But it's also a PR campaign for the Arab world. It's worth it in the long run to be generous. It's vital that the Iraqi people don't feel like they're getting screwed over. You can say that we'll get bad press no matter what we do, but remember that, hopefully, in a year or two Iraq will have a free press that makes Al-Jazeera look like a bunch of fools, and it's pretty likely they'll be the most trusted source of news in the region. Unless, of course, we do something incredibly stupid like try to control what they say. Having the Iraqis not hate us would be a really good idea, and getting their country into good shape ASAP would be great way of doing it.
Read "Dark Sun" (sequel to "Making Of The Atomic Bomb"). We found out a hell of a lot after the fall of the Soviet Union; for instance we know now that the Rosenbergs actually were spies.
I'm sure you've also heard of the detailed records the Nazis kept regarding the Holocaust (whoa, dangerously close to invoking Godwin).
There were media reports in the last few weeks of Iraqi soldiers and Baath party officials loading up convoys of vehicles with files and documentation. Don't think it was their 401K records.
Tell that to the people on flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. Troll.
If you're sitting in your seat waving around a broken bottle, hey, I'll kick back and watch. If you actually hurt somebody, or try to get into the cockpit, I'll be first in line to tear your head off. If it means that the people behind me have to pull my corpse off you before *they* can stomp your face in, hey, I'm cool with that.
Well, when you think about this, it's really a very bad thing.
Where do you think the records are of who the secret police are? Who the torturers are? Where the mass graves are? Where the nerve gas cannisters are buried, and where the foreign bank accounts are? Police states document stuff like that meticulously.
Why? Well, hopefully, it'll reduce the possibility that an American city gets nerve gassed or nuked. That a good enough reason?
And price of oil will drop enough that you'll more than make up for it at the gas pump (and pretty much everything else you pay for has energy costs, too).
I suppose you think the Marshall Plan was a real bad idea, too.
We'll do a hell of a lot more business with an Iraq that has a large middle class and high standards of living.
Who's our biggest trading partners now? Who can we have better business with, North or South Korea?
We've made more money selling Starcraft games to South Korea than selling anything to North Korea.
And as far as debt from WWII, I'd be willing to bet that the US govt still owes a hell of a lot more than 345 million dollars, especially if you add in the money spent on the Marshall Plan.
We're not doing it because of greed, and we're not doing it because we're nice guys. A free and democratic Iraq is in the US's best interest now.
Tell me about it. I live in Dallas. Southwest Airlines flies out of Love Field (near downtown Dallas); it's where they started from. American's main hub is DFW Airport. The Wright Amendment prohibits airliners that fly out of Love Field from going to any state that is not adjacent to Texas; this was done to encourage use of DFW.
So if I want to fly to Denver or LA or NYC on Southwest, I have to go thru Houston.
What do you think would happen to American's ticket prices if they had to compete directly with Southwest Airlines?
It wouldn't bother me at all if the govt let them all go belly up.
I believe AIDS is diagnosed when the T-cell count gets below a certain lever. You can be infected by HIV for quite a while before this happens (in some people, apparently, until they die of old age).
They had an interesting article in Scientific American a while ago (6/97) about something like this, where they're designing FPGA that can be programmed fast enough that something like this can be done.
A chip can be an neural network 20 msec, then an array processor for 30 msec, etc.
It doesn't look like the article is online at www.sciam.com, but googling for scientific american fpga gets some data. Can also try "configurable computing".
My impression is that he was talking about an engineered virus that is easily transmitted (like Ebola) with a long incubation period (like AIDS). Something like that could spread and infect everybody in the country (well, the world) before anybody showed symptoms. Then, two years later, everyone is dead. Except for the group that was immunized beforehand.
Of course, then he talks about the spore form of it, and ruins it that way.
Although if the author does live in one of the Arab states, what he's saying is pretty ludicrous.
There's more to democracy than freedom of speech. How about voting, freedom of assembly, trial by jurt, etc? Would Hitler or Stalin been able to get re-elected?
Also, look at Iraq vs.North Korea. Iragis are much more aware of what's going on in the outside world than the North Koreans. You don't think that makes a difference in how easy it is to maintain a totalitarian state?
