Waving my point away with 'semantics' doesn't make it any less true, your determination to conflate the two without any understanding about the differences between an act and a group is not only hopeless but ignorant of how the English language works.
This from the guy who can't parse the difference between a tactic and a religion. Islamic Facists useterrorism as a tactic. Terrorism is a means, and Islam's only contribution to the annals of terrorism is the use of suicide bombing--although suicide attacks are as old as Rome and as new as the Kamikaze. The current state of Islam alternates between an apocolyptic world view and a peaceful one and this swing is accerbated by the region's political and economic states.
While these two things are becoming symbiotic as other groups abandon terrorism for fear of becoming related to the various IF groups such as Al Qaeda, they are not always related. Terrorism is a tactic, a grotesque practice that has been used by the Romans, the Assassins, the Mongols, the British, and Germans. Frightening a populace used to be common-place, and killing civilians was sometimes the goal, rather than a side-affect.
Go back and read some history, pay particular attention to the use of terror, biological warfare, and propaganda by Genghiz Khan for one.
Then what was the IRA doing? Or the Basque separatists? What about Pol Pot? Terrorism is merely a tactic that has been used by numerous groups throughout modern history. Islamic Facists use Terrorism, but the two are not inherently the same.
Not that aggro-hippies are any less demented, but what you're talking about is a rediculously short-sighted view of the world based on the lack of memory for anything further than a generation or two.
Simply put, you have to think for longer than next week and certaintly longer than the next generation.
A few examples:
Cut down a forrest for tooth-picks, lay down a parking lot. What happens? The heat island effect, black asphalt holds in heat at night especially in summer raising the local temperature by a degree or two. Why do you care? Your air-conditioning bill.
Amazon Rain Forest is decimated. What happens? Local weather patterns change, the amazon valley turns to the next great desert, and crops grown in the local area suddenly become more expensive. $10 bananas.
Dolphins are eaten like tuna, go extinct. What happens? More sharks, lots of them, and they really like to eat tuna and surfers. Florida stops being fun, fishing becomes expensive. Tuna costs $4 per can.
Cows. Screw 'em, they're worthless genetic experiments, eat them, steak is good and burgers are awesome.
Owls. Don't really care, except they're the canary in the coal mine, when the owls go the forrest is failing and then we get floods, invasive grasses that burn easily, plus no more deck material. It's not the owls really, but the entire forrest because ecosystems are just that, systems.
The problem with the redneck view is it sees the environment as a resource to be used up, not as something to regenerate and steward. And, this view also refuses to see the environment as a large-scale and rediculously complex system that is more than the sum of its parts. Owls are like motor-mounts, dolphins are wiring harnesses, and forrests are your transmission. You can't bounce along a dirt road listening to Skynard without these things right? Neither can the environment, there's a reason for each and every species, they all do something.
You don't know anything about me, you're just making assumptions about me. But, what I wrote was wrong, I apologize for that, it was unfair of me. Thank you for serving and for doing your duty.
However, I question the usefulness of scanning and indexing every piece of mail, every file, every conversation to find a small group of people. I question the ability of NSA and others to use more information than ever to do waht they failed to do before September 11. I don't believe that NSA access to every facet of every American's life will allow the government to stop another attack because that data must be filtered, understood, and then acted upon. And many failures of intelligence didn't happen because of a lack of information, but at lack of understanding. We don't have the translators to read documents we found in Afghanistan, so how will someone sift through millions of emails to find the one that gives them a clue?
At the same time, we are continuing to loose privacy which, when Al Qaeda is gone, won't be easy to bring back. I fear we are giving up rights for a war that has no end--if we're fighting terror, and not just Osama--and we will have no way to bring them back.
I do assume that the members of Al Qaeda have humanity because they're human, though twisted. And, Osama stated this was his purpose in attacking the US. It was designed to 'terrorize' us, the make us react and to make us retract our freedoms and the openess of our society. This was the damage he knew he could cause and the only way to hurt us.
