Internet Explorer has a "Content Advisor". Tools -> Internet Options -> Content.
Thank you for pointing out that utterly useless feature. I was aware of that thing, however my theory was that the lady in question was probably confused about which program provided her content filtering. I based my guess on the fact that Norton has far more comprehensive and even borderline useful (as far as younger kids are concerned) tool.
She said Internet Explorer had a "Content Advisor"
Actually, it was probably Norton that had it. The Internet Security thingie comes with a contents filtering component based on word patterns, blacklisted sites etc.
Why Israel is immune to Chapter VII is that the US, as everyone knows, has long been a staunch ally of Israel, and we use our permanent security council member status to veto any draft resolution which directly threatens the interests of our close allies.
I was merely pointing out this hypocritical stance and the selective use of "UN resolutions" as a war cry of the various Crusaders. I call them Crusaders since the religious insanity is the only motive that is left standing after all the other secular ones were demolished by facts one by one as time went by. Also while the Iraq resolutions were primarily a result of the "security council", a useless and corrupt body that indeed turns UN into a tool of the US (since other members seem to lack the singular drive for world hegemony at any cost), many of the Israel resolutions were passed by the General Assembly with vote counts like 174 to 2 (Israel and US opposing). UN will not be an effective operation of any sort until there is a sweeping reform abolishing the "permanent members" and their vetos and making the security council a democratically elected body.
Seventeen UN resolutions (of which ANY member could enforce...
The US mostly regards the UN as irrelevant - isn't it hypocritical to be using resolutions as an excuse for aggression?
You should also point out that Iraq's arch foe, Israel has been guilty if defying this handsomne list of fourty-something resolutions, number far exceeding that of any other country on the planet. Somehow I dont see Bush and crew getting ready to bring "regime change" to Israel.
Likewise their focus on corporate deployments really hinders home/clueless users
This is a very good point. The solution is obvious: companies with expertise in home/clueless computing should stick to it and produce auto-magical, pretty, multimedia operating systems. Those who know the corporate field, should produce centrally controlled, reliable, multi-vendor compatible, remotely deployed, headless etc etc. operating systems. Alternatively, one group can produce both systems providing that they share but small central core and all the other components focused on those two completely distinct groups are totally separate.
A Linux based OS has a possiblity here only because of its granular design and ability to create pre-defined and auto-magical distributions for the clueless crowd, while with a different set
of components it can be targetted at wide range of corporate and industrial deployments with no compromises at all since the cute GUI can be stripped down or jetissoned alltogether when not needed. This, combined with many, many other design considerations that can aid the corporate users and can be made invisible to the home crowd makes this system a winner when compared to Windows which is really a one trick pony: a home/clueless system that is being forcefully pressed into service in a professional market.
Not only that, DirectX is actually a hindrance in typical deployments since some retarded video driver manufacturers (hello ATI) insist that their basic video drivers for a basic on-board card depend on DirectX and make you install the whole ball of wax on corporate desktops...
Lets face it, Microsoft's primary focus on home/clueless computing is a detrement to corporate deployments.
but there is a huge demand for internal web application... I'm working on several web applications, and we're running into the same problems others have.
Wrong. You dont know what are you doing. Sorry. Just like all those "rich user experience" wankers in all these other posts, you cannot be bothered to use the existing standards in a way that provides functional application interface. We developed a series of in-house web based MRP applications (yes the whole shebang including order processing, GL, scheduling etc etc) by using PHP and HTML 3. NO CSS. So that an ancient web browser running on an ancient computer can access it. Subsequently we dont upgrade workstations (err.. terminals really) until they fall apart. The IT expenditures went down by 90% yearly. That is the "rich" experience the business owners are after.
Your kind of "rich user experience" crap and business do not mix. In business, old green screen WYSE terminals were quite acceptable for vast majority of the tasks until some snake oil salesmen like Bill Gates managed to create a race as to whose company's clerical staff would fuck around with screen savers and browse porn more. The winner gets to have hundrends of vocational school MSCE's running arround all over the place, consuming 40% of company revenues in salaries. Plus to have Microsoft and Dell on the company's list of main creditors.
There are very, very few areas that even demand graphics, never you mind SVG or XAML. A web based interface is a questionable luxury already. But there is a lot of money to be squeezed out of clueless people with the phrase "rich user experience". Think endless sales of OSs that support the crap. Each of course demanding 25GHz Pentium 7 with 25GB of RAM. I can hear the cash registers going "cha-ching" already.
Your boss should read your posts, and mark you down firmly in the "frivolous, excessive expense" field on his next P&L report.
It's a lot of functionality to give up for such a small price savings.
Ha! I say thats a lot of improvements for such small savings!
No hard disks filled with crap to maintain (service pack 6 multiplied times 1000 with 124 stations not taking it is fun, no?). No fans to clog and rattle or cause intermittent lockups. No floppies for admin workers to bring viruses on or steal company customer list with. No moving parts of any kind to fail. No noise. Significant power savings corporate-wide. Centralized administration. No crap software installed by users on workstations. Full staff mobility between workstations. Full remote access for people who need it. etc. etc. etc.
