"To be legally recognised as a POW according to the rules of the Geneva Convention...blah blah blah".
I'm saying the principles matter more than the "law". By relying on the notion of POW, which incidentally doesn't have anything for non-uniformed people, you are basically creating a new category called "enemy combatants". You are circumventing the spirit of the law. What you are doing is not illegal but immoral, and against international norms. Only the UN, in particular the ICRC (Red Cross), can make that judgement. And based on their opinions, there is no such thing as "enemy combatant."
I can tell it's supposed to be a question, because it's got a question mark on the end, but other than that I'm not sure what you are actually asking. Perhaps you are saying that it's sad for him and his family. I would agree. I don't know much more about the case. Perhaps you should provide more detail next time.
Yeah, I should give more info. Unfortunately, I had a good link but don't remember what it was. Just to recap:
Jose Padilla
American citizen (I emphasize citizens because USA has an attitude that only its citizens matter)
charged with terrorism
held on some military base (I think a ship--not sure)
no formal charges or court proceedings (AFAIK), very little contact with lawyers, no contact with family (all against international norms, and possibly even illegal under US law)
Total disregard for US "standards"
What's my point? Well, you were talking about non-citizens in Guantanomo Bay but what about your own citizen (which is even worse, although the conditions aren't the same)? The fact that the people are even being held in Guantomo Bay (as opposed to USA) should say something. The US govt is trying to circumvent its own "laws".
No, claiming that people aren't wearing uniforms is a statement of fact. There's really not much more to it than that.
Yes it's fact. So what? We are talking about what should happen to these people--not whether they wore uniforms, were engaged in terrorism, and so forth!
Details such as "was this person shooting at others?" are important. I'm not sure what the rules of evidence should be in this situation (because IANAL).
That is not even the point! I, as well as others like me, aren't arguing over whether they were shooting or not. Instead, the point is that these people are being held without charges, with almost no lawyers, etc.
You don't know what I think. You certainly can't assume that I think that based on my previous statements (I'll presume:-) that you meant to say "unacceptable").
That's a lame argument. Of course, no one knows what you think. For all I know, you could an Al-Qaida informant;) Besides, you don't know what I think either. However, based on your words, you seem to support the current position of the US government (namely, holding non-uniformed combatants forever and claiming them as "enemy combatants"). That seems to be your position...
---OFF-TOPIC---
BTW, do you know how to search one's past postings? I posted a good rebuttal a while ago with html links and I need to access that. Do you know how to search Slashdot for just my comments?
First of all, USSR was hardly socialist. If anything, it was a bureaucratic totalitarian state. A lot of words but they are all true. It was bureacratic because the country never listened to the workers. Instead being bottom-up, it was top-down. The country was controlled by the Communist Party, which was a vanguard party. It wasn't even a "real" party. That's why you couldn't "join" it. Whoever that controlled the vanguard party had total control of everything. To make matters worse, Stalin, a totalitarian dictator, took control and implemented his policies.
You can hate socialism because it tries to be egalitarian, or redistributes wealth, or some other reason. But it serves no purpose to claim USSR was socialist (unless you are Red-baiting). Socialism requires that the workers control the economy (among others), not some vanguard party that claims to act in the interest of the workers, or some totalitarian who claims to be a socialist. Until that happens, one can hardly consider it to be socialism (just like how, it is grossly misleading to consider any modern country as democratic).
Anyway on to your point...
... its a lot easier for a company to survive if it has a larger market share (i.e. has an abundance of product to sell) and takes smaller profit margins than if it has less product to sell and has to take higher margins.
I don't know if you realize it but you are basically asking for monopolies. Not government monopolies but corporate monopolies. I don't know if you are one of the corporate slaves who worships corporations but monopolies are a bad thing. Why do I say you are asking for monopolies when you didn't even use that word? Well, what is market share? Market share is basically a measure of dominance. The higher the market share, the more poweful and closer to a monopoly an organization is. When marketing people talk about market share, they are trying to steal market share and corner the market.
Most capitalists will disagree with your view; they will claim that perfect competition is preferable over an oligopoly or monopoly. Your view, that large companies will survive and hence need abundance, is (indirectly) supporting the creation of monopolies.