I am frustrated and worried about this country, but that's not excuse for insulting someone who has served, not matter how wrong I think they are.
I like that your post is about how people who have differing points of view and insult each other and then you write this: "to sum up for those who didn't feel like reading through the big words with more than one syllable..." So, with this little nugget we get to see how easy it is to fall into that trap I guess.
My point was, ID and Creationism are the same thing that are made to appear diferent. ID then tries to subvert Evolution by playing on people's ignorance about the subject and their faith. ID is faith dressed in a lab coat and once we recognize that we can have a real conversation about the limits of faith, the necessity of science unhindered by faith-based prejudices, and have a real dicussion about the metaphysics in god and the universe. We can have a real conversation, but not when we have to pretend that ID is science and Evolution a religion.
Lastly, I agree that name calling is a bad way to express a point-of-view, but yet no matter how badly presented the truth is still the truth and everything is bullshit. Adherents, including the two of us, don't matter much either way so let us stop worrying about zealots and mod-bombers (your posts are not trolls) and let's talk, without resorting to easy digs.
Stop posting to slashdot and start digging that bunker boy, Osama's coming to get you. Time to roll up the old freedoms and seal that hatch.
See, here's the thing, I know that Al Qaeda had one main goal, to scare the beejezus out of us and I refuse to be scared. I refuse to be cowed by some six-foot zealot and the goddamned fools he surrounds himself with, and I also refuse to be cowed by those who would wrest my freedoms away from me while pretending to fight the first guy. I want my freedoms, bought and paid for by my grandfather and great-grandfather. I want my freedoms despite the horror of September 11, and I refuse to give them all up because you're scared and the government thinks it needs more information when it doesn't know what to do with the information it already has.
I think there's much more evidence and much better models with regard to global warming as opposed to global cooling, however I like where you're going. The local environment is also disrupted by car emissions, trash, urban sprawl, and toxic dumping and all of these things affect human beings whether it's increasing rates of asthma or cancers. And, in many ways, by dealing with local problems we deal with national and international problems, and thus we may save the environment while acting selfish.
The point is not to destroy industry, but to redirect its energy in a way that may allow us to avoid the worst kinds of environmental disasters. We don't shut down the factory, we just figure out how to decrease, recycle, or eliminate toxic emissions. We can do this through design, we can do this through legislation that includes both carrots and sticks, we can do this by creating new industries.
We, as a culture, need to invest in the future and the internal combustion engine belongs there as much as the buggy does in the present.
This procrastination to make tough choices now will only make things harder later, let's just start now, let's do the work, start the policies, and begin building environmentally sound business right now. If in 100 years we realize that everything we thought we knew was wrong, we still made new jobs, new technology and new industry. And, that's just ignoring the local benefits, healthier people, that come with environmentally responsible technologies.
You're assuming that the earth is a kind of oven and will automatically cool down if we stop pushing energy into it. This is simply not true. There are a myriad of delicate balances that could be toppled and cause chain-reactions that we don't entirely understand, we be seeing only the beginnings of that unbalancing, or we may be seeing the precursors. Two degreess is a lot of energy and considering the population went from 1.7 billion to around 5.9 billion in the 20th Century. How much energy will 5.9 billion need?
Unfortunately, it is impossible for you to give up your rights while I retain mine, therefore you don't just give up your own rights because the terrorists managed to scare into wetting the bed, you also give up mine.
Now you're just moving the goal posts and twisting the argument to make both sides appear unresonable, while you can stand in the middle taking the slings and arrows of both sides as you attempt to instill reason and compromise.
All heroic posturing aside, the Intelligent Design adherents want to break the back of evolution's credibility by calling it a 'theory' knowing that this will make evolution appear less valid than other scientific theories. This helps to instill a confusion between theory and law, between scientific certainty and mere possibility. Some people really believe in Intelligent Design, but act as if this is a new idea, when it's merely a rip-off of Aristotle's Prime Mover, but others are using it was a weapon to disprove something they find scary. It's dangerous because it attempt to subvert any idea that dares to scrape against the faith, when science has always been doing this and should always be doing this.