Dont tell this to the thin client makers though or else they will start charging more then for stupid low-end corporate PCs.
The whole idea of a chemical artillery shell is that it is fired from a standard gun. Therefore it has to have the same dimentions and mechanical properties as a regular shell. Add to this the fact that the shell is 20 years old (the production runs of the Iraqi "binary" type sarin shells occured in the 1980's), it was stored in unknown conditions (possibly even fired and found in fields) and you will get yourself a piece of rusted junk that would require an expert to recognise.
In the 1990's, before leaving, UNSCOM said there were over 500 such shells filled with sarin they couldn't account for.
The actual number of the "binary" type sarin shells produced was 170 and this production run was experimental. According to UNSCOM, they were all accounted for and believed to be used as follows: 10 filled with mock chemicals, 10 filled with real stuff but tested (exploded) in the lab and remaining 150 fired at a gunnery range. The current theory as far as I know is that the shell might have been misplaced in that process, or more likely, it was actually fired on the test range and turned out a dud and subsequently dug out after all these years by some ammo-scavenging guerrilla. The examination of the shell would determine if it was inded the case.
the permission of the company owning those rights.
That is why this decision, and the whole "Intellectual Property" rights sytem is a total fuck invented by greed, for greater greed and outright slavery of humankind.
Too extreme? Consider this. Instead of the plant gene, think a child who has an "improved" proprietary sequence so she is immune from acne. No pimples. The gene sequence of course is some fuckwit's "Intellectual Property". Parents pay license fee. When this child grows up and wants to have children of his/her own.... gues what? The seuence is passed on and.... welcome to perpetual license fees ala RIAA except this time if you do not pay up you become slave to Overlord Biotech Megacorp Inc. You WILL PAY or they will put you into forced labour at a "humane" age of 8. This is the world which all those proponents of "Intellectual Property" are advocating. This what software patents, music copyrights and all the other assorted vile evil leads DIRECTLY to.
Compeared to this, the nightmare of Orwell's 1984 is a picnic.
which means whereever he got the money for an airplane is about to become dried up.
And you would find out how? You do that when the seeding is done from an ultra-lite or from the ground. The effect wont be visible until late in the summer. As a matter of fact I think this is the method to fight this nonsense. If we dont, it is only matter of time before human DNA sequences get patented and some imbecillic megacorp shows up to collect lifetime license fees from everyone who inhereits them.
The only means you can exert influence is by voting. So do so.
I am afraid that it is no longer so. Not unless you are a multi-national corporaion or have means of influencing the elected officials via some sort of crackpot ideology like neo-conservatism.
A moment is fast approaching when only one choice will remain at last: between passive sheepish acceptance of a fate violating all the things dear to some of us on one hand and mostly self-defeating violence on the other. As history shows, many will choose dying in the hail of bullets and in prison cells as less painful then lifetime of mental rape.
Of course there are better ways of handling this in Unix world, things like ole good 'tar' or 'dump' come to mind.
As for the other stuff, sure its nice but it costs pretty penny and you need to upgrade the crap all the time, not to mention the always popular proprietary software trap. A bootable business-card Linux (like Linux-BBC for example) and some custom scripts are all you need to achieve most of these tasks and you get to retain full control of the entire process.
I also use Ghost. Best investion since toilet paper.
Its called "dd" on any Unix system, long before there was Norton Anything, Symantec Anything and even DOS, Windows or Linux anything. Although I think, toilet paper did come first.
The penalty for any foreign national giving to a US Election should be DEATH
Although I am a Canadian, I agree except that the penalty should be to the taker not to the giver. Firstly, the giver is only doing his duty as a national of the foreign nation trying to make his nation's plight better. It is the slimey politician taking the bribe that is commiting treason. One can expell the foreigner and make him persona non grata so he never comes back, you can give shit to that nations ambassador, raise hell in the media and maybe even impose economic penalties, but killing that person would be a duplicitous, hypocritical act, since some patriotic citizens of the USA are engaged in similiar activities abroad.
Remember Membership is India PAC or the India Caucus is TREASON
Quite right, but given the amount of harm a PAC can cause to America's own interests and the world in general, the Israeli PAC should be then considered a treason to the third power. For all its efforts, India has managed to syphon some jobs out of you, yet the Israelis receive tens of billions of dollars annually, get you suckered into wars that cost you trillions literally not to mention hundreds of dead and result in your international standing to be surpassed by the contents of a septic tank.
Canadian, we rely on you to invent and produce medicines so we can loot them
You Sir, are a despicable bottomfeeding greedmonkey who believes that if he cannot get ahead of everybody else in something, then that something is communist, evil and a work of Satan. If you like the US style medical system so greatly, do not let the door hit on your way down South.