On top of all that, I disagree with your view of the computer industry. The whole notion of scarcity does not really reflect the industry. Since you can produce products at a low cost (very close to zero), there is no scarcity. You cannot claim that Sun is selling less and tie that to scarcity. Sun is selling less because no one wants their products. If more people wanted Sun's products, Sun can easily sell 100 million units without really incurring much cost. One can hardly claim the present situation is due to scarcity.
I think he took the picture while walking into his office location. That hardly qualifies as working. I mean, most people don't even get paid while travelling to their work location (even if it is on the premises).
Also, I doubt he wrote the web log during his work time. I don't know for sure but since it is his personal weblog, I imagine he only writes it when he gets home.
The security argument is bogus, and most people know it! If these Macs were sitting outside in the receiving area (or whatever) on a street, I'm sure anyone could have taken the picture. I don't know if this is located in some cordoned off area (I doubt it) but if it isn't, the media (for example) can go and snap a photo. I'm not a legal expert but I think one could simply take pictures of "public" areas.
wow..that's some crazy stuff... I use Quanta once ina a while but haven't seen any SERIOUS bugs like that... I've never heard of Bluefish but I'll check it out. I'm not a web developer so I don't really care what happens with my data:)
I agree... Newbies don't really have any decent programs for Linux. Frontpage may suck for anything large but it is good for people who just want a small personal page or something. I use Quanta Plus but it isn't a WYSIWYG, and it isn't feature complete. Even compared to some free Windows tools, like HTML-edit which I used to use, Quanta Plus is lacking. Also, Quanta Plus is lacking PHP support (from what I can gather).
I haven't read the article (I may in the future) so take this for what it is worth...
Only a capitalist would want to maintain scarcity (so that their economic systems are preserved). Creating abundance is a good thing! One should not be unhappy with abundance (unless you are a business owner who profits from scarcity).
Man, you can say a lot of things about spam, obesity, etc but tying it into scarcity/abundance gives it away...
The same can be said of Germans and others. The Romans literally raped all the women in Europe. Therefore, a sizeable chunk of Germans would not be Aryans. (I'm just using Germany as an example.) Also, don't forget the Mongols who invaded some eastern parts of Europe.
Admit it: there aren't many "pure" ethnicities around. Perhaps the exceptions are the Nordic countries and Russia. But ironically, Neo-Nazis don't consider Russians to be "Aryans" and some of the Nordic countries (as well as others like Iceland) are actually mixed with some unknown ancient tribe.
Anyone that is derived from Aryans should be called Aryan-derivatives, which includes all of Europe. Claiming one is "pure" while another is not (while no such evidence exists) is pure fabrication--something Hitler was known for.
I wonder what the official response to all this is going to be. Surely some journalist or some curious person has contacted the White House to explain the issue. Let's wait and see what the response is.
I think there is something fishy here. If all this is a mistake, then why is only Iraq of all things being left out. There must be a ton of other topics but why this?
Actually, there is nothing wrong with Aryans as a civilization. They DID exist (they didn't come from India but from somewhere north, probably modern day Russia). They were basically the ancestors of Europeans and their descendents (i.e. white people). So, Aryans as people are fine...
The problem is with Nazis and various others who claim that Aryans are superior to others. Also, the whole notion of blue-eyed, blonde whites are mostly a bunch of lies (even Hitler was neither blonde nor blue-eyed). Furthermore, Nazis like to claim certain people are Aryans while others aren't, when in fact they are all the same (eg. French are not Aryans according to Nazis but Germans are; Italians aren't but British are; etc).
...over half of it would go to paying taxes to support a war to keep gasoline costs low for cars and SUVs I don't own.
Actually the "additional" oil from the middle east is not needed by USA. Less than 20% of USA's imports come from the Middle East. All the "extra" oil is sold to Asia and Europe. All the profits go to the oil companies, refineries, etc (with a little bit to the US govt via taxes). A consumer would see no drop in energy prices, and would not use that "extra" oil.