My point is not disengagement, but rather engagement with diplomacy and with a promise that we won't just decide to start pounding the place. An air war is cheap for us, but expensive for civilians and we at best get a very angry and polarized populace and a delay on Iran's nuclear program. We also get an Iran that reasonably fears another attack and so quietly goes about building up its nuclear program with aims to actually use it. We also get to infuriate the rest of the hornets in the Mid-East who will also make us pay.
I may be wrong, but Iran and others always threaten Israel, it's saber rattling and we can't just attack Iran because they're doing the same thing that Pakistan, India, and others have.
As for the Iranian navy, there's more firepower on Lake Havasu during Spring Break, and if that's a true indication of their military, I think Israel will be fine. Also, Iran can't really invade Israel, there's more than a few countries in the way and they don't have the logistical tail necessary, plus the Israelis will get to plant their flag in Tehran.
Think of it this way, we're a big 6" guy and we trip over some mean little guy and spill his beer. He starts raving at us about his beer and how he's going to kick our ass. Now, we know we can wail on this kid for sport, we can probably break his arm with a thought and drop-kick him for the big finish, but we also should remember that this guy is mean, he's been in lots of fights and he doesn't have much to loose. He might even enjoy the fight, and he's always got a sucker punch and a little knife tucked in his sleeve. So, should we proceed to beat his ass, or do we offer him a new beer, brush him of, apologize. Now he's got nothing to fight about, and now he looks bad because he wants to fight. We make him throw, then we hurt him, but we don't really want to fight, because it's going to ruin our night no matter what and we might get hurt over some watered-down beer.
Between you and me, diplomacy is our best option, we want to show Iranians that their government is theirs and it their problem to fix and we won't interfere, unless someone makes us. Force is great, but you can't just stand there and threaten someone, you have to give them a carrot too. Give that little guy a choice between a free beer and an ass-kicking because you want him to choose the free beer.
As for Israel, this is the equivalent of saying 'ladies and gentlemen' in a political speech, they say this all the time and while I think some of the mullahs mean it a lot of people don't. Plus they know any attack on Israel will cause not only a retaliation by Tel Aviv, and the mullahs know the Israelies have more than one nuke, but a response by the US and NATO, even the Russians. The mullahs have a tenuous grasp on their country, they rule by force and propaganda and they use the Israelis as a distraction to the real problems of the Iranian people.
The Mullahs want us to react a certain way, they want the US to threaten Iran and corner it. We can't afford a war, we don't have the men, the equipment, or the stamina to wage war in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, at the same time. We will loose and the Mullahs aren't stupid. They're crazy and dangerous, but not stupid.
I disagree, I think a military strike will poison whatever chance we have to 'deal' with the mullahs because it will polarize the youth vote, a rising and massive demographic that will at some point begin to take control of their country. By attacking we merely prove the mullahs right, that the US wants to hurt Iran and thus they must own the biggest scariest weapon. And this is of course assuming our strike is sucessful and breaks the back of their nuclear program.
With Bush's capitulation to India we have shown that our 'allies' can have nuclear weapons, thus rendering the whole moral "nukes are so dangerous no one should have them" to a good-old boys club. The Iranian mullahs like the nuclear program because it terrorizes the west, proves the need for their leadership, and could create a 'crisis' allowing them to hold the reins a little longer. Military strikes would just push this further.
I think the best way to deal with Iran is to paint them into a corner, let the Russians sell them technology that can't be used for nukes, offer help to build other kinds of infrastructure, and make the Mullahs admit that they want nukes as a weapon, then offer a treaty of non-aggression (we are afterall on both sides of their country) or some other deal. The minute that NK, Pakistan, and India had nukes the cat was out of the bag, now is time for damage control rather than some unilateral strike that will make things worse.
