. Bike lanes are sized for safe, non-intrusive sharing of the road by both bikes and cars.
But goddammit, wondering back and forth in the lane isn't sharing. It's not sharing when other cars do it, and it's downright dangerous for all concerned.
As computers are widespread, and everything you need to know to build a weapon is published (why that was ever allowed, I don't understand!)
I'll answer the parenthetical expression first, of course. Censorship is never a workable long-term solution, and is frequently unworkable as a short-term solution. If censorship really worked, the average age for loss of virginity would never have dropped below average age of marriage, and it has been in the low 'teens for centuries, I understand (but could be wrong, that might be a relatively recent thing).
In this specific instance, censorship would not seriously prevent the wrong people from building the bombs. It would hinder them, yes, but not prevent them. ON the other hand, it would prevent everyone else from being able to find them, identify them, or even notice something that might be suspicious. By passing around the information to build a bomb, we can also pass around the information to prevent the bomb's construction and/or deployment.
We'll never know if I'm right, but it's my firm opinion that had we successfully censored this stuff, "they" would already have nukes, and would have already used them. And if it had happened in the Cold War, we would either be having this discussion underground, or we wouldn't be having it at all.
And we did try censorship already, and that resulting in several other nations suddenly becoming nuclear powers.
I admit, censorship can be a seductive idea. Just don't tell anyone! They'll never figure it out, and if "we" don't say anything, it'll never happen! But it never works. Time and time again, it has been used and it has failed. When will we learn? Censorship doesn't work, and frequently manages to defeat the purpose entirely.
I wouldn't necessarily call it a strawman; but I do think that you are sheltered enough that you haven't really experienced the human goblin condition yet, that you haven't met any truly nasty people.
Okay, regardless of what the other guy was saying, I am definitely not sheltered and have both personally experienced and witnessed aspects of the human goblin condition, and have known truly nasty people.
Yet I agree with the other guy. Figure that out.;)
Please don't misunderstand me-- I don't have a shoot first, ask later mentality. I am, however, a huge fan of letting the people who would think to screw around with us know that there is a potentially a huge hammer hanging over their heads.
Do you really think people enjoy "screwing around with us"? Maybe if we didn't continually back them into a corner they would quit acting like cornered rats. How big a hammer we wield is exactly part of the problem, here.
I'm not saying we can just leave, either. We've caused enough trouble that morally we need to right our own wrongs. We can't just reverse previous policy and back out, anymore. Not only would that be giving in to terrorism, it would also be morally bankrupt. You can't stick a kid in the middle of a burning fire, say you screwed up, and walk away without taking the kid out of the fire and running him to the ER.
But our current foreign policy isn't any different than it's been, and we're not righting our wrongs over there, we're just doing more wrong.
And guess what? Once they start targeting the civilan populace with their military actions, why they hate no longer matters because obviously the only meaningful thing you can do for them is die. If that's the case, I have no problems.
When our bombs drop, who are their targets? How much of the civilian populace have we targetted ourselves? Once upon a time, weapons were of a short, intimate nature, and it could actually be considered dishonorable for a soldier to kill someone he didn't intend to kill. The advent of gunpowder changed that, pretty much. Granted, there was a small amount of collateral damage from previous distance weapons, and the siege of a city has never been pretty. That's not the point. The point is that now we bomb cities with the intent of killing civilians that produce the enemy's war machine.
I'm not attempting to defend terrorism, and it is nuts, but I can see where their actions derive from both crazy-headed thinking but also long-standing doctrines of war.
Hey, i'll be happy to admit the US has made it's share of forgeign policy mistakes in the region, but they, nor the others hardly share all the blame. As you mentioned, oil is perhapse the worlds number one most valuable commodity, But for such a massive revenue generating resource, the Middle East (with very few exceptions) is surprisingly poor.
Yeah, the area is surprisingly poor. For two reasons. First, the oil companies make deals with the totalitarian rulers, so the money that *is* going into the country isn't going to the people in the area. Second, the totalitarian rulers are frequently propped up in one form or another by the "evil Western imperialists" (ref: Saddam Hussein, we also support the Saudi King and a few others).