If the benefit of capturing the oil were benefitial to all Americans, you can be sure that the majority of Americans will support the capture of oil resources from foreign nations. Right now, less than 10% of Americans actually support invading other countries for oil...
How about the fact that an American citizen, Jose Padilla, has been jailed with almost no contact with his lawyers and family for the last year or so?
Claiming people aren't wearing uniforms is a cop-out. When you are dealing with situations like this, what matters is not the details but the principles. It's too bad that you don't think that jailing someone without trial (likely forever), without charges, with little contact with lawyers is acceptable. People who subscribe to your view will never be satsified with anything.
Unfortunately, I'd be surprised if they're not doing a lot of log analysis to find out who's reading what parts of the site, to look for political opponents of various sorts and other patterns that could be useful.
Political opponents wouldn't be visiting the white house website--ever. That's almost the definition of a political opponent, isn't it?;)
wow... that's a MAJOR DISCOVERY... I know the titles are only off by one word but it is significant. The press releases aren't supposed to be different. The difference is especially important given the controversy swirling the end of "major combat operations" and the casulties.
Does anyone know how to automatically compare HTML and text to see the differences (no, I don't want to program or code such a thing)? Someone should attempt to see if there is any other difference.
This robot blocking thing is amazing! It is unbelievable that they would only block stuff related to Iraq and 'text'.
1. every major journalist worth his/her salt would be all over it within hours. so it wouldn't succeed in obscuring information.
You trust the media too much. How many journalists actually uncovered what happened to JFK? ZERO! Who was responsible for uncovering Iran-Contra? The media or someone else? The media is NOT in the business of uncovering the truth; instead, they are in the business of making money. This is why the media uncovers many "secrets" relating to celebrities, sports athletes, etc yet very little about government actions, policies, or intentions.
2. it would create an incredible backlash as soon as detected. what purpose would this serve?
There is something that you are forgetting. The citizens can be tamed easily. There is never a doubt about that. The question is always whether your enemies/opponents will be stronger with the revelation. If what you are saying is true, then why would the US govt carry out things like Bay of Pigs, or Iran-Contra? Or why would the CIA import LSD and attempt to brainwash its own citizens (read the history of LSD)? Where is the backlash in that?
A dictatorship assumes George Bush took absolute power of the government. Our government is way too inefficient to support that political model.
I don't think USA can ever be a dictatorship. However, it can very well turn into a fascist government. Look at someone like Hitler or Mussolini. People always claim that Hitler was a dictator but that is missing the point. If there were elections held in Germany (open fair elections monitored by the UN), Hitler would still have won by a massive majority.
The US govt CAN start practicing fascism. I'm not saying it is doing that now but it isn't inconceivable. Dictatorship, on the other hand, is highly unlikely...
I don't support totalitarians like Stalin but you do realize that the treaty was fake, right? Nothing really happened. It is as fake as USA giving back Panama to the Panamenians...
Sort of...I'm something like 70% socialist, 25% anarchist. I'm on the far-left so I will be your enemy. Fascists and capitalists are my enemies. A fascist capitalist, as the Nazis or Italians were, are my arch-enemy.
I don't know if that is a flame or a joke... but anyway... I'm not where you think I'm from, although it is a neighbour of the country you are thinking of... Besides, I'm Canadian. I can't go back. I can't even speak my native language...Furthermore, I'm a leftist (on the far-left actually). If I go back, I'll probably in jail:( Most people who immigrate to USA or Canada or whatever think the greatest thing about it is the wealth (the fact that USA/Canada/etc are rich). But I disagree. The greatest thing about Canada is not the welath--rather it is the political freedoms. You just have no idea how other countries are.
Just like the AC said, read up on comparative advantage. It's called free trade. I live in a temperate area. I can't get pineapples from my region because you can't grow pineapples in temperate zones. Thus the Thai produce it for me. My regional economy is better suited to producing apples and grapes, so these products are produced in leiu of other products.
If you can't produce pineapples then it would absolute advantage (not comparative advantage; comparative is when both can produce the product). Anyway...