I'm wondering how 400 billion out of a 2 trillion dollar budget could be considered "half".
Why favor the military option? Gee, maybe because the diplomatic options was about as effective as using harsh language.
My grandma's a millionaire from stocks that someone like you wouldn't pick up if you saw it lying on the ground. Boring stuff like utilities.
How old are you? The last seven or eight years of the stock market were a bubble, yes, but that's not how it normally is. You buy stock, you buy ownership in a company. It isn't to hard to know when the stock is overvalued. In the late nineties I wasn't buying tech stocks, I was selling them. So long, suckers. If you buy overpriced stock because you think you'll find a sucker to pay even more for it, you better go get some soap, cause you're going to take a bath. Go tell Warren Buffet the stock market is a shell game. He'll get a good chuckle out of that.
And why the f*ck should profits go to the employees instead of the owners? The owners are the OWNERS. If the company goes under, the employees are out maybe two weeks pay. The owners lose every dime they put in. The people hurt by the collapse of Enron weren't the ones that just lost their jobs, they were the ones that had their life savings tied up in Enron stock. If they're really unlucky (or more accurately, if they're that stupid), they lost their jobs *and* their life savings.
If the employees want the profits from the company, they can buy the stock (although they'd damn well better diversify). Or join a startup and get sweat equity. You want a shot at the rewards, you better be willing to take the risks. I know people who worked in startups that failed, and they had *nothing* to show for years of work, not even salary. They were paid in sweat equity.
You're an employee? You're a resource. Your pay is determined by the laws of supply and demand.
BTW, I'm an employee. Though I hope to eventually be enough of an owner to change that.
>And what's your evidence that the Republicans are anti-Disney?
When I referred to "the senator from Disney", you knew who I was talking about.
>And we shouldn't vote against Bush now, because Congress passed a law, which FDR signed?
Evidence to support the concept that Democrats may also take away civil liberties. Lincoln suspending habeus corpus during the Civil War. Didn't seem to do much damage in the long run.
>Meanwhile, it's ok that Bush is taking away civil liberties, becasue you think Democrats are wimps.
I'm sure that Gore would have taken military action. I wish he had been able to get Clinton to do it years ago. As for justification, last I heard, embassies are considered American soil. Attacking them are acts of war
And I'd like to hear the reasons you think that, if Gore were president, he wouldn't be doing pretty much the same thing? You think that the dirty bomb guy would be walking the streets?
Cool. Let's get rid of one of the main reasons to buy stock. That should do wonders for the stock market.
Guess what. A company *can* put all its profits into bonuses for all its employees. If the owners agree to it. Doubt that will happen if it's a publicly held company. On the other hand, there's nothing keeping the employees from buying up the stock and becoming the owners.
There's a company that did than already. United (or is it Delta?) is owned primarily by its employees. Of course, the retards have been giving themselves the highest raises in the airline industry, and when they go bankrupt they'll lose their jobs *and* the value of all their stock will go to zero. I suppose you'll tell me now that the govt should bail them out when that happens. Screw them. Let somebody buy their planes and routes for a song, and make the unions crawl on their bellies to get their jobs back.
BTW, one reason the other airlines are in so much trouble is that their unions have demanded they keep up with United's pay levels.
I'm sll in favor of well-regulated business, but you're talking about killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The success of the economy is based on LETTING PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY WANT. Unless they're hurting other people, leave them the hell alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, you can increase the amount of your daily free time by 5 or 6 hours.
Well, if you need to have your wet dream, don't use the machine :)
And the world population was less than two billion back then. We're packed in tighter now, with much more travel.
But it's also a PR campaign for the Arab world. It's worth it in the long run to be generous. It's vital that the Iraqi people don't feel like they're getting screwed over. You can say that we'll get bad press no matter what we do, but remember that, hopefully, in a year or two Iraq will have a free press that makes Al-Jazeera look like a bunch of fools, and it's pretty likely they'll be the most trusted source of news in the region. Unless, of course, we do something incredibly stupid like try to control what they say. Having the Iraqis not hate us would be a really good idea, and getting their country into good shape ASAP would be great way of doing it.