Also for your information, Canada has many research facilities and I am personally involved with companies manufacturing unique pharmaceutical products which are being exported to the USA. There is great profit to be made since the drugs sell at insane prices down there. So much for looting. The only one who wants to loot things here is you. You, in your abysmal arrogance, believe that you are special and will be forever able to earn enough income to guarantee yourself superior medical care. All of it possible only because generations of Canadians through their common effort have built a place for you to piss about in. Yet you, like any right-wing asshole out there, will certainly take exclusive credit for everything good that happens to you claiming that its a result of your hard work. That is why you consider capitalism a religion. Never you mind that Canada is as capitalist as it is reasonable to be. The purpose of the entire excercise is to make life for all Canadians better and not just to make a few whiney jerks into millionaires at the expense of everybody else.
Well, my wish for you is that you go to the USA, denounce Canadian citizenship (because we are the communist paradise), get in an accident, be unable to work and your medical costs exceed 10 times your insurance coverage. I hear dying of a curable illness because you cannot afford the cure sucks. Have fun. That is what you deserve.
The only entity that can make the best decision is the Market, not the government.
This is basically the idea Adam Smith had when he coined the notion of capitalism as we know it today. The trouble is that human societies are extremely complex arrangements of very complex components, e.i. us humans. As any scientist will tell you, predicting behaviour of such complex and in essence chaotic systems is extremely difficult and dependant not only on the rules of the interaction of the elements in the system but also starting conditions. Most complex/chaotic (I use chaos in the scientific meaning of it here) systems are so sensitive to small changes of those interaction rules and starting conditions that they are often preceived totally random.
Adam Smith's idea, like most of the 19th century social philosophers (say Marx) oversimplifies things quite crudely. And even if it didnt, creating a system by superimposing its rules on the already super complex social interactions of people is a wild gamble at best.
That is in my opinion the core of the problem with using capitalism as a primary tool for change. The starting conditions for example is what caused most of what we call 3rd world countries to be in their current shape. Many Arab countries for example have centuries long history of financialy free merchant economies and yet they failed to transition to the western style propserous market systems, although they all are capitalist in spirit today. They also had very little of government influence on the marketplace, save for taxation (or tithe, since many were part of the Ottoman empire). And yet it didnt work out for them even though the supposed conditions were there. It is simply because what western economists believe to be sufficient conditions for market economies, is in fact far from the truth.
Free markets require as a pre-condition societies with strong and stable laws, accessible education, reasonable social services and many other things. Not the other way around. It is our western culture and political traditions (not to mention a great deal of luck as well as thieving on our part) that allowed us to have what we have. Note that China is making a rapid transition to market economy, but not free society. Note also that China had communist style free education and iron-fisted legal system already in place. The fact that the population is basically enslaved politically is not a factor and does not seem to impede in any way the implementation of booming capitalist markets. Even more enterntaining is the fact that most of the capital and ownership of those markets is rooted in the so called "free" countries. Capitalists it seems are not interested in freedom and justice anywhere near as they are interested in profit.
Also, note that 100% private ownership of medical services for example leads to massive inefficiences and lack of coverage for vast swaths of society. Compare Canada (where I live) and the US. In Canada we have sometimes overworked but free for all medical service, which occasionally results in long waits for procedures for patients. In the USA there is a fast and efficient medical care, which costs double what our costs per capita and delivers its services to only 60% of the population. And we are talking partial coverage whereby your children might end up paying for your bypass operation. Also US has 26% or so "administrative" overhead due to the involvement of profit-taking insurance industry as well as profit-taking of the hospitals, Canada's commie system has 3%.
So on one hand you have an imperfect system which delivers its services when needed to nearly everyone and on the other hand you have best service money can buy, if you dont mind your house being reposessed.
Why? Because the medical/pharmaceutical companies are only interested in profit. They are good capitalists and will do everything in their power to maximise it. Forming cartels and price fixing included. And since they deal with desperate and dying people, their negotiating
I apologise for that post being off-topic, however it was a reply to an already off-topic post claiming an economic system known as "capitalism" has nearly divine attributes.
With those examples, it seems that you've shown... Large/Oppressive/Corrupt government = Poverty
not Capitalism = Poverty
No. All I have shown is that capitalism is an economic system that can be mixed up with all sorts of political systems. For example, one can have great capitalist wealth (Quatar, Saudi Arabia) and no political freedom whatsoever.
I'm not sure what your definition of Capitalism is...
Capitalism is defined as: "an economic system based on private ownership of capital"
No more. No less.
Those countries where people are hungry, aren't the capitalist countries
On the contrary, they are perfectly capitalist. What you, and many many other victims of dubious western education seem to be confused about is that capitalism is not a political system but an economic one. And thus it is perfectly possible to have various combinations of capitalism with despotic dictatorships, monarchy and what have you.
The beauty of capitalism is that it gives people economic freedom, and economic freedom equals political freedom. To give up economic freedom is to give up all your liberties, you give up control of your life, your give up control of your fate.... the gift of capitalism is freedom.
I am not sure how did you arrive at that conclusion, but having freedom to earn a pile of money does not equal political freedom. One can be perfectly capable of making oodles of dough and being afraid to speak up against the monarchy for example. See Saudi Arabia.