Besides, with all the battles we fought with the Soviet Union that were fought through puppets in the Middle East, how rich would you expect an area to be that has been fighting someone else's war for decades? The Cold War had a lot more collateral damage than anybody's owned up for. Viet Nam was at least honest in the sense that we used our own troops, and Korea as well, but those weren't the only wars fought on our behalf against the Soviet Union. Does the name "Iran Contra" mean anything to you? Yeah, we officially only supported one side of that war because our man Hussein was fighting it (iirc, he may not have been in power yet), and a few nuts of our own sold weapons to the Iranians. But the Iranians fought with Soviet Union backing, as well.
It's people are supressed. In poverty. You make it sound like everybody is just robbing them blind when they are actually making billion.
Yeah, many middle eastern people are oppressed, meanwhile the only countries we've targetted so far just happen to be countries which have leaders that we put in charge? What are you missing, here? Yes, the people are generally oppressed. More importantly, we generally support the leaders who are oppressive, and *not* the leaders who would find freedom. OPEC and their home countries and American oil companies as well are so scared of a free market in the middle east it isn't even funny. If a free market arrived in middle east oil exports, you won't be looking at $2/gallon and complaining about how high it is. You'll be looking at hybrids, and you'll be looking at $6+.
You make it sound like they are helpless when they wield considerable sway on the world economy. Speaking of which, you're right, LET'S brush up on history and current events and remember the 70s oil crisis.
As I recall, the Middle East was actually doing a fairly decent job of recovering from Nazi influence when we had our oil crisis and got more seriously involved with them.
And what "considerable sway" are you referring to? The countries don't have that, not with the oil fields in the North Sea, South America, etc. It's the oil companies that have it.
Honestly, if the Middle East is a terrorist cest pool, I have to s
Well, anytime you decide to post either correcting someone's spelling or spouting elitist "Oh lookee I'm smarter than someone else", your post immediately becomes open to attack for even the slightest mistake. Even forgivable typos will come under attack at that point.
So, from an American to a Canadian who's having a little trouble learning this lesson, next time you spout off about how wonderful you are for any reason, double-check your post for spelling and grammer errors.
It'll save you the trouble of looking like an ass later when you try to defend an obviously indefensible position.
I have invested too many resources into my IT career to do that unless it's a 'last resort'.
Doh!
Sure, IT will be in demand again, but expect it to wind up a shit-for-pay job, just like automechanics, because your average IT worker is doing a job that is pretty much the same thing, only less understood.;) Also, expect it to go that way faster than automechanics did, because the industry grew faster than the automotive industry did.
Hmm, looks like it's almost there already. Won't be too long, then. In fact, there are already plenty of IT folks that are making just a dollar or less an hour over Mickie D's burger flippers. PErsonally, given the choice, I'd rather flip burgers. It's a lot more fun.;)
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I tell you one thing though. Except for the MS astro turfers most people here never claimed open source was un american or a cancer or communist. How you can claim that MS loves open source and this community is beyond me. Just listen to their leaders for gods sake.
There are several possibilities that Microsoft may be pursuing.
There are other possibilities I haven't enumerated because I'm too lazy, and others still that I haven't thought of.
The bottom line is, we should accept them into the community, insofar as they participate, and only that far. As they participate more, they gain more acceptance, and so forth. We should encourage them to keep up the good work and give up more code. Maybe by doing so, we'll eventually get all of Windows under IBM's CPL, eh? We have nothing to lose by treating them right, insofar as they are participating and following the rules. We have much to lose by fighting them over it and excluding them from our l33t c0mmun1ty.
If we fight them, then we give them another weapon to use against us, while accepting them actually takes weapons away from them, without arming ourselves anymore than we're already armed. From any viewpoint I try to look at this, there's only one course of action that is clear, and it's that we should be supportive of their movements into open source, and the fact that they have chosen a real OSI-certified license. GPL would be nice, don't get me wrong. But CPL is good enough for us to accept IBM, right? (yes yes, I realize IBM also has a great deal of GPL code out there, and if Microsoft is serious in participating, then they too will have a lot of GPL code out there eventually)
There are two highways across NEw MExico that are guaranteed to show you nothing but *shit*. I-40 and I-10. (Where the hell is I20 anyway?) I-25 has some nice places, but not many. Had you driven across the Valley of Fire (or whatever that damn volcanic plain is called) you'd have said "Wow, this place is really hot! I thought Texas was hot, but check this out!"
Of course, had you driven I-25 through Santa Fe, or 54 down through Alamogordo, or 70 into Ruidoso, you'd have had a hard time leaving the state. Those Apache babes, man..... wow.
Probably back east where all them weird other "New" states are. You know, New York, New Hampshire, New Vagina. Yeah, back there somewhere.