Read "Dark Sun" (sequel to "Making Of The Atomic Bomb"). We found out a hell of a lot after the fall of the Soviet Union; for instance we know now that the Rosenbergs actually were spies.
I'm sure you've also heard of the detailed records the Nazis kept regarding the Holocaust (whoa, dangerously close to invoking Godwin).
There were media reports in the last few weeks of Iraqi soldiers and Baath party officials loading up convoys of vehicles with files and documentation. Don't think it was their 401K records.
Tell that to the people on flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. Troll.
If you're sitting in your seat waving around a broken bottle, hey, I'll kick back and watch. If you actually hurt somebody, or try to get into the cockpit, I'll be first in line to tear your head off. If it means that the people behind me have to pull my corpse off you before *they* can stomp your face in, hey, I'm cool with that.
Well, when you think about this, it's really a very bad thing.
Where do you think the records are of who the secret police are? Who the torturers are? Where the mass graves are? Where the nerve gas cannisters are buried, and where the foreign bank accounts are? Police states document stuff like that meticulously.
They need to put a bounty on those PCs, ASAP.
Why? Well, hopefully, it'll reduce the possibility that an American city gets nerve gassed or nuked. That a good enough reason?
And price of oil will drop enough that you'll more than make up for it at the gas pump (and pretty much everything else you pay for has energy costs, too).
I suppose you think the Marshall Plan was a real bad idea, too.
We'll do a hell of a lot more business with an Iraq that has a large middle class and high standards of living.
Who's our biggest trading partners now? Who can we have better business with, North or South Korea?
We've made more money selling Starcraft games to South Korea than selling anything to North Korea.
And as far as debt from WWII, I'd be willing to bet that the US govt still owes a hell of a lot more than 345 million dollars, especially if you add in the money spent on the Marshall Plan.
We're not doing it because of greed, and we're not doing it because we're nice guys. A free and democratic Iraq is in the US's best interest now.
Tell me about it. I live in Dallas. Southwest Airlines flies out of Love Field (near downtown Dallas); it's where they started from. American's main hub is DFW Airport. The Wright Amendment prohibits airliners that fly out of Love Field from going to any state that is not adjacent to Texas; this was done to encourage use of DFW.
So if I want to fly to Denver or LA or NYC on Southwest, I have to go thru Houston.
What do you think would happen to American's ticket prices if they had to compete directly with Southwest Airlines?
It wouldn't bother me at all if the govt let them all go belly up.
Flushing vast sums of money down a toilet would be a pretty good imitation.
Too many people seem to forget that one definition of good engineering is that it MAKES MONEY. At least in the non-government world.
Well the *75* billion he just got is for the war, and will not be a permanent increase.
2 .h tml#Revenues
And 30 seconds with google shows me that federal government receipts (in 2001) to be 2,019 billion dollars.
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guide0
Or do they not count social security taxes as taxes in Europe? If that's the case, you all must have reeeaally low taxes.
I believe AIDS is diagnosed when the T-cell count gets below a certain lever. You can be infected by HIV for quite a while before this happens (in some people, apparently, until they die of old age).
To be quite honest, none of those things will keep the other hundred people on the plane from kicking your ass six ways from Tuesday.
And in related news, you are no longer able to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
And, just to be clear, it was a *state* law the Supreme Court was upholding.
They had an interesting article in Scientific American a while ago (6/97) about something like this, where they're designing FPGA that can be programmed fast enough that something like this can be done.
A chip can be an neural network 20 msec, then an array processor for 30 msec, etc.
It doesn't look like the article is online at www.sciam.com, but googling for scientific american fpga gets some data. Can also try "configurable computing".
My impression is that he was talking about an engineered virus that is easily transmitted (like Ebola) with a long incubation period (like AIDS). Something like that could spread and infect everybody in the country (well, the world) before anybody showed symptoms. Then, two years later, everyone is dead. Except for the group that was immunized beforehand.
Of course, then he talks about the spore form of it, and ruins it that way.
Tried to check out the link; didn't seem to work.