First, and least important at this point I think, was your statement that I think indicated that the US 'stopped' Hitler. This was a general statement and thus not very precise, so I think you can understand why everyone said you were wrong. But, obviously, without Hitler's defeat Europe and the rest of the world would be very different.
Now, as for UAVs and fighting an asymetrical conflict. Looking at the historical precedents of 'intervention' does show us where the pitfalls are, and it also shows that only in rare instances are military interventions sucessful in not only merely queling violence, but in actual state building. It's just hard, and it's almost impossible to define a Democratic state at the end of a rifle barrel. Germany and Japan are often trotted out, but these are examples of a homogenous culture, exhausted by war and handily defeated who already had the economic and social experience to define a new state. And remember that this still took time and treasure.
We also have to remember that the Mid-East is screwed up because of previous machinations which failed and merely brought about different problems, we exchanged Russians for the Taliban in Afghanistan for our trouble.
Furthermore, Vietnam was not 'lost' because of bad policy, but because of strategic mistakes made before Kennedy decided that 'advisors' should set foot in the country. If President Wilson had acted on Ho Chi Minh's request for help against the French, and later the Japanese, things might have gone different, but by the time our advisors arrived, the Viet Cong and NVA had been fighting for essentially 20 years against foreign armies. We should have avoided the fight entirely, allowed the French to fail, allowed the North to invade and unify the country, and then let the same kind of detente that is slowly remaking China into a Democracy foster there as well. Instead, we invaded, killed thousands, and still lost.
Intervention is dangerous, expensive, and often prone to failure. Should we always avoid intervention? No, but we need to be very choosy or aware of just how damn difficult it is.
Now, as for technology, survellience can be very useful, but someone can always hide, they can always move underground, and they just have to wait and find that soft-spot to hit you. Knowing that the explosives came from Person A who bought it from Supplier H is useful, but it only allows you to react and only if you have all the right information. This also assumes that someone doesn't take a SAM to the drone, or mortars the drone's base and the communication trailers. Remember your enemy is smart, knows the terrain, and is willing to do *anything* to win.
Technology will help, but the notion that any state can be fixed by an invading army has been proven wrong many, many times, and only in the best intances does it work.
Personally, I think an Iran left alone by the US, or engaged diplomatically and culturally, will be far more likely to change that an Iran under threat of force. Cornering an animal only makes it more dangerous.
I don't 'love' Apple either, but to say that their service is nothing special and arguably worse than Dell is just silly. Consumer Reports has noted, year after year, that Apple's service is better than Dell's, as has PC World and others. I've dealt with both, and frankly Apple makes Dell's system look maddingly byzantine in comparison.
As for 'spoiling' the Apple brand, I guess I never understood the whole cool and anti-cool thing. If someone is obnoxious about their fanaticism I get annoyed at the person and I've never paid much attention to media hype, because it's just that, hype. But, I do like Apple, and I wouldn't buy anything else because I base my opinion on experience and Apple has always treated me well.
For switcher ads they were aiming towards the general home customer, thus showing some suit monkey yammering on about ROI, SAP, or whatever other acronym is the flavor of the day in business, would make the Mac seem more complex and esoteric than Windows. Most people don't know what SAP, Oracle, or even IBM actually does.
As for the iMac, those were great machines, and OS9 was great for its time, but they were quickly eclipsed by hardware requirements, although if you shove enough RAM in one they can still be used today.
If you know the facts than making the blanket statement you made earlier should just be embarrasing. Furthermore, the Middle East has been in 'turmoil' since the fall of the Ottoman Empire (if not far earlier) and Western attempts to 'fix' this area has actually made it worse. Frankly, I think the Mid-East would be better served if the various psuedo-colonialist powers, i.e. Britian, the US, France, and Russia would stop screwing with these countries and let the chips fall as they may. We have already shoved warring tribal ethnic and religious sects into fake countries, removed Democratically-elected leaders because they displeased us, supported violent and dangerous warlords, and generally screwed up the place.