That stuff really pisses me off. :( Everybody knows New Mexico is part of the Republic of Texas. *Everybody*. Sheesh.
Seriously, I was shocked to hear that New Mexico was adding USA to the license plates. I asked "Why? Aren't all the states in the USA? Why does New MExico have to say so?"
These days, I live in the Northwest, and I find that when I tell people I used to live in New MExico, they say "You don't look Mexican at all! Do you speak spanish?"
I just say "Si, yo quiero Taco Bell, puto. Margarita vas y tu es El Bendejo, now suck my dick". Nobody ever catches the last four words of that. Nobody. ;)
Seems to me that the kernel should be able to load Win executables, rather than having a separate app for it. Have you tried to get Linus et al to accept a patch that'll make Linux understand Microsoft's executable format? It already knows a.out and ELF, why not throw in the win one as well? If not, do you have any justification for keeping the executable loader in a separate, user-space application?
Um, how complicated can your taxes be that you can't just follow the directions provided? I've submitted a quarter-inch worth of paperwork with no problems, done by hand by myself. Conversely, how big of a hurry can you possible be to get your refund (assuming a refund, because nobody's in a hurry to pay, right?) that you've already waited half a year just to be able to start the paperwork. File early (like in early February) and you get your return quick quick quick...
Bah. Only if your kid is a fscking wuss. My 3 year old is currently hacking on some kernel code. Even my 1 year old writes complex AI algorithms!
Your kids are definitely pussies, man. My 3 year old just build a full-fledged android. My 1 year old coded the AI. The thing's indistinguishable from Yakov Smirnov! Keeps saying "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, kid makes YOU!"
I'm am having trouble with it too. Anybody?
You could have just said "In Microsoft's world, the tail wags the dog. The rest of us want to be the dog wagging the tail". ;)
Cuba is not under international orders to disarm with an authorization to use military force to get them to comply, and Cuba has not shown a willingness to use WMDs in the past.
Man, oh man, is history ever repeating itself. The only difference is that there isn't a superpower opposite the US in polarity to help out Iraq. What we just did in Iraq we would have gladly done to Cuba in 1960. In fact, we tried it. Then Cuba got some nukes from the Soviet Union, and what happened?
That's right, we couldn't pick on them any longer.
I'm so glad you mentioned Cuba, WMDs and so forth. We made invasion noises at Cuba immediately after Castro showed up, very similar to how we've been making invasion noises at Iraq for some time. Of course Saddam was looking for some way to deter us from invading his country.
Now, I'm not trying to take Saddam's side in this, I just don't think Bush should've gone in there so soon. I would have preferred giving the poor dictator more rope to hang himself with. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off is a good way to get the US in some pretty deep shit, and I'd prefer it if our president would cut it out. Also, running around trying to invade every nation for "fear of terrorism" is in fact a symptom that we have already lost the war against terror. Yep, we've already lost. We're scared shitless and firing our guns at anything that moves.
Take the red off the Texas flag Bush claims, apparently we don't have any bravery anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if people are listening to the same President Bush. Both Bush and Blair were very clear that we must act BEFORE Iraq can plan to use the weapons- BEFORE they became an immenent threat. Its too late to act if he already has a gun pointed at our head. Iraq has known terrorist connections- they have been on the State Dept list of Terror Sponsering States for 15 years. We should have acted against that threat a lot sooner than we did.
Well, it's really too bad Iraq didn't have nukes, otherwise we wouldn't have invaded. I'll restate your entire paragraph in slightly older historical terms, and then I have a question for you.
So the question is, when it is ok and when it is not ok to be a first strike nation? What specific qualifications would you offer on when it is ok to attack a nation?
I'll take the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis over wiping out an entire nation for fear of them getting nukes. At least the CMC can be understood, and it can clearly be seen how both sides acted well, and acted to save face for each other, and acted in the interest of peace, even if the MAD philosophy is a bit on the crazy side. I'd wager that if Saddam was after nukes, he wasn't after them to fire at anybody (that would be pretty dumb, and he's not *that* dumb). He was after them to keep us from invading him, as a deterrant, just like the Soviets' nukes, and more than likely just like North Korea's nukes now. Sure, they're crazy, but it doesn't take a whole lot of brainpower to figure out that unless you have a whole bunch of nukes, the development of nukes is not going to allow you to use them. THe first nation that launches nukes at somebody is going to get so totally blasted to hell (either nuclear or with conventional weapons) that it'll take a lot more than craziness to launch them.