There are things you capitalists don't consider: the environment (among others). For you, a capitalist, the only thing that matters is price. The fact that you can get apples from your local farmer does not matter if you can import it for less from somewhere else. The fact that the imported apples traver further, resulting in transporation pollution, chemicals being injected into the fruits to keep them preseved, fruits being artificially coloured (did you know that some fruits are artificially "painted" to look like a fresh fruit), etc. Capitalism never considers any of these issues. The only thing that matters is price. IF the environment, for example, was priced into the product, the problem wouldn't exist. But as it is--and as it will always be under capitalism--destroying the environemnt and polluting has zero cost!!!
The funny thing about all this is that these issues will not manifest if the world were egalitarian. Unfortunately, capitalism is elitist and blocks egalitarianism. For instance, if wages were the same everywhere (they should be, since humans are all equal), the environmental policies were the same everywhere, etc, no one would be importing apples from far way. They would, instead, buy it locally. In other words, comparative advantage will become less meaningful.
Capitalists claim to produce wealth and to create efficiency. The fact of the matter is, that is codeword for simply exploiting people. In many cases, the reason companies move to another country, or import products from another country, is simply because the environmental, social, political, etc conditions are not the same. The reason these capitalists create profit is, not because they did anything revolutionary, but because they simply cut say labour costs by moving to another country where people would be willing to work 12 hours a day, without washroom breaks, for low wages. If these people weren't as vulnerable then these capitalists wouldn't be creating any wealth!
It's funny how the capitalists and their allies blame the left-wing for everything, ranging from trade all the way to preventing wealth creation. We, the left wing, are not against trade! Trade is something that existed thousands of years before capitalism manifested itself!!! I, speaking as a leftist, is perfectly fine with trade relating to absolute advantage. If I can't produce something, I'll happily import it. What the left wing is generally against is wealth creation by simply exploitation, generally masked as wealth creation or comparative advantage.
Also, $120M sounds a very cheap for a company of this size. Red Hat, not quite twice the size by employees, is valued at over 2$ billion.
Red Hat is overvalued IMO. Red Hat should be around $500million. Even if Linux captures greater marketshare, it is questionable whether it would be worth as much as Windows (Windows is worth more because it charges more).
So what if it's not in the shareholders interest to sell to the highest bidder? Shareholders often have agendas on their own.
Under capitalism and its financial systems, all that matters is money. What you are saying only makes sense if the shareholders are majority owners such as small businesses (I don't know if that's what you mean. In that case, their opinions/values/etc matter. Otherwise, you can be guaranteed that your views don't matter. Even Bill Gates has almost zero control over Microsoft (he only owns a tiny percentage of the company). I really cannot see anyone blocking the sale of SuSE for reasons other than money (especially when a big chunk of the owners are investment banks, funds, etc).
PS many apologies for the erroneous use of "their" in my original post.. I *hate* it when people do that, and can't believe it happened to me...
lol:) I guess it's about time that you stopped hating people for doing that. People seem to lack proper spelling nowadays (or perhaps its a typo--I don't know). There are also other mistakes like "who's" vs "whose", etc...
And then there's SCO, who is trying to not be a Linux company and is aiming for. ..
SCO is the most innovative company in the field. They are trying to build a new industry based solely on lawsuits and bogus claims. You can think of it as Enron's close relative. In case you didn't know, Enron was considered to be one of the most innovative companies in America (highly respected, major, business magazines awarded many awards to it in the late 90's). I'm guessing SCO is trying to be just as innovative and win all those awards...
Let's put it this way: If spam never worked (i.e. people didn't read/buy/visit spammers) then none of this would be an issue. As long as there are people who "fall" for the spam, it will work. It may seem unbelievable but people actually buy the penis enlargement, sign up for "free" holidays, invest in bogus scams, etc. If none of this happened, spam wouldn't exist...
So philosophical question is: Is spamming (and falling for spam) a characteristic of humans? If yes, then spam will never be eliminated*...
(* assuming that freedom of the speech is maintained to some extent)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying the principles matter more than the "law". By relying on the notion of POW, which incidentally doesn't have anything for non-uniformed people, you are basically creating a new category called "enemy combatants". You are circumventing the spirit of the law. What you are doing is not illegal but immoral, and against international norms. Only the UN, in particular the ICRC (Red Cross), can make that judgement. And based on their opinions, there is no such thing as "enemy combatant."