Also, I do not see anything in a purely capitalist society, with minimal government oversight that would prevent a state of monopoly to be created in any particular industry based on technological barriers to entry for competitors. There are many, many, many ways in which a group of financially priviledged people can create and maintan control of vast majority of that society's wealth.
Even in the USA, over 90% of the national wealth is owned by less then 5% of the population.
Adam Smith believed that such designs of a small group of would-be economical overlords would be auto-magically balanced and prevented by competition, but he, just like Marx, failed to foresee changes in technology, law and other areas that make such centralisation of wealth possible.
Note also the ongoing process of centralisation in media ownership and thus control over the political life in the USA.
In other words, political freedom is completely separate from economic one, resulting in situations where one can be economically free and a slave to the state (Saudi Arabia) or politically free and practicaly a slave to moneyed people (many western countries and India for example)
A 30% income tax means that you're working for the government 4 months out of the year. Sounds a lot like slavery.
As opposed to working a 90-hours week for $1 a day, less company provided living and food, which amounts to $0.50 a day if you are lucky? Medical care? Whats that? (That is the situation in many countries. In some places you actually get in more debt to the company longer you work there since the accomodations cost more then you earn. Note that the employers in question are typically US-based conglomerates like Nike)
So, now it's your turn to enlighten me how furthers freedom
How about truly representative democracy with stong and sane legal system, fair and comprehensive medical care, not too overzealous but not too laxed government oversight? Sane labour laws? Smart controls on movement of capital from and to the country? Capitalism is the economic model of choice since it is the only of such systems that can actually account for human greed and utilize it, but it is only an ingredient in a mix, not a cure-all root cause of freedom and prosperity. Note also that capitalism needs to be managed and controlled, or else it quickly devolves into no-holds-barred, winner-takes-all brawl where few enslave everybody else. And that is my entire point here, capitalism on itself is an incomplete, unbalanced and inherently dangerous tool, which however has also great upsides. So, like a loaded gun, it has to be used with care and pointed in the right direction, unless one wishes a new orifice in one's foot. This point is always lost on various far-right, and these days also "libertarian", activists who believe that by merely reducing government to a size of a telephone booth, making tax rate equal 1% and removing all government regulation, one can cause manna to literally fall from heaven. They should read more Charles Dickens.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in my previous reply, if you watch the news you will find out that India just had a government change. Apparently vast majority of the population was uninformed that they were being made less poor. So much so that they elected a member of the Ghandi family on the premise that she will do something about it.
As far as I know, India had a capitalist economy ever since before its independence, back when it was a British colony. Frankly, the fact that the trend of "globalization" caused many pan-national megacorps to ship hundreds of thousands of jobs from industrialized countries over to India and China, is not something to hold up as a "proof" of capitalism naturally leading to freedom and propserity.
More importantly, what I was pointing out is that capitalism and freedom are not inherently coupled, and it is possible to have tyrannical overlords and happy, profit-making capitalist economy at the same time. Not only possible, but it is a preferred method in much of the world. What you seem to miss is that many of the great capitalists of the planet thrive when they can attain government assistance to create a monopoly status, rob national resources or obtain slave labour.
I think you're just another rebel without a cause
No, I am just a realist. I am also fed up with various charlatans trying to rob me blind of my freedom or money by brainwashing people into believing their various "get-rich/powerful-quick" schemes disguised as "promoting freedom and prosperity". War in Iraq springs to mind. Or WIPO.
China (pseudo-communist tyrannical government + capitalist economy). Saudi Arabia (oppressive feudal government + capitalist economy). Quatar (ditto). Yemen (pseudo-democratic, president for life + capitalism). Egypt (ditto). Algeria (islamic theocracy + capitalism). Iran. (ditto). India (democratic and capitalist, yet over 80% of people are starving-poor, $1 a day avg. income). Peru. Colombia. Indonesia. And so on. And on. And on.
I wasn't aware that "capitalist" was a synonym for "criminal" or "dictator"
Capitalism is defined as: "an economic system based on private ownership of capital"
It is a common misconception spread by those who worship money that the "privare ownership" bit will miraculously usher in freedom and prosperity for all.
Unfortunately, there is nothing inherently incompatible between capitalism and dictatorship as long as the "private ownership of capital" part is left undisturbed. And that is how places like Saudi Arabia can call themselves "capitalist".
As for things to read, I sense sarcasm here. How about this here help for capitalistsfrom your best buddies, the paragons of freedom, the leaders in pursuit of happiness for the common man, the Saudi Royals.
....it would be CAPITALISM, savior of the common man and the greatest force for freedom ever known.
Perheaps you would care to explain it in more detail to the 90% of the planet's population, livng in places where dog-eat-dog capitalizm is the religion de jeur but it is curiously coupled with unspeakable misery and poverty of the "common man", freedom is unheard of and outright slavery common. What is your solution? More capitalism? More US-based pan-national megacorporations owning more of everything? Less governent restrictions on "investment"?