Armed invasion is dangerous and increasingly unsupportable as the symmetry of war turns towards the guerilla fighter and generally fails to create stable viable governments over long periods of time. This is an especially bad policy because it polarizes groups against the US rather than their own governments allowing the Syrians, Jordanians, and Iranian leaders legitimacy as they 'fight' against the US.
That's actually what I was asking for an example of an app that didn't work on the transition between Panther and Tiger, I was curious. This isn't entirely Apple's fault, Dantz is using the transition as an excuse to charge customers which is unfortunate. My hope would be that Leopard doesn't change much to cause these kinds of problems. Tiger is a pretty good upgrade, but not as great as Jaguar to Panther was, although Dashboard and Spotlight are pretty damn cool.
Now, although Dantz has decided to put the screws to its customers, are you really going to abandon the Mac? This seems like a greater reaction than is warrented.
Apple and Microsoft are at opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to legacy code. If Microsoft made car stereos they'd be including 8-track and casette player with their CD player, while Apple would have eighty-sixed casettes for CDs without making interim combo players. There's a happy middle somewhere in between.
Re:I'm the only GNU/Linux user in the office
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Why Windows is Slow
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You're an exception to the general rule in that you do everything right and yet even with your finely arrayed defenses you're still getting spyware and malware which, while not viral, are still dangerous to your system.
I was being a little facetious with my last comment, but for a lot of people there is a truism there.
Mac OS X was released on March 24, 2001. Just because Apple gives it a new "big cat" nickname and charges you for it doesn't make it revolutionary. I've "seen what's changed in 4 years" on a Mac and I have to say it's not that much.
You're not very observant are you? You could say the same about a 1967 Mustang and the 2006 Mustang and have the same opinion and you'd be just as wrong.
I'm curious about which packages were 'broken' by an OSX release that were not updated by the developer. Which applications did you have problems with?
This seems like a really poor reason to migrate away from the Macintosh platform, especially as Apple has promised to slow down the upgrade cycle since OSX has officially matured. The transition between Panther and Tiger was especially painless.
Re:I'm the only GNU/Linux user in the office
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Why Windows is Slow
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· Score: 1
That can't be right, you found a Mac virus, but never had a Windows virus?
Of course, silly me I didn't realize you lived on Htrae.
First, personal anecdotes do not constitute evidence, so while it's interesting that you haven't seen a virus on Windows lately this does not mean that viruses are not a problem. This is of course ignoring spyware and other types of malware which also affect Windows and plagues many small IT departments. I've personally cleaned up a dozen machines in the last month that were nearly crippled due to all the associated malware, including one that was totally hosed by SmithFraud.
IMHO, there are two kinds of Windows users, those who've had a virus and those who don't know it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Think damnit.
Think.
While these two things are becoming symbiotic as other groups abandon terrorism for fear of becoming related to the various IF groups such as Al Qaeda, they are not always related. Terrorism is a tactic, a grotesque practice that has been used by the Romans, the Assassins, the Mongols, the British, and Germans. Frightening a populace used to be common-place, and killing civilians was sometimes the goal, rather than a side-affect.
Go back and read some history, pay particular attention to the use of terror, biological warfare, and propaganda by Genghiz Khan for one.
Then what was the IRA doing? Or the Basque separatists? What about Pol Pot? Terrorism is merely a tactic that has been used by numerous groups throughout modern history. Islamic Facists use Terrorism, but the two are not inherently the same.
This is one of the most coherent posts I've read on Slashdot regarding any political discussion. Kudos.
Simply put, you have to think for longer than next week and certaintly longer than the next generation.
A few examples:
Cut down a forrest for tooth-picks, lay down a parking lot. What happens? The heat island effect, black asphalt holds in heat at night especially in summer raising the local temperature by a degree or two. Why do you care? Your air-conditioning bill.