I can tell it's supposed to be a question, because it's got a question mark on the end, but other than that I'm not sure what you are actually asking. Perhaps you are saying that it's sad for him and his family. I would agree. I don't know much more about the case. Perhaps you should provide more detail next time.
Yeah, I should give more info. Unfortunately, I had a good link but don't remember what it was. Just to recap:
- Jose Padilla
- American citizen (I emphasize citizens because USA has an attitude that only its citizens matter)
- charged with terrorism
- held on some military base (I think a ship--not sure)
- no formal charges or court proceedings (AFAIK), very little contact with lawyers, no contact with family (all against international norms, and possibly even illegal under US law)
- Total disregard for US "standards"
What's my point? Well, you were talking about non-citizens in Guantanomo Bay but what about your own citizen (which is even worse, although the conditions aren't the same)? The fact that the people are even being held in Guantomo Bay (as opposed to USA) should say something. The US govt is trying to circumvent its own "laws".No, claiming that people aren't wearing uniforms is a statement of fact. There's really not much more to it than that.
Yes it's fact. So what? We are talking about what should happen to these people--not whether they wore uniforms, were engaged in terrorism, and so forth!
Details such as "was this person shooting at others?" are important. I'm not sure what the rules of evidence should be in this situation (because IANAL).
That is not even the point! I, as well as others like me, aren't arguing over whether they were shooting or not. Instead, the point is that these people are being held without charges, with almost no lawyers, etc.
You don't know what I think. You certainly can't assume that I think that based on my previous statements (I'll presume
That's a lame argument. Of course, no one knows what you think. For all I know, you could an Al-Qaida informant
---OFF-TOPIC---
BTW, do you know how to search one's past postings? I posted a good rebuttal a while ago with html links and I need to access that. Do you know how to search Slashdot for just my comments?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
First of all, USSR was hardly socialist. If anything, it was a bureaucratic totalitarian state. A lot of words but they are all true. It was bureacratic because the country never listened to the workers. Instead being bottom-up, it was top-down. The country was controlled by the Communist Party, which was a vanguard party. It wasn't even a "real" party. That's why you couldn't "join" it. Whoever that controlled the vanguard party had total control of everything. To make matters worse, Stalin, a totalitarian dictator, took control and implemented his policies.
... its a lot easier for a company to survive if it has a larger market share (i.e. has an abundance of product to sell) and takes smaller profit margins than if it has less product to sell and has to take higher margins.
You can hate socialism because it tries to be egalitarian, or redistributes wealth, or some other reason. But it serves no purpose to claim USSR was socialist (unless you are Red-baiting). Socialism requires that the workers control the economy (among others), not some vanguard party that claims to act in the interest of the workers, or some totalitarian who claims to be a socialist. Until that happens, one can hardly consider it to be socialism (just like how, it is grossly misleading to consider any modern country as democratic).
Anyway on to your point...
I don't know if you realize it but you are basically asking for monopolies. Not government monopolies but corporate monopolies. I don't know if you are one of the corporate slaves who worships corporations but monopolies are a bad thing. Why do I say you are asking for monopolies when you didn't even use that word? Well, what is market share? Market share is basically a measure of dominance. The higher the market share, the more poweful and closer to a monopoly an organization is. When marketing people talk about market share, they are trying to steal market share and corner the market.
Most capitalists will disagree with your view; they will claim that perfect competition is preferable over an oligopoly or monopoly. Your view, that large companies will survive and hence need abundance, is (indirectly) supporting the creation of monopolies.
On top of all that, I disagree with your view of the computer industry. The whole notion of scarcity does not really reflect the industry. Since you can produce products at a low cost (very close to zero), there is no scarcity. You cannot claim that Sun is selling less and tie that to scarcity. Sun is selling less because no one wants their products. If more people wanted Sun's products, Sun can easily sell 100 million units without really incurring much cost. One can hardly claim the present situation is due to scarcity.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I think he took the picture while walking into his office location. That hardly qualifies as working. I mean, most people don't even get paid while travelling to their work location (even if it is on the premises).