My imagination is too feable to understand how could one have less restrictions for the capitalists in some of the African and Latin American bannana republics then they have now. Most even come with a friendly dictator who would promptly kill/maim/torture anyone who would object to a capitalist investment. So, please, by all means, do enlighten me how does capitalizm further freedom. I for one was under this irrational impression that capitalizm is a religion of money and the only thing it is concerned with is multiplication of "wealth" with no regards as to its distribution and human costs. We in the west are just lucky that our history and culture resulted in other, completely unrelated ideas like "democracy", "representative governemt", "free press" etc to colaborate with some of the more palatable capitalist ideas to form our present, somewhat successful social systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for pointing out that utterly useless feature. I was aware of that thing, however my theory was that the lady in question was probably confused about which program provided her content filtering. I based my guess on the fact that Norton has far more comprehensive and even borderline useful (as far as younger kids are concerned) tool.
Actually, it was probably Norton that had it. The Internet Security thingie comes with a contents filtering component based on word patterns, blacklisted sites etc.
I was merely pointing out this hypocritical stance and the selective use of "UN resolutions" as a war cry of the various Crusaders. I call them Crusaders since the religious insanity is the only motive that is left standing after all the other secular ones were demolished by facts one by one as time went by. Also while the Iraq resolutions were primarily a result of the "security council", a useless and corrupt body that indeed turns UN into a tool of the US (since other members seem to lack the singular drive for world hegemony at any cost), many of the Israel resolutions were passed by the General Assembly with vote counts like 174 to 2 (Israel and US opposing). UN will not be an effective operation of any sort until there is a sweeping reform abolishing the "permanent members" and their vetos and making the security council a democratically elected body.
The US mostly regards the UN as irrelevant - isn't it hypocritical to be using resolutions as an excuse for aggression?
You should also point out that Iraq's arch foe, Israel has been guilty if defying this handsomne list of fourty-something resolutions, number far exceeding that of any other country on the planet. Somehow I dont see Bush and crew getting ready to bring "regime change" to Israel.
This is a very good point. The solution is obvious: companies with expertise in home/clueless computing should stick to it and produce auto-magical, pretty, multimedia operating systems. Those who know the corporate field, should produce centrally controlled, reliable, multi-vendor compatible, remotely deployed, headless etc etc. operating systems. Alternatively, one group can produce both systems providing that they share but small central core and all the other components focused on those two completely distinct groups are totally separate.
A Linux based OS has a possiblity here only because of its granular design and ability to create pre-defined and auto-magical distributions for the clueless crowd, while with a different set of components it can be targetted at wide range of corporate and industrial deployments with no compromises at all since the cute GUI can be stripped down or jetissoned alltogether when not needed. This, combined with many, many other design considerations that can aid the corporate users and can be made invisible to the home crowd makes this system a winner when compared to Windows which is really a one trick pony: a home/clueless system that is being forcefully pressed into service in a professional market.
Not only that, DirectX is actually a hindrance in typical deployments since some retarded video driver manufacturers (hello ATI) insist that their basic video drivers for a basic on-board card depend on DirectX and make you install the whole ball of wax on corporate desktops...
Lets face it, Microsoft's primary focus on home/clueless computing is a detrement to corporate deployments.
Wrong. You dont know what are you doing. Sorry. Just like all those "rich user experience" wankers in all these other posts, you cannot be bothered to use the existing standards in a way that provides functional application interface. We developed a series of in-house web based MRP applications (yes the whole shebang including order processing, GL, scheduling etc etc) by using PHP and HTML 3. NO CSS. So that an ancient web browser running on an ancient computer can access it. Subsequently we dont upgrade workstations (err.. terminals really) until they fall apart. The IT expenditures went down by 90% yearly. That is the "rich" experience the business owners are after.
Your kind of "rich user experience" crap and business do not mix. In business, old green screen WYSE terminals were quite acceptable for vast majority of the tasks until some snake oil salesmen like Bill Gates managed to create a race as to whose company's clerical staff would fuck around with screen savers and browse porn more. The winner gets to have hundrends of vocational school MSCE's running arround all over the place, consuming 40% of company revenues in salaries. Plus to have Microsoft and Dell on the company's list of main creditors.
There are very, very few areas that even demand graphics, never you mind SVG or XAML. A web based interface is a questionable luxury already. But there is a lot of money to be squeezed out of clueless people with the phrase "rich user experience". Think endless sales of OSs that support the crap. Each of course demanding 25GHz Pentium 7 with 25GB of RAM. I can hear the cash registers going "cha-ching" already.
Your boss should read your posts, and mark you down firmly in the "frivolous, excessive expense" field on his next P&L report.
Ha! I say thats a lot of improvements for such small savings!
No hard disks filled with crap to maintain (service pack 6 multiplied times 1000 with 124 stations not taking it is fun, no?). No fans to clog and rattle or cause intermittent lockups. No floppies for admin workers to bring viruses on or steal company customer list with. No moving parts of any kind to fail. No noise. Significant power savings corporate-wide. Centralized administration. No crap software installed by users on workstations. Full staff mobility between workstations. Full remote access for people who need it. etc. etc. etc.