Although if the author does live in one of the Arab states, what he's saying is pretty ludicrous.
There's more to democracy than freedom of speech. How about voting, freedom of assembly, trial by jurt, etc? Would Hitler or Stalin been able to get re-elected?
Also, look at Iraq vs.North Korea. Iragis are much more aware of what's going on in the outside world than the North Koreans. You don't think that makes a difference in how easy it is to maintain a totalitarian state?
The beer is worse but the food is better :)
Whether or not you have a good time will be entirely dependant on the girl . . .
I'm wondering how 400 billion out of a 2 trillion dollar budget could be considered "half". Why favor the military option? Gee, maybe because the diplomatic options was about as effective as using harsh language.
Well, the environmentalists would start bouncing off the walls if they sold engineered seeds that were viable.
And farmers *do* have the option to go back to using regular seed.
Hey sherlock, what do you think is keeping gravity from making the cable fall to earth? :)
My grandma's a millionaire from stocks that someone like you wouldn't pick up if you saw it lying on the ground. Boring stuff like utilities.
How old are you? The last seven or eight years of the stock market were a bubble, yes, but that's not how it normally is. You buy stock, you buy ownership in a company. It isn't to hard to know when the stock is overvalued. In the late nineties I wasn't buying tech stocks, I was selling them. So long, suckers. If you buy overpriced stock because you think you'll find a sucker to pay even more for it, you better go get some soap, cause you're going to take a bath.
Go tell Warren Buffet the stock market is a shell game. He'll get a good chuckle out of that.
And why the f*ck should profits go to the employees instead of the owners? The owners are the OWNERS. If the company goes under, the employees are out maybe two weeks pay. The owners lose every dime they put in. The people hurt by the collapse of Enron weren't the ones that just lost their jobs, they were the ones that had their life savings tied up in Enron stock. If they're really unlucky (or more accurately, if they're that stupid), they lost their jobs *and* their life savings.
If the employees want the profits from the company, they can buy the stock (although they'd damn well better diversify). Or join a startup and get sweat equity. You want a shot at the rewards, you better be willing to take the risks. I know people who worked in startups that failed, and they had *nothing* to show for years of work, not even salary. They were paid in sweat equity.
You're an employee? You're a resource. Your pay is determined by the laws of supply and demand.
BTW, I'm an employee. Though I hope to eventually be enough of an owner to change that.
>And what's your evidence that the Republicans are anti-Disney?
When I referred to "the senator from Disney", you knew who I was talking about.
>And we shouldn't vote against Bush now, because Congress passed a law, which FDR signed?
Evidence to support the concept that Democrats may also take away civil liberties. Lincoln suspending habeus corpus during the Civil War. Didn't seem to do much damage in the long run.
>Meanwhile, it's ok that Bush is taking away civil liberties, becasue you think Democrats are wimps.
I'm sure that Gore would have taken military action. I wish he had been able to get Clinton to do it years ago. As for justification, last I heard, embassies are considered American soil. Attacking them are acts of war
And I'd like to hear the reasons you think that, if Gore were president, he wouldn't be doing pretty much the same thing? You think that the dirty bomb guy would be walking the streets?
Cool. Let's get rid of one of the main reasons to buy stock. That should do wonders for the stock market.
Guess what. A company *can* put all its profits into bonuses for all its employees. If the owners agree to it. Doubt that will happen if it's a publicly held company. On the other hand, there's nothing keeping the employees from buying up the stock and becoming the owners.
There's a company that did than already. United (or is it Delta?) is owned primarily by its employees. Of course, the retards have been giving themselves the highest raises in the airline industry, and when they go bankrupt they'll lose their jobs *and* the value of all their stock will go to zero. I suppose you'll tell me now that the govt should bail them out
when that happens. Screw them. Let somebody buy their planes and routes for a song, and make the unions crawl on their bellies to get their jobs back.
BTW, one reason the other airlines are in so much trouble is that their unions have demanded they keep up with United's pay levels.
I'm sll in favor of well-regulated business, but you're talking about killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The success of the economy is based on LETTING PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY WANT. Unless they're hurting other people, leave them the hell alone.