If treaties or international organizations don't suit our national interests, we withdraw. All countries do, really. Any country that does not is betraying its citizens.
The WTO is forceful because it legitimizes and enforces trade retaliation. If the US doesn't give in, US businesses will face trade restrictions that would cost americans jobs. And that makes politicians lose elections, so you don't mess (much) with the WTO.
Any other international group the US is a party to could order the same thing and would be laughed at.
John Howard... maintains the US had intelligence on WMD
It's funny how the argument has degraded overseas... that any reluctance to claim bush was lying must be 'crazy'.
Incidentally, the brits, french and germans also maintained (at least before the US started talking war) that Iraq had WMDs.
Also, there was most recently a big huff in Britain when the Lord Hutton thing came out. Turns out the brits didn't exaggerate the cause for war... the only people lying and exaggerating were the BBC. (shocker)
There seems to be an occam's razor explanation that slipped through the cracks... that maybe the US, british, german, and french intelligence on Saddam's WMD was wrong, and it was not a giant conspiracy that GWB evidently launched while he was still governor of texas.
As for other intelligence failures... in recent months the US has also vastly underestimated the nuclear capabilities of, let's see : Lybia, Iran, and North Korea. Also, they didn't know Pakistan was distributing most of these weapons.
The US intelligence apparatus has some serious problems. They need to be fixed. But it doesn't even make any sense that Bush would lie about WMDs when there were other good reasons to go to war... he would be found out right before the next election. As it were, we found much documentation that helps to explain why we were wrong... for example, it appears that Saddam himself also thought he had WMDs.
Make no mistake, it is a serious intelligence failure. But it should be Mr. Tenet's head rolling, not Mr. Bush's.
If unarmed was the original comment, I wouldn't have replied... the original comment said "heavily unarmed", which makes no sense whatsoever. It's like saying "heavily uncooked".
Since you brought it up... the US is not deliberately killing Iraqi civilians, which is, coincidentally, a practice popular with the prior regime and current insurgency.
The MPAA and RIAA have been harassing programmers from the start, and wondering aloud why it was having little to no effect on illegal file swapping.
If jack valenti were the drug czar of the US, he would put botanists and horticulturalists in jail and wonder why illegal drugs still proliferated.
I don't buy it, though. The MPAA and RIAA cabal isn't stupid. I believe they've been refraining from visibly targeting 'dealers and users' so as to keep illegal piracy high, to serve as an argument in lobbying efforts for further legislation, which they (mistakenly) believe is the real answer.
However, now that the cabal is facing much greater opposition to legislative 'remedies', they are being forced into the role they should have taken all along... pursuing pirates. The action against the college students recently (although still against programmers and not pirates) was the first step. They were chosen because the high damanages allowed guaranteed a settlement... note that usually secret settlement amounts became very public.
This will hopefully turn into a better, friendlier entertainment cabal. Still users of scare tactics, but no longer backward opponents of technology.
You could also publish relevant details about the tools (which you also essentially do when you patent them). Stuff existing in the literature already is not considered patentable.
It's interesting that your IP lawyers failed to mention that. COUGHjobsecurityCOUGH! Something's in my throat! Excuse me!
Patents are good for countersuits, however, and that's why the preferred business model is moving towards either 1) large companies with tons of products and patents or 2) small companies or individuals with no products (no countersuits there) but plenty of IP and lawyers.
Caffeine is a stimulant. When you drink coffee you're self-medicating... I used to do the same thing. It's also why it's very, very bad for ADHD people to fool around with coke... because it will actually make you think clearer, but at the same time dismantle your body.
I've taken ritalin and it messed me up pretty good. I am now taking something called wellbutrin. The side effects aren't too bad. It's one of those "never tested against ADHD but seems to works" things. I know I didn't think it worked until I quit taking it for a while and noticed how bad 'normal' was:)
Every year thousands of IP lawyers can barely afford the convertible version of their favorite mercedes benz. Many go hungry as they wait in line at expensive restaurants. And every second, another IP lawyer must make a choice between a $1000 black suit and a $1000 brown suit.
How can I help, you ask? By supporting strong intellectual property laws. And supporting your local technology company... if they're still around in five years, they will be paying plenty of IP lawyers.
At this point you may have some worries. I hate innovation, you say... what if the money I invest in technology companies is used to advance technology?
No need to worry. Less and less potential IP lawyer salary is wasted on technology every day, and many visionary technology companies have already made the switch to an all-IP lawyer technical staff! No pesky engineers needed!