Dont tell this to the thin client makers though or else they will start charging more then for stupid low-end corporate PCs.
The whole idea of a chemical artillery shell is that it is fired from a standard gun. Therefore it has to have the same dimentions and mechanical properties as a regular shell. Add to this the fact that the shell is 20 years old (the production runs of the Iraqi "binary" type sarin shells occured in the 1980's), it was stored in unknown conditions (possibly even fired and found in fields) and you will get yourself a piece of rusted junk that would require an expert to recognise.
In the 1990's, before leaving, UNSCOM said there were over 500 such shells filled with sarin they couldn't account for.
The actual number of the "binary" type sarin shells produced was 170 and this production run was experimental. According to UNSCOM, they were all accounted for and believed to be used as follows: 10 filled with mock chemicals, 10 filled with real stuff but tested (exploded) in the lab and remaining 150 fired at a gunnery range. The current theory as far as I know is that the shell might have been misplaced in that process, or more likely, it was actually fired on the test range and turned out a dud and subsequently dug out after all these years by some ammo-scavenging guerrilla. The examination of the shell would determine if it was inded the case.
That is why this decision, and the whole "Intellectual Property" rights sytem is a total fuck invented by greed, for greater greed and outright slavery of humankind.
Too extreme? Consider this. Instead of the plant gene, think a child who has an "improved" proprietary sequence so she is immune from acne. No pimples. The gene sequence of course is some fuckwit's "Intellectual Property". Parents pay license fee. When this child grows up and wants to have children of his/her own .... gues what? The seuence is passed on and.... welcome to perpetual license fees ala RIAA except this time if you do not pay up you become slave to Overlord Biotech Megacorp Inc. You WILL PAY or they will put you into forced labour at a "humane" age of 8. This is the world which all those proponents of "Intellectual Property" are advocating. This what software patents, music copyrights and all the other assorted vile evil leads DIRECTLY to.
Compeared to this, the nightmare of Orwell's 1984 is a picnic.
And you would find out how? You do that when the seeding is done from an ultra-lite or from the ground. The effect wont be visible until late in the summer. As a matter of fact I think this is the method to fight this nonsense. If we dont, it is only matter of time before human DNA sequences get patented and some imbecillic megacorp shows up to collect lifetime license fees from everyone who inhereits them.
I am afraid that it is no longer so. Not unless you are a multi-national corporaion or have means of influencing the elected officials via some sort of crackpot ideology like neo-conservatism.
A moment is fast approaching when only one choice will remain at last: between passive sheepish acceptance of a fate violating all the things dear to some of us on one hand and mostly self-defeating violence on the other. As history shows, many will choose dying in the hail of bullets and in prison cells as less painful then lifetime of mental rape.
True but then you do:
Actually I tend to do:
Of course there are better ways of handling this in Unix world, things like ole good 'tar' or 'dump' come to mind.
As for the other stuff, sure its nice but it costs pretty penny and you need to upgrade the crap all the time, not to mention the always popular proprietary software trap. A bootable business-card Linux (like Linux-BBC for example) and some custom scripts are all you need to achieve most of these tasks and you get to retain full control of the entire process.
Its called "dd" on any Unix system, long before there was Norton Anything, Symantec Anything and even DOS, Windows or Linux anything. Although I think, toilet paper did come first.
Although I am a Canadian, I agree except that the penalty should be to the taker not to the giver. Firstly, the giver is only doing his duty as a national of the foreign nation trying to make his nation's plight better. It is the slimey politician taking the bribe that is commiting treason. One can expell the foreigner and make him persona non grata so he never comes back, you can give shit to that nations ambassador, raise hell in the media and maybe even impose economic penalties, but killing that person would be a duplicitous, hypocritical act, since some patriotic citizens of the USA are engaged in similiar activities abroad.
Remember Membership is India PAC or the India Caucus is TREASON
Quite right, but given the amount of harm a PAC can cause to America's own interests and the world in general, the Israeli PAC should be then considered a treason to the third power. For all its efforts, India has managed to syphon some jobs out of you, yet the Israelis receive tens of billions of dollars annually, get you suckered into wars that cost you trillions literally not to mention hundreds of dead and result in your international standing to be surpassed by the contents of a septic tank.
You Sir, are a despicable bottomfeeding greedmonkey who believes that if he cannot get ahead of everybody else in something, then that something is communist, evil and a work of Satan. If you like the US style medical system so greatly, do not let the door hit on your way down South.
Also for your information, Canada has many research facilities and I am personally involved with companies manufacturing unique pharmaceutical products which are being exported to the USA. There is great profit to be made since the drugs sell at insane prices down there. So much for looting. The only one who wants to loot things here is you. You, in your abysmal arrogance, believe that you are special and will be forever able to earn enough income to guarantee yourself superior medical care. All of it possible only because generations of Canadians through their common effort have built a place for you to piss about in. Yet you, like any right-wing asshole out there, will certainly take exclusive credit for everything good that happens to you claiming that its a result of your hard work. That is why you consider capitalism a religion. Never you mind that Canada is as capitalist as it is reasonable to be. The purpose of the entire excercise is to make life for all Canadians better and not just to make a few whiney jerks into millionaires at the expense of everybody else.