Amazon Rain Forest is decimated. What happens? Local weather patterns change, the amazon valley turns to the next great desert, and crops grown in the local area suddenly become more expensive. $10 bananas.
Dolphins are eaten like tuna, go extinct. What happens? More sharks, lots of them, and they really like to eat tuna and surfers. Florida stops being fun, fishing becomes expensive. Tuna costs $4 per can.
Cows. Screw 'em, they're worthless genetic experiments, eat them, steak is good and burgers are awesome.
Owls. Don't really care, except they're the canary in the coal mine, when the owls go the forrest is failing and then we get floods, invasive grasses that burn easily, plus no more deck material. It's not the owls really, but the entire forrest because ecosystems are just that, systems.
The problem with the redneck view is it sees the environment as a resource to be used up, not as something to regenerate and steward. And, this view also refuses to see the environment as a large-scale and rediculously complex system that is more than the sum of its parts. Owls are like motor-mounts, dolphins are wiring harnesses, and forrests are your transmission. You can't bounce along a dirt road listening to Skynard without these things right? Neither can the environment, there's a reason for each and every species, they all do something.
However, I question the usefulness of scanning and indexing every piece of mail, every file, every conversation to find a small group of people. I question the ability of NSA and others to use more information than ever to do waht they failed to do before September 11. I don't believe that NSA access to every facet of every American's life will allow the government to stop another attack because that data must be filtered, understood, and then acted upon. And many failures of intelligence didn't happen because of a lack of information, but at lack of understanding. We don't have the translators to read documents we found in Afghanistan, so how will someone sift through millions of emails to find the one that gives them a clue?
At the same time, we are continuing to loose privacy which, when Al Qaeda is gone, won't be easy to bring back. I fear we are giving up rights for a war that has no end--if we're fighting terror, and not just Osama--and we will have no way to bring them back.
I do assume that the members of Al Qaeda have humanity because they're human, though twisted. And, Osama stated this was his purpose in attacking the US. It was designed to 'terrorize' us, the make us react and to make us retract our freedoms and the openess of our society. This was the damage he knew he could cause and the only way to hurt us.
I am frustrated and worried about this country, but that's not excuse for insulting someone who has served, not matter how wrong I think they are.
Mark my previous comment -5 jackass.
My point was, ID and Creationism are the same thing that are made to appear diferent. ID then tries to subvert Evolution by playing on people's ignorance about the subject and their faith. ID is faith dressed in a lab coat and once we recognize that we can have a real conversation about the limits of faith, the necessity of science unhindered by faith-based prejudices, and have a real dicussion about the metaphysics in god and the universe. We can have a real conversation, but not when we have to pretend that ID is science and Evolution a religion.
Lastly, I agree that name calling is a bad way to express a point-of-view, but yet no matter how badly presented the truth is still the truth and everything is bullshit. Adherents, including the two of us, don't matter much either way so let us stop worrying about zealots and mod-bombers (your posts are not trolls) and let's talk, without resorting to easy digs.
See, here's the thing, I know that Al Qaeda had one main goal, to scare the beejezus out of us and I refuse to be scared. I refuse to be cowed by some six-foot zealot and the goddamned fools he surrounds himself with, and I also refuse to be cowed by those who would wrest my freedoms away from me while pretending to fight the first guy. I want my freedoms, bought and paid for by my grandfather and great-grandfather. I want my freedoms despite the horror of September 11, and I refuse to give them all up because you're scared and the government thinks it needs more information when it doesn't know what to do with the information it already has.
You're a goddamned coward.
Yeah, I said it.
I think there's much more evidence and much better models with regard to global warming as opposed to global cooling, however I like where you're going. The local environment is also disrupted by car emissions, trash, urban sprawl, and toxic dumping and all of these things affect human beings whether it's increasing rates of asthma or cancers. And, in many ways, by dealing with local problems we deal with national and international problems, and thus we may save the environment while acting selfish.