Only problem with the linked article is that they cite Super Marios Brothers as the first game with Mario. It was, as far as I remember, the third game with Mario and Luigi. Donkey Kong was the first, the original Mario Brothers was the second, and Super Mario Brothers was the third. Right? Wait, there was a Donkey Kong Junior, wasn't there? Oh, so that makes Super Mario Brothers the fourth game.
I'll take a Smegway, as long as I can get a t-shirt that says "Smegway" along with it. ;)
You know, as the driver of a large, 70ish truck toting a trailer, I have to say I like your post a lot. I absolutely *hate* passing bikes on the road, because I *know* that if even part of my truck touches them someone's going to get seriously hurt.
What really irritates me about bicyclers (you know, cyclers that go both ways, heh heh) isn't the fact that I have to share the road with them. It's the fact that they have such a tendency to drift back and forth in their space without caring about other traffic. Yes, we want to get around, but many of us want to get around pretty safely, and some help from the rider is required.
So, the reason I like your post is because you're providing the help. ;) In my truck, if I can't do a full-lane pass on a bike, I don't pass. My truck is just too big to properly share the road. Luckily, many of the roads in my area also have bike lanes! And that's where my complaint about cyclists wondering back and forth in their lanes comes into play. Bike lanes are sized for safe, non-intrusive sharing of the road by both bikes and cars.
But goddammit, wondering back and forth in the lane isn't sharing. It's not sharing when other cars do it, and it's downright dangerous for all concerned.
Perhaps you should try googling for "moped".
Mopeds are like fat girls. They're great fun to ride until your friends see you doing it.
As computers are widespread, and everything you need to know to build a weapon is published (why that was ever allowed, I don't understand!)
I'll answer the parenthetical expression first, of course. Censorship is never a workable long-term solution, and is frequently unworkable as a short-term solution. If censorship really worked, the average age for loss of virginity would never have dropped below average age of marriage, and it has been in the low 'teens for centuries, I understand (but could be wrong, that might be a relatively recent thing).
In this specific instance, censorship would not seriously prevent the wrong people from building the bombs. It would hinder them, yes, but not prevent them. ON the other hand, it would prevent everyone else from being able to find them, identify them, or even notice something that might be suspicious. By passing around the information to build a bomb, we can also pass around the information to prevent the bomb's construction and/or deployment.
We'll never know if I'm right, but it's my firm opinion that had we successfully censored this stuff, "they" would already have nukes, and would have already used them. And if it had happened in the Cold War, we would either be having this discussion underground, or we wouldn't be having it at all.
And we did try censorship already, and that resulting in several other nations suddenly becoming nuclear powers.
I admit, censorship can be a seductive idea. Just don't tell anyone! They'll never figure it out, and if "we" don't say anything, it'll never happen! But it never works. Time and time again, it has been used and it has failed. When will we learn? Censorship doesn't work, and frequently manages to defeat the purpose entirely.
I wouldn't necessarily call it a strawman; but I do think that you are sheltered enough that you haven't really experienced the human goblin condition yet, that you haven't met any truly nasty people.
Okay, regardless of what the other guy was saying, I am definitely not sheltered and have both personally experienced and witnessed aspects of the human goblin condition, and have known truly nasty people.
Yet I agree with the other guy. Figure that out. ;)
Please don't misunderstand me-- I don't have a shoot first, ask later mentality. I am, however, a huge fan of letting the people who would think to screw around with us know that there is a potentially a huge hammer hanging over their heads.
Do you really think people enjoy "screwing around with us"? Maybe if we didn't continually back them into a corner they would quit acting like cornered rats. How big a hammer we wield is exactly part of the problem, here.
I'm not saying we can just leave, either. We've caused enough trouble that morally we need to right our own wrongs. We can't just reverse previous policy and back out, anymore. Not only would that be giving in to terrorism, it would also be morally bankrupt. You can't stick a kid in the middle of a burning fire, say you screwed up, and walk away without taking the kid out of the fire and running him to the ER.
But our current foreign policy isn't any different than it's been, and we're not righting our wrongs over there, we're just doing more wrong.
And guess what? Once they start targeting the civilan populace with their military actions, why they hate no longer matters because obviously the only meaningful thing you can do for them is die. If that's the case, I have no problems.