Call your elected representative. Tell them that you support the welfare for IP lawyers program, and to keep those IP laws coming! And make sure you say, "A lonely black suit won't happen on my watch."
If I was in DARPA, and happened to like Theo a lot, I would probably still have to dump him if he made some shallow anti-war comments.
Funding is of prime concern to government agencies. If it shows up on the drudge report or bill o'reilly that DARPA is funding a canadian who openly ridicules bush, it could be detrimental to their funding and, for that matter, to their purpose.
Also, I somehow have a hard time believing that if I (american) was receiving canadian research grant money, it would be unaffected if I publicly denounced the canadian government's anti-war views.
First off, it's also going to take a good amount of money (I've heard 40 billion) to modernize iraq's oil harvesting facilities. Most of that will have to come from the oil industry.
Secondly, oil companies already could get cheap oil from iraq under the oil for food thing.
Third, if GWB had offered to drop sanctions in exchange for exclusive contracts for american companies I'm sure Saddam would have jumped.
Fourth, installing a democratic iraqi government does little to ensure long term contracts with american companies.
Fifth, if the russians or french had chosen to participate (which we asked them to do), they would probably find the newly-freed iraqi people quite willing to give them oil contracts after a war. However, the only dead russians and french in the country (if there were any) were there providing military support to Saddam's regime. I doubt the french and russians have many big fans in iraq right now.
Finally, the greed motive doesn't work out too well as US support for the war goes. But, it does work as a reason that the french and russians opposed the war (their oil companies were making a killing under saddam and oil-for-food).
Throughout our history, the one rule has proven true time and time again : wars have been always been precipitated by the sales of real-time strategy games to children.
Wars are not caused by dictators, or greed, or oppression, or breaking of treaties. They are caused by poor problem solving skills picked up from the playing of real time strategy games by children. Kudos to the german government. You have made a brave stand for peace in these troubled times.
This link isn't a great explanation, but it was the best a few minutes search could do:)
Raceways are conduits you put on the outside (facing the room) of your interior walls. After you've installed them, rewiring your house then requires... a screwdriver. It's supposed to be easier on the insulation, too (no holes in walls).
Raceways, incidentally, were often used when first installing electricity in old houses back in the early to mid 1900s. Some houses still have them, but they are usually too tiny to run anything but electrical wire through.
One problem, though. Many non-geeks might find raceways ugly.:)
Umm, I hate to downplay the value of geekily pursuing it, but I don't believe there's reliable clinical evidence that verifies the existence of MCS.
MCS is kind of aligned with the same people who feel that radio waves harm them.
Now, allergies to about everything, individually, _are_ considered medically viable and clinically verifiable. But MCS, which proposes that one disease makes you allergic to almost all chemicals, doesn't seem to pass muster.
Here is a compilation of views of medical associations towards MCS. Nobody says it is complete bunk, but everybody agrees that there aren't any good studies that proves it does exist.
I'm just at work taking a little break before I spend half an hour tracking down where I can update my contact information on the corporate website because I was asked to do so by an office administrator (secretary).
I think it would be a boon to both the tech and movie industries if more movies were made realistically portraying what software engineers do. For all you aspiring screenwriters out there, I was also munching on some "cheetos", although you might want to negotiate a product placement contract for the specific snack.
Office Admin (played by jennifer garner) : "Could you please update your contact information on the corporate webserver."
Software engineer (played by Sean Connery, munching on "Xtreme BBQ Veggie Rinds") : "Of coursh, my darling."
Corporate website (played by richard dreyfuss) : "Beep boop boop beep."
I've thought something like this would be pretty cool, especially one that could switch between audio and video on two dvd's. Mostly so I can watch the updated original star wars trilogy, only minus greedo shooting first, and plus the "yub yub" song.
Studios have no qualms about watering down their own movies... movies are already edited for tv in content, length, and aspect ratio. The studios just want the exclusive right to possibly produce watered down movies themselves and profit from said watered down movies.
As for the "if you don't want the bad content, don't watch the movie." I know it's kind of knee-jerk and you hear that argument a lot. This fails to remedy the fact that it doesn't make any sense. There's no moral or logical imperative I am aware of that states that there's something wrong with liking only portions of a whole. It's only really a valid argument if you hate people you think are prudish or if you are an artistic fascist. And then it's still juvenile.