Well, my wish for you is that you go to the USA, denounce Canadian citizenship (because we are the communist paradise), get in an accident, be unable to work and your medical costs exceed 10 times your insurance coverage. I hear dying of a curable illness because you cannot afford the cure sucks. Have fun. That is what you deserve.
This is basically the idea Adam Smith had when he coined the notion of capitalism as we know it today. The trouble is that human societies are extremely complex arrangements of very complex components, e.i. us humans. As any scientist will tell you, predicting behaviour of such complex and in essence chaotic systems is extremely difficult and dependant not only on the rules of the interaction of the elements in the system but also starting conditions. Most complex/chaotic (I use chaos in the scientific meaning of it here) systems are so sensitive to small changes of those interaction rules and starting conditions that they are often preceived totally random.
Adam Smith's idea, like most of the 19th century social philosophers (say Marx) oversimplifies things quite crudely. And even if it didnt, creating a system by superimposing its rules on the already super complex social interactions of people is a wild gamble at best.
That is in my opinion the core of the problem with using capitalism as a primary tool for change. The starting conditions for example is what caused most of what we call 3rd world countries to be in their current shape. Many Arab countries for example have centuries long history of financialy free merchant economies and yet they failed to transition to the western style propserous market systems, although they all are capitalist in spirit today. They also had very little of government influence on the marketplace, save for taxation (or tithe, since many were part of the Ottoman empire). And yet it didnt work out for them even though the supposed conditions were there. It is simply because what western economists believe to be sufficient conditions for market economies, is in fact far from the truth.
Free markets require as a pre-condition societies with strong and stable laws, accessible education, reasonable social services and many other things. Not the other way around. It is our western culture and political traditions (not to mention a great deal of luck as well as thieving on our part) that allowed us to have what we have. Note that China is making a rapid transition to market economy, but not free society. Note also that China had communist style free education and iron-fisted legal system already in place. The fact that the population is basically enslaved politically is not a factor and does not seem to impede in any way the implementation of booming capitalist markets. Even more enterntaining is the fact that most of the capital and ownership of those markets is rooted in the so called "free" countries. Capitalists it seems are not interested in freedom and justice anywhere near as they are interested in profit.
Also, note that 100% private ownership of medical services for example leads to massive inefficiences and lack of coverage for vast swaths of society. Compare Canada (where I live) and the US. In Canada we have sometimes overworked but free for all medical service, which occasionally results in long waits for procedures for patients. In the USA there is a fast and efficient medical care, which costs double what our costs per capita and delivers its services to only 60% of the population. And we are talking partial coverage whereby your children might end up paying for your bypass operation. Also US has 26% or so "administrative" overhead due to the involvement of profit-taking insurance industry as well as profit-taking of the hospitals, Canada's commie system has 3%.
So on one hand you have an imperfect system which delivers its services when needed to nearly everyone and on the other hand you have best service money can buy, if you dont mind your house being reposessed.
Why? Because the medical/pharmaceutical companies are only interested in profit. They are good capitalists and will do everything in their power to maximise it. Forming cartels and price fixing included. And since they deal with desperate and dying people, their negotiating
I apologise for that post being off-topic, however it was a reply to an already off-topic post claiming an economic system known as "capitalism" has nearly divine attributes.
No. All I have shown is that capitalism is an economic system that can be mixed up with all sorts of political systems. For example, one can have great capitalist wealth (Quatar, Saudi Arabia) and no political freedom whatsoever.
Capitalism is defined as: "an economic system based on private ownership of capital"
No more. No less.
Those countries where people are hungry, aren't the capitalist countries
On the contrary, they are perfectly capitalist. What you, and many many other victims of dubious western education seem to be confused about is that capitalism is not a political system but an economic one. And thus it is perfectly possible to have various combinations of capitalism with despotic dictatorships, monarchy and what have you.
The beauty of capitalism is that it gives people economic freedom, and economic freedom equals political freedom. To give up economic freedom is to give up all your liberties, you give up control of your life, your give up control of your fate. ... the gift of capitalism is freedom.
I am not sure how did you arrive at that conclusion, but having freedom to earn a pile of money does not equal political freedom. One can be perfectly capable of making oodles of dough and being afraid to speak up against the monarchy for example. See Saudi Arabia.
Also, I do not see anything in a purely capitalist society, with minimal government oversight that would prevent a state of monopoly to be created in any particular industry based on technological barriers to entry for competitors. There are many, many, many ways in which a group of financially priviledged people can create and maintan control of vast majority of that society's wealth.
Even in the USA, over 90% of the national wealth is owned by less then 5% of the population.