We, as a culture, need to invest in the future and the internal combustion engine belongs there as much as the buggy does in the present.
This procrastination to make tough choices now will only make things harder later, let's just start now, let's do the work, start the policies, and begin building environmentally sound business right now. If in 100 years we realize that everything we thought we knew was wrong, we still made new jobs, new technology and new industry. And, that's just ignoring the local benefits, healthier people, that come with environmentally responsible technologies.
You're assuming that the earth is a kind of oven and will automatically cool down if we stop pushing energy into it. This is simply not true. There are a myriad of delicate balances that could be toppled and cause chain-reactions that we don't entirely understand, we be seeing only the beginnings of that unbalancing, or we may be seeing the precursors. Two degreess is a lot of energy and considering the population went from 1.7 billion to around 5.9 billion in the 20th Century. How much energy will 5.9 billion need?
Stop it.
All heroic posturing aside, the Intelligent Design adherents want to break the back of evolution's credibility by calling it a 'theory' knowing that this will make evolution appear less valid than other scientific theories. This helps to instill a confusion between theory and law, between scientific certainty and mere possibility. Some people really believe in Intelligent Design, but act as if this is a new idea, when it's merely a rip-off of Aristotle's Prime Mover, but others are using it was a weapon to disprove something they find scary. It's dangerous because it attempt to subvert any idea that dares to scrape against the faith, when science has always been doing this and should always be doing this.
I may be wrong, but Iran and others always threaten Israel, it's saber rattling and we can't just attack Iran because they're doing the same thing that Pakistan, India, and others have.
As for the Iranian navy, there's more firepower on Lake Havasu during Spring Break, and if that's a true indication of their military, I think Israel will be fine. Also, Iran can't really invade Israel, there's more than a few countries in the way and they don't have the logistical tail necessary, plus the Israelis will get to plant their flag in Tehran.
Between you and me, diplomacy is our best option, we want to show Iranians that their government is theirs and it their problem to fix and we won't interfere, unless someone makes us. Force is great, but you can't just stand there and threaten someone, you have to give them a carrot too. Give that little guy a choice between a free beer and an ass-kicking because you want him to choose the free beer.
As for Israel, this is the equivalent of saying 'ladies and gentlemen' in a political speech, they say this all the time and while I think some of the mullahs mean it a lot of people don't. Plus they know any attack on Israel will cause not only a retaliation by Tel Aviv, and the mullahs know the Israelies have more than one nuke, but a response by the US and NATO, even the Russians. The mullahs have a tenuous grasp on their country, they rule by force and propaganda and they use the Israelis as a distraction to the real problems of the Iranian people.
The Mullahs want us to react a certain way, they want the US to threaten Iran and corner it. We can't afford a war, we don't have the men, the equipment, or the stamina to wage war in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, at the same time. We will loose and the Mullahs aren't stupid. They're crazy and dangerous, but not stupid.
With Bush's capitulation to India we have shown that our 'allies' can have nuclear weapons, thus rendering the whole moral "nukes are so dangerous no one should have them" to a good-old boys club. The Iranian mullahs like the nuclear program because it terrorizes the west, proves the need for their leadership, and could create a 'crisis' allowing them to hold the reins a little longer. Military strikes would just push this further.
I think the best way to deal with Iran is to paint them into a corner, let the Russians sell them technology that can't be used for nukes, offer help to build other kinds of infrastructure, and make the Mullahs admit that they want nukes as a weapon, then offer a treaty of non-aggression (we are afterall on both sides of their country) or some other deal. The minute that NK, Pakistan, and India had nukes the cat was out of the bag, now is time for damage control rather than some unilateral strike that will make things worse.
Now, as for UAVs and fighting an asymetrical conflict. Looking at the historical precedents of 'intervention' does show us where the pitfalls are, and it also shows that only in rare instances are military interventions sucessful in not only merely queling violence, but in actual state building. It's just hard, and it's almost impossible to define a Democratic state at the end of a rifle barrel. Germany and Japan are often trotted out, but these are examples of a homogenous culture, exhausted by war and handily defeated who already had the economic and social experience to define a new state. And remember that this still took time and treasure.