Also, I doubt he wrote the web log during his work time. I don't know for sure but since it is his personal weblog, I imagine he only writes it when he gets home.
The security argument is bogus, and most people know it! If these Macs were sitting outside in the receiving area (or whatever) on a street, I'm sure anyone could have taken the picture. I don't know if this is located in some cordoned off area (I doubt it) but if it isn't, the media (for example) can go and snap a photo. I'm not a legal expert but I think one could simply take pictures of "public" areas.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
wow..that's some crazy stuff... I use Quanta once ina a while but haven't seen any SERIOUS bugs like that... I've never heard of Bluefish but I'll check it out. I'm not a web developer so I don't really care what happens with my data :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I agree... Newbies don't really have any decent programs for Linux. Frontpage may suck for anything large but it is good for people who just want a small personal page or something. I use Quanta Plus but it isn't a WYSIWYG, and it isn't feature complete. Even compared to some free Windows tools, like HTML-edit which I used to use, Quanta Plus is lacking. Also, Quanta Plus is lacking PHP support (from what I can gather).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I haven't read the article (I may in the future) so take this for what it is worth...
Only a capitalist would want to maintain scarcity (so that their economic systems are preserved). Creating abundance is a good thing! One should not be unhappy with abundance (unless you are a business owner who profits from scarcity).
Man, you can say a lot of things about spam, obesity, etc but tying it into scarcity/abundance gives it away...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
The same can be said of Germans and others. The Romans literally raped all the women in Europe. Therefore, a sizeable chunk of Germans would not be Aryans. (I'm just using Germany as an example.) Also, don't forget the Mongols who invaded some eastern parts of Europe.
Admit it: there aren't many "pure" ethnicities around. Perhaps the exceptions are the Nordic countries and Russia. But ironically, Neo-Nazis don't consider Russians to be "Aryans" and some of the Nordic countries (as well as others like Iceland) are actually mixed with some unknown ancient tribe.
Anyone that is derived from Aryans should be called Aryan-derivatives, which includes all of Europe. Claiming one is "pure" while another is not (while no such evidence exists) is pure fabrication--something Hitler was known for.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
My knowledge of other areas is similar to econopolitics (capitalism in this case). So I guess that makes me dumb huh?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I wonder what the official response to all this is going to be. Surely some journalist or some curious person has contacted the White House to explain the issue. Let's wait and see what the response is.
I think there is something fishy here. If all this is a mistake, then why is only Iraq of all things being left out. There must be a ton of other topics but why this?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Actually, there is nothing wrong with Aryans as a civilization. They DID exist (they didn't come from India but from somewhere north, probably modern day Russia). They were basically the ancestors of Europeans and their descendents (i.e. white people). So, Aryans as people are fine...
The problem is with Nazis and various others who claim that Aryans are superior to others. Also, the whole notion of blue-eyed, blonde whites are mostly a bunch of lies (even Hitler was neither blonde nor blue-eyed). Furthermore, Nazis like to claim certain people are Aryans while others aren't, when in fact they are all the same (eg. French are not Aryans according to Nazis but Germans are; Italians aren't but British are; etc).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
...over half of it would go to paying taxes to support a war to keep gasoline costs low for cars and SUVs I don't own.
Actually the "additional" oil from the middle east is not needed by USA. Less than 20% of USA's imports come from the Middle East. All the "extra" oil is sold to Asia and Europe. All the profits go to the oil companies, refineries, etc (with a little bit to the US govt via taxes). A consumer would see no drop in energy prices, and would not use that "extra" oil.
If the benefit of capturing the oil were benefitial to all Americans, you can be sure that the majority of Americans will support the capture of oil resources from foreign nations. Right now, less than 10% of Americans actually support invading other countries for oil...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
How about the fact that an American citizen, Jose Padilla, has been jailed with almost no contact with his lawyers and family for the last year or so?