Adam Smith believed that such designs of a small group of would-be economical overlords would be auto-magically balanced and prevented by competition, but he, just like Marx, failed to foresee changes in technology, law and other areas that make such centralisation of wealth possible.
Note also the ongoing process of centralisation in media ownership and thus control over the political life in the USA.
In other words, political freedom is completely separate from economic one, resulting in situations where one can be economically free and a slave to the state (Saudi Arabia) or politically free and practicaly a slave to moneyed people (many western countries and India for example)
A 30% income tax means that you're working for the government 4 months out of the year. Sounds a lot like slavery.
As opposed to working a 90-hours week for $1 a day, less company provided living and food, which amounts to $0.50 a day if you are lucky? Medical care? Whats that? (That is the situation in many countries. In some places you actually get in more debt to the company longer you work there since the accomodations cost more then you earn. Note that the employers in question are typically US-based conglomerates like Nike)
So, now it's your turn to enlighten me how furthers freedom
How about truly representative democracy with stong and sane legal system, fair and comprehensive medical care, not too overzealous but not too laxed government oversight? Sane labour laws? Smart controls on movement of capital from and to the country? Capitalism is the economic model of choice since it is the only of such systems that can actually account for human greed and utilize it, but it is only an ingredient in a mix, not a cure-all root cause of freedom and prosperity. Note also that capitalism needs to be managed and controlled, or else it quickly devolves into no-holds-barred, winner-takes-all brawl where few enslave everybody else. And that is my entire point here, capitalism on itself is an incomplete, unbalanced and inherently dangerous tool, which however has also great upsides. So, like a loaded gun, it has to be used with care and pointed in the right direction, unless one wishes a new orifice in one's foot. This point is always lost on various far-right, and these days also "libertarian", activists who believe that by merely reducing government to a size of a telephone booth, making tax rate equal 1% and removing all government regulation, one can cause manna to literally fall from heaven. They should read more Charles Dickens.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in my previous reply, if you watch the news you will find out that India just had a government change. Apparently vast majority of the population was uninformed that they were being made less poor. So much so that they elected a member of the Ghandi family on the premise that she will do something about it.
As far as I know, India had a capitalist economy ever since before its independence, back when it was a British colony. Frankly, the fact that the trend of "globalization" caused many pan-national megacorps to ship hundreds of thousands of jobs from industrialized countries over to India and China, is not something to hold up as a "proof" of capitalism naturally leading to freedom and propserity.
More importantly, what I was pointing out is that capitalism and freedom are not inherently coupled, and it is possible to have tyrannical overlords and happy, profit-making capitalist economy at the same time. Not only possible, but it is a preferred method in much of the world. What you seem to miss is that many of the great capitalists of the planet thrive when they can attain government assistance to create a monopoly status, rob national resources or obtain slave labour.
I think you're just another rebel without a cause
No, I am just a realist. I am also fed up with various charlatans trying to rob me blind of my freedom or money by brainwashing people into believing their various "get-rich/powerful-quick" schemes disguised as "promoting freedom and prosperity". War in Iraq springs to mind. Or WIPO.
Sure.
China (pseudo-communist tyrannical government + capitalist economy). Saudi Arabia (oppressive feudal government + capitalist economy). Quatar (ditto). Yemen (pseudo-democratic, president for life + capitalism). Egypt (ditto). Algeria (islamic theocracy + capitalism). Iran. (ditto). India (democratic and capitalist, yet over 80% of people are starving-poor, $1 a day avg. income). Peru. Colombia. Indonesia. And so on. And on. And on.
Capitalism is defined as: "an economic system based on private ownership of capital"
It is a common misconception spread by those who worship money that the "privare ownership" bit will miraculously usher in freedom and prosperity for all.
Unfortunately, there is nothing inherently incompatible between capitalism and dictatorship as long as the "private ownership of capital" part is left undisturbed. And that is how places like Saudi Arabia can call themselves "capitalist".
As for things to read, I sense sarcasm here. How about this here help for capitalistsfrom your best buddies, the paragons of freedom, the leaders in pursuit of happiness for the common man, the Saudi Royals.
Perheaps you would care to explain it in more detail to the 90% of the planet's population, livng in places where dog-eat-dog capitalizm is the religion de jeur but it is curiously coupled with unspeakable misery and poverty of the "common man", freedom is unheard of and outright slavery common. What is your solution? More capitalism? More US-based pan-national megacorporations owning more of everything? Less governent restrictions on "investment"?
My imagination is too feable to understand how could one have less restrictions for the capitalists in some of the African and Latin American bannana republics then they have now. Most even come with a friendly dictator who would promptly kill/maim/torture anyone who would object to a capitalist investment. So, please, by all means, do enlighten me how does capitalizm further freedom. I for one was under this irrational impression that capitalizm is a religion of money and the only thing it is concerned with is multiplication of "wealth" with no regards as to its distribution and human costs. We in the west are just lucky that our history and culture resulted in other, completely unrelated ideas like "democracy", "representative governemt", "free press" etc to colaborate with some of the more palatable capitalist ideas to form our present, somewhat successful social systems.