We also have to remember that the Mid-East is screwed up because of previous machinations which failed and merely brought about different problems, we exchanged Russians for the Taliban in Afghanistan for our trouble.
Furthermore, Vietnam was not 'lost' because of bad policy, but because of strategic mistakes made before Kennedy decided that 'advisors' should set foot in the country. If President Wilson had acted on Ho Chi Minh's request for help against the French, and later the Japanese, things might have gone different, but by the time our advisors arrived, the Viet Cong and NVA had been fighting for essentially 20 years against foreign armies. We should have avoided the fight entirely, allowed the French to fail, allowed the North to invade and unify the country, and then let the same kind of detente that is slowly remaking China into a Democracy foster there as well. Instead, we invaded, killed thousands, and still lost.
Intervention is dangerous, expensive, and often prone to failure. Should we always avoid intervention? No, but we need to be very choosy or aware of just how damn difficult it is.
Now, as for technology, survellience can be very useful, but someone can always hide, they can always move underground, and they just have to wait and find that soft-spot to hit you. Knowing that the explosives came from Person A who bought it from Supplier H is useful, but it only allows you to react and only if you have all the right information. This also assumes that someone doesn't take a SAM to the drone, or mortars the drone's base and the communication trailers. Remember your enemy is smart, knows the terrain, and is willing to do *anything* to win.
Technology will help, but the notion that any state can be fixed by an invading army has been proven wrong many, many times, and only in the best intances does it work.
Personally, I think an Iran left alone by the US, or engaged diplomatically and culturally, will be far more likely to change that an Iran under threat of force. Cornering an animal only makes it more dangerous.
As for 'spoiling' the Apple brand, I guess I never understood the whole cool and anti-cool thing. If someone is obnoxious about their fanaticism I get annoyed at the person and I've never paid much attention to media hype, because it's just that, hype. But, I do like Apple, and I wouldn't buy anything else because I base my opinion on experience and Apple has always treated me well.
As for the iMac, those were great machines, and OS9 was great for its time, but they were quickly eclipsed by hardware requirements, although if you shove enough RAM in one they can still be used today.
Armed invasion is dangerous and increasingly unsupportable as the symmetry of war turns towards the guerilla fighter and generally fails to create stable viable governments over long periods of time. This is an especially bad policy because it polarizes groups against the US rather than their own governments allowing the Syrians, Jordanians, and Iranian leaders legitimacy as they 'fight' against the US.
Now, although Dantz has decided to put the screws to its customers, are you really going to abandon the Mac? This seems like a greater reaction than is warrented.
Apple and Microsoft are at opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to legacy code. If Microsoft made car stereos they'd be including 8-track and casette player with their CD player, while Apple would have eighty-sixed casettes for CDs without making interim combo players. There's a happy middle somewhere in between.
I was being a little facetious with my last comment, but for a lot of people there is a truism there.
You're not very observant are you? You could say the same about a 1967 Mustang and the 2006 Mustang and have the same opinion and you'd be just as wrong.
This seems like a really poor reason to migrate away from the Macintosh platform, especially as Apple has promised to slow down the upgrade cycle since OSX has officially matured. The transition between Panther and Tiger was especially painless.
Of course, silly me I didn't realize you lived on Htrae.
First, personal anecdotes do not constitute evidence, so while it's interesting that you haven't seen a virus on Windows lately this does not mean that viruses are not a problem. This is of course ignoring spyware and other types of malware which also affect Windows and plagues many small IT departments. I've personally cleaned up a dozen machines in the last month that were nearly crippled due to all the associated malware, including one that was totally hosed by SmithFraud.
IMHO, there are two kinds of Windows users, those who've had a virus and those who don't know it yet.