I think that's a great idea to help the starving peoples of the world. Use capitalism to induce farmers to produce less yield for more money. That way, everybody wins.
At least what they do for ballistic fingerprinting...
They have relatively little effect on gun crime, but cause a dramatic decrease in handgun sales. It intimidates and hassles potential gun buyers, as well as potentially pricing them out of the market.
Some people tend to say this is a prudent decision... but a prudent decision would probably be made after the technology was developed and proved reliable over a period of time.
Contra : Shattered Soldier (soliders?) was just released for the PS2. It's still 2D. You still die after being shot once, evidently. I've heard it's fantastic.
Slashdot Mirror
The WTO is forceful because it legitimizes and enforces trade retaliation. If the US doesn't give in, US businesses will face trade restrictions that would cost americans jobs. And that makes politicians lose elections, so you don't mess (much) with the WTO.
Any other international group the US is a party to could order the same thing and would be laughed at.
It's funny how the argument has degraded overseas ... that any reluctance to claim bush was lying must be 'crazy'.
Incidentally, the brits, french and germans also maintained (at least before the US started talking war) that Iraq had WMDs.
Also, there was most recently a big huff in Britain when the Lord Hutton thing came out. Turns out the brits didn't exaggerate the cause for war ... the only people lying and exaggerating were the BBC. (shocker)
There seems to be an occam's razor explanation that slipped through the cracks ... that maybe the US, british, german, and french intelligence on Saddam's WMD was wrong, and it was not a giant conspiracy that GWB evidently launched while he was still governor of texas.
As for other intelligence failures ... in recent months the US has also vastly underestimated the nuclear capabilities of, let's see : Lybia, Iran, and North Korea. Also, they didn't know Pakistan was distributing most of these weapons.
The US intelligence apparatus has some serious problems. They need to be fixed. But it doesn't even make any sense that Bush would lie about WMDs when there were other good reasons to go to war ... he would be found out right before the next election. As it were, we found much documentation that helps to explain why we were wrong ... for example, it appears that Saddam himself also thought he had WMDs.
Make no mistake, it is a serious intelligence failure. But it should be Mr. Tenet's head rolling, not Mr. Bush's.
As the article noted, never underestimate the computing power of a meth junkie.
Better to turn it into sawdust. And then burn it.
If unarmed was the original comment, I wouldn't have replied ... the original comment said "heavily unarmed", which makes no sense whatsoever. It's like saying "heavily uncooked".
Since you brought it up ... the US is not deliberately killing Iraqi civilians, which is, coincidentally, a practice popular with the prior regime and current insurgency.
I'm assuming this means that instead of not being armed with pistols or rifles, they are instead not armed with machine guns and missile launchers?
wireless is much easier and much cheaper. Can you imagine wiring a desk or two for every child in the school?
"Yeah, boss, sorry the code is late, but it was leaked : therefore, it must be rewritten."
If jack valenti were the drug czar of the US, he would put botanists and horticulturalists in jail and wonder why illegal drugs still proliferated.
I don't buy it, though. The MPAA and RIAA cabal isn't stupid. I believe they've been refraining from visibly targeting 'dealers and users' so as to keep illegal piracy high, to serve as an argument in lobbying efforts for further legislation, which they (mistakenly) believe is the real answer.
However, now that the cabal is facing much greater opposition to legislative 'remedies', they are being forced into the role they should have taken all along ... pursuing pirates. The action against the college students recently (although still against programmers and not pirates) was the first step. They were chosen because the high damanages allowed guaranteed a settlement ... note that usually secret settlement amounts became very public.
This will hopefully turn into a better, friendlier entertainment cabal. Still users of scare tactics, but no longer backward opponents of technology.
It's interesting that your IP lawyers failed to mention that. COUGHjobsecurityCOUGH! Something's in my throat! Excuse me!
Patents are good for countersuits, however, and that's why the preferred business model is moving towards either 1) large companies with tons of products and patents or 2) small companies or individuals with no products (no countersuits there) but plenty of IP and lawyers.
I've taken ritalin and it messed me up pretty good. I am now taking something called wellbutrin. The side effects aren't too bad. It's one of those "never tested against ADHD but seems to works" things. I know I didn't think it worked until I quit taking it for a while and noticed how bad 'normal' was :)
How can I help, you ask? By supporting strong intellectual property laws. And supporting your local technology company ... if they're still around in five years, they will be paying plenty of IP lawyers.
At this point you may have some worries. I hate innovation, you say ... what if the money I invest in technology companies is used to advance technology?