Claiming people aren't wearing uniforms is a cop-out. When you are dealing with situations like this, what matters is not the details but the principles. It's too bad that you don't think that jailing someone without trial (likely forever), without charges, with little contact with lawyers is acceptable. People who subscribe to your view will never be satsified with anything.
Sivaram Velauthapillai Sivaram Velauthapillai
Unfortunately, I'd be surprised if they're not doing a lot of log analysis to find out who's reading what parts of the site, to look for political opponents of various sorts and other patterns that could be useful.
;)
Political opponents wouldn't be visiting the white house website--ever. That's almost the definition of a political opponent, isn't it?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Your quote:
Patriotism != Nationalism
That's true. BUT "patriots" accusing other citizens of being traitors, unpatriotic, un-American, and anti-American IS nationalism!
One would not call Alexander Hamilton unpatriotic because of his disagreements with Thomas Jefferson. So why is it different now?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
wow... that's a MAJOR DISCOVERY... I know the titles are only off by one word but it is significant. The press releases aren't supposed to be different. The difference is especially important given the controversy swirling the end of "major combat operations" and the casulties.
Does anyone know how to automatically compare HTML and text to see the differences (no, I don't want to program or code such a thing)? Someone should attempt to see if there is any other difference.
BTW, nice discovery...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
This robot blocking thing is amazing! It is unbelievable that they would only block stuff related to Iraq and 'text'.
1. every major journalist worth his/her salt would be all over it within hours. so it wouldn't succeed in obscuring information.
You trust the media too much. How many journalists actually uncovered what happened to JFK? ZERO! Who was responsible for uncovering Iran-Contra? The media or someone else? The media is NOT in the business of uncovering the truth; instead, they are in the business of making money. This is why the media uncovers many "secrets" relating to celebrities, sports athletes, etc yet very little about government actions, policies, or intentions.
2. it would create an incredible backlash as soon as detected. what purpose would this serve?
There is something that you are forgetting. The citizens can be tamed easily. There is never a doubt about that. The question is always whether your enemies/opponents will be stronger with the revelation. If what you are saying is true, then why would the US govt carry out things like Bay of Pigs, or Iran-Contra? Or why would the CIA import LSD and attempt to brainwash its own citizens (read the history of LSD)? Where is the backlash in that?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
A dictatorship assumes George Bush took absolute power of the government. Our government is way too inefficient to support that political model.
I don't think USA can ever be a dictatorship. However, it can very well turn into a fascist government. Look at someone like Hitler or Mussolini. People always claim that Hitler was a dictator but that is missing the point. If there were elections held in Germany (open fair elections monitored by the UN), Hitler would still have won by a massive majority.
The US govt CAN start practicing fascism. I'm not saying it is doing that now but it isn't inconceivable. Dictatorship, on the other hand, is highly unlikely...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't support totalitarians like Stalin but you do realize that the treaty was fake, right? Nothing really happened. It is as fake as USA giving back Panama to the Panamenians...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sort of...I'm something like 70% socialist, 25% anarchist. I'm on the far-left so I will be your enemy. Fascists and capitalists are my enemies. A fascist capitalist, as the Nazis or Italians were, are my arch-enemy.
So, what are you? Are you a FOE or a NEUTRAL?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't know if that is a flame or a joke... but anyway... I'm not where you think I'm from, although it is a neighbour of the country you are thinking of... Besides, I'm Canadian. I can't go back. I can't even speak my native language...Furthermore, I'm a leftist (on the far-left actually). If I go back, I'll probably in jail :( Most people who immigrate to USA or Canada or whatever think the greatest thing about it is the wealth (the fact that USA/Canada/etc are rich). But I disagree. The greatest thing about Canada is not the welath--rather it is the political freedoms. You just have no idea how other countries are.
Sivaram Velauthpaillai
Just like the AC said, read up on comparative advantage. It's called free trade. I live in a temperate area. I can't get pineapples from my region because you can't grow pineapples in temperate zones. Thus the Thai produce it for me. My regional economy is better suited to producing apples and grapes, so these products are produced in leiu of other products.
:)
If you can't produce pineapples then it would absolute advantage (not comparative advantage; comparative is when both can produce the product). Anyway...