When our bombs drop, who are their targets? How much of the civilian populace have we targetted ourselves? Once upon a time, weapons were of a short, intimate nature, and it could actually be considered dishonorable for a soldier to kill someone he didn't intend to kill. The advent of gunpowder changed that, pretty much. Granted, there was a small amount of collateral damage from previous distance weapons, and the siege of a city has never been pretty. That's not the point. The point is that now we bomb cities with the intent of killing civilians that produce the enemy's war machine.
I'm not attempting to defend terrorism, and it is nuts, but I can see where their actions derive from both crazy-headed thinking but also long-standing doctrines of war.
Hey, i'll be happy to admit the US has made it's share of forgeign policy mistakes in the region, but they, nor the others hardly share all the blame. As you mentioned, oil is perhapse the worlds number one most valuable commodity, But for such a massive revenue generating resource, the Middle East (with very few exceptions) is surprisingly poor.
Yeah, the area is surprisingly poor. For two reasons. First, the oil companies make deals with the totalitarian rulers, so the money that *is* going into the country isn't going to the people in the area. Second, the totalitarian rulers are frequently propped up in one form or another by the "evil Western imperialists" (ref: Saddam Hussein, we also support the Saudi King and a few others).
Besides, with all the battles we fought with the Soviet Union that were fought through puppets in the Middle East, how rich would you expect an area to be that has been fighting someone else's war for decades? The Cold War had a lot more collateral damage than anybody's owned up for. Viet Nam was at least honest in the sense that we used our own troops, and Korea as well, but those weren't the only wars fought on our behalf against the Soviet Union. Does the name "Iran Contra" mean anything to you? Yeah, we officially only supported one side of that war because our man Hussein was fighting it (iirc, he may not have been in power yet), and a few nuts of our own sold weapons to the Iranians. But the Iranians fought with Soviet Union backing, as well.
It's people are supressed. In poverty. You make it sound like everybody is just robbing them blind when they are actually making billion.
Yeah, many middle eastern people are oppressed, meanwhile the only countries we've targetted so far just happen to be countries which have leaders that we put in charge? What are you missing, here? Yes, the people are generally oppressed. More importantly, we generally support the leaders who are oppressive, and *not* the leaders who would find freedom. OPEC and their home countries and American oil companies as well are so scared of a free market in the middle east it isn't even funny. If a free market arrived in middle east oil exports, you won't be looking at $2/gallon and complaining about how high it is. You'll be looking at hybrids, and you'll be looking at $6+.
You make it sound like they are helpless when they wield considerable sway on the world economy. Speaking of which, you're right, LET'S brush up on history and current events and remember the 70s oil crisis.
As I recall, the Middle East was actually doing a fairly decent job of recovering from Nazi influence when we had our oil crisis and got more seriously involved with them.
And what "considerable sway" are you referring to? The countries don't have that, not with the oil fields in the North Sea, South America, etc. It's the oil companies that have it.
Honestly, if the Middle East is a terrorist cest pool, I have to s
it could make cheap fuel, cheap food and cheap thingamabobs.
Um, we already have that, the products are generally referred to as "beer", "wine", and "liquor". ;)
Um, "off a sholt piel"?
How long till Spanish becomes the majority langugage in some of the States?
Que?
Hmmm, I just realized I screwed up my Spanish in another post. Hope nobody notices...
Well, anytime you decide to post either correcting someone's spelling or spouting elitist "Oh lookee I'm smarter than someone else", your post immediately becomes open to attack for even the slightest mistake. Even forgivable typos will come under attack at that point.
So, from an American to a Canadian who's having a little trouble learning this lesson, next time you spout off about how wonderful you are for any reason, double-check your post for spelling and grammer errors.
It'll save you the trouble of looking like an ass later when you try to defend an obviously indefensible position.
At least we can do that in more than one language!
Vous etes no bueno por caca, asshole.
Je suis American. Tengo grande huevos, puto.
Good-bye.
I have invested too many resources into my IT career to do that unless it's a 'last resort'.
Doh!
Sure, IT will be in demand again, but expect it to wind up a shit-for-pay job, just like automechanics, because your average IT worker is doing a job that is pretty much the same thing, only less understood. ;) Also, expect it to go that way faster than automechanics did, because the industry grew faster than the automotive industry did.
Hmm, looks like it's almost there already. Won't be too long, then. In fact, there are already plenty of IT folks that are making just a dollar or less an hour over Mickie D's burger flippers. PErsonally, given the choice, I'd rather flip burgers. It's a lot more fun. ;)