No need to worry. Less and less potential IP lawyer salary is wasted on technology every day, and many visionary technology companies have already made the switch to an all-IP lawyer technical staff! No pesky engineers needed!
Call your elected representative. Tell them that you support the welfare for IP lawyers program, and to keep those IP laws coming! And make sure you say, "A lonely black suit won't happen on my watch."
Funding is of prime concern to government agencies. If it shows up on the drudge report or bill o'reilly that DARPA is funding a canadian who openly ridicules bush, it could be detrimental to their funding and, for that matter, to their purpose.
Also, I somehow have a hard time believing that if I (american) was receiving canadian research grant money, it would be unaffected if I publicly denounced the canadian government's anti-war views.
Secondly, oil companies already could get cheap oil from iraq under the oil for food thing.
Third, if GWB had offered to drop sanctions in exchange for exclusive contracts for american companies I'm sure Saddam would have jumped.
Fourth, installing a democratic iraqi government does little to ensure long term contracts with american companies.
Fifth, if the russians or french had chosen to participate (which we asked them to do), they would probably find the newly-freed iraqi people quite willing to give them oil contracts after a war. However, the only dead russians and french in the country (if there were any) were there providing military support to Saddam's regime. I doubt the french and russians have many big fans in iraq right now.
Finally, the greed motive doesn't work out too well as US support for the war goes. But, it does work as a reason that the french and russians opposed the war (their oil companies were making a killing under saddam and oil-for-food).
Wars are not caused by dictators, or greed, or oppression, or breaking of treaties. They are caused by poor problem solving skills picked up from the playing of real time strategy games by children. Kudos to the german government. You have made a brave stand for peace in these troubled times.
Show humor who's boss!
Raceways are conduits you put on the outside (facing the room) of your interior walls. After you've installed them, rewiring your house then requires ... a screwdriver. It's supposed to be easier on the insulation, too (no holes in walls).
Raceways, incidentally, were often used when first installing electricity in old houses back in the early to mid 1900s. Some houses still have them, but they are usually too tiny to run anything but electrical wire through.
One problem, though. Many non-geeks might find raceways ugly. :)
MCS is kind of aligned with the same people who feel that radio waves harm them.
Now, allergies to about everything, individually, _are_ considered medically viable and clinically verifiable. But MCS, which proposes that one disease makes you allergic to almost all chemicals, doesn't seem to pass muster.
Here is a compilation of views of medical associations towards MCS. Nobody says it is complete bunk, but everybody agrees that there aren't any good studies that proves it does exist.
I think it would be a boon to both the tech and movie industries if more movies were made realistically portraying what software engineers do. For all you aspiring screenwriters out there, I was also munching on some "cheetos", although you might want to negotiate a product placement contract for the specific snack.
Office Admin (played by jennifer garner) : "Could you please update your contact information on the corporate webserver."
Software engineer (played by Sean Connery, munching on "Xtreme BBQ Veggie Rinds") : "Of coursh, my darling."
Corporate website (played by richard dreyfuss) : "Beep boop boop beep."
Studios have no qualms about watering down their own movies ... movies are already edited for tv in content, length, and aspect ratio. The studios just want the exclusive right to possibly produce watered down movies themselves and profit from said watered down movies.
As for the "if you don't want the bad content, don't watch the movie." I know it's kind of knee-jerk and you hear that argument a lot. This fails to remedy the fact that it doesn't make any sense. There's no moral or logical imperative I am aware of that states that there's something wrong with liking only portions of a whole. It's only really a valid argument if you hate people you think are prudish or if you are an artistic fascist. And then it's still juvenile.
I think that's a great idea to help the starving peoples of the world. Use capitalism to induce farmers to produce less yield for more money. That way, everybody wins.
In the DC area, for the past several years.
They have relatively little effect on gun crime, but cause a dramatic decrease in handgun sales. It intimidates and hassles potential gun buyers, as well as potentially pricing them out of the market.
Some people tend to say this is a prudent decision ... but a prudent decision would probably be made after the technology was developed and proved reliable over a period of time.
Contra : Shattered Soldier (soliders?) was just released for the PS2. It's still 2D. You still die after being shot once, evidently. I've heard it's fantastic.
Drop $100-200 bucks a month on commercial internet service. Then they let you do pretty much whatever you want :)
If the calling company allows its employees to call you, they could face sexual harassment litigation. Brilliant :)