There are things you capitalists don't consider: the environment (among others). For you, a capitalist, the only thing that matters is price. The fact that you can get apples from your local farmer does not matter if you can import it for less from somewhere else. The fact that the imported apples traver further, resulting in transporation pollution, chemicals being injected into the fruits to keep them preseved, fruits being artificially coloured (did you know that some fruits are artificially "painted" to look like a fresh fruit), etc. Capitalism never considers any of these issues. The only thing that matters is price. IF the environment, for example, was priced into the product, the problem wouldn't exist. But as it is--and as it will always be under capitalism--destroying the environemnt and polluting has zero cost!!!
The funny thing about all this is that these issues will not manifest if the world were egalitarian. Unfortunately, capitalism is elitist and blocks egalitarianism. For instance, if wages were the same everywhere (they should be, since humans are all equal), the environmental policies were the same everywhere, etc, no one would be importing apples from far way. They would, instead, buy it locally. In other words, comparative advantage will become less meaningful.
Capitalists claim to produce wealth and to create efficiency. The fact of the matter is, that is codeword for simply exploiting people. In many cases, the reason companies move to another country, or import products from another country, is simply because the environmental, social, political, etc conditions are not the same. The reason these capitalists create profit is, not because they did anything revolutionary, but because they simply cut say labour costs by moving to another country where people would be willing to work 12 hours a day, without washroom breaks, for low wages. If these people weren't as vulnerable then these capitalists wouldn't be creating any wealth!
It's funny how the capitalists and their allies blame the left-wing for everything, ranging from trade all the way to preventing wealth creation. We, the left wing, are not against trade! Trade is something that existed thousands of years before capitalism manifested itself!!! I, speaking as a leftist, is perfectly fine with trade relating to absolute advantage. If I can't produce something, I'll happily import it. What the left wing is generally against is wealth creation by simply exploitation, generally masked as wealth creation or comparative advantage.
Capitalism Sucks! Thanks for reading
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Also, $120M sounds a very cheap for a company of this size. Red Hat, not quite twice the size by employees, is valued at over 2$ billion.
Red Hat is overvalued IMO. Red Hat should be around $500million. Even if Linux captures greater marketshare, it is questionable whether it would be worth as much as Windows (Windows is worth more because it charges more).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
So what if it's not in the shareholders interest to sell to the highest bidder? Shareholders often have agendas on their own.
:) I guess it's about time that you stopped hating people for doing that. People seem to lack proper spelling nowadays (or perhaps its a typo--I don't know). There are also other mistakes like "who's" vs "whose", etc...
Under capitalism and its financial systems, all that matters is money. What you are saying only makes sense if the shareholders are majority owners such as small businesses (I don't know if that's what you mean. In that case, their opinions/values/etc matter. Otherwise, you can be guaranteed that your views don't matter. Even Bill Gates has almost zero control over Microsoft (he only owns a tiny percentage of the company). I really cannot see anyone blocking the sale of SuSE for reasons other than money (especially when a big chunk of the owners are investment banks, funds, etc).
PS many apologies for the erroneous use of "their" in my original post.. I *hate* it when people do that, and can't believe it happened to me...
lol
Sivaram Velauthapillai
And then there's SCO, who is trying to not be a Linux company and is aiming for. . .
SCO is the most innovative company in the field. They are trying to build a new industry based solely on lawsuits and bogus claims. You can think of it as Enron's close relative. In case you didn't know, Enron was considered to be one of the most innovative companies in America (highly respected, major, business magazines awarded many awards to it in the late 90's). I'm guessing SCO is trying to be just as innovative and win all those awards...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Let's put it this way: If spam never worked (i.e. people didn't read/buy/visit spammers) then none of this would be an issue. As long as there are people who "fall" for the spam, it will work. It may seem unbelievable but people actually buy the penis enlargement, sign up for "free" holidays, invest in bogus scams, etc. If none of this happened, spam wouldn't exist...
So philosophical question is: Is spamming (and falling for spam) a characteristic of humans? If yes, then spam will never be eliminated*...
(* assuming that freedom of the speech is maintained to some extent)
Sivaram Velauthapillai