Or how about maybe killing 40,000 of their countrymen. You may argue that it was a war of liberation or perhaps that the Iraqi terrorists did it. To the average person on the street that just lost a child/parent/sibling the cause and effect of a US invasion and mass deaths is crystal clear (regardless of the accuracy of his perception). And thats without the people exhorting him to DO something to save his country against the 'evil' invaders (One would presume Al qaeda n its ilk actively recruit).
And no i'm not saying they were mistreated in their childhood poor them we must 'understand' them, it wasn't their fault. Murder is murder is murder but that swings both ways (be it state sponsored individual or a 'terrorist' organization)
The only way to prevent people from taking up arms against you is to not give them a reason to do so. Try spending the hundreds of billions a year we spend on war on elimination of hunger on creation of jobs and on propping up democratic institutions (encouraging checks and balances in other countries and the like) and watch the difference it can make.
Violence begets violence and we're the only ones with the means to break the cycle
How about telling me which other group as a whole has suffered more because of the US? The US supports numerous dictators amongst the muslim world (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, most of the oil-rich small sheikhdoms in the Middle East, Pakistan, until 1990 Iraq so on and so forth). Not to mention the countless CIA managed coup's against democracies instilling dictators (Iraq used to be a democracy way back in the day). People tend to have long memories and rarely forget atrocities committed against them.
Yes violence especially violence against innocent civilians is wrong in every way possible (and is condemned / forbidden by Islam) but there will always by a certain percentage of nuts out of every population. By rapidly ramping up the percentage of people that hate America the percentage of nuts correspondingly also increases. Not to mention people like Bin Laden are largely impotent without a large replenishable supply of foot soldiers which we conveniently provide Iraq creating new breed of jihadists, says CIA
Most of the current generation of foot soldiers have been trained and bred by the CIA during their operations for the Afghan war in the 70's and 80's, cue Iraq war and we're creating a whole new generation...
To summarize 1) To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction 2) An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - Mahatma Gandhi
From my understanding 1080i requires over 20Mbits/sec throw in 1080p and higher capacities, maybe better frame rates and we can max it out today. What about background torrents? Caching other movies perhaps? Something like RDP with video support? Streaming US Channels through your RDP session @ home to your cafe in england? How about actual work, data intensive work? 100 megabyte binaries flying around? I could go on and on, no matter how much bandwidth you dream up there will be far smarter people dreaming ways to max it out.
Similar weird story about GoDaddy. I had a couple of domains with them one of which was about to expire I applied for a transfer to another registrar which never went through b/c of some issue with their privacy guard feature. I didnt follow it up rigorously since i didnt think it would be an issue (obscure name) , turned out it was turned into a google link site (not sure what the exact site is but basically a bunch of links for other sites to boost google pagerank). In any case registered for a year, cool somewhat understandable shit happens. Within a few weeks of that the domain was suddenly available again
I personally don't believe thats the case. Look at the success of allofmp3.com as well as iTunes. People do pay for convenience itself, and most people like to compensate for things they enjoy, above and beyond that a certain percentage of people will never pay. The problem is that they're (MPAA/RIAA) forcing a mass change in the percentage of people on both sides
With invasive DRM and its ilk people that would've been willing to pay are driven to pirate since its more convenient. Also since they've been refusing to adapt their business model to a changing world the quantity of people that pirate will continue to keep going up (free AND more convenient you say?). Again imho once people begin downloading media its relatively unusual for them to quit and switch to paying especially without a significantly more convenient alternative.
I guess one possibility could be local net caching of some sort. Have a couple of dozen torrent servers that are local to large networks/metro areas , with fat pipes and the close network proximity they may be able to compete on download speeds. I've got a 30 megabit downlink which @ peak speeds should be able to download a movie in under 7 minutes (1.4 gb) and a TV episode (350mb) in 1.6 minutes. Give consumers that and watch the tide turn, but if they refuse to compete with p2p and not provide what people want they'll slowly but surely shrink and wither away.
How about this,
1) Give me fast torrents for all the shows I want to see with a single commercial embedded every 10 minutes (very little incentive to bother to click to forward through it)
2) Give me 10 cents an episode torrents with no ads at all. Fast easy to download in any format I want.
At 10 cents an episode a show like Lost / American Idol (upwards of 20 million viewers) would be earning a cool 2 million an episode. Perhaps peanuts compared to current advertising budgets but plenty sufficient to cover production costs + profits and thats without considering the massive pays actors get.
Note that that is factoring in the first time it runs not syndication or international figures etc which would pad it significantly.
Now we all know that they'll be available online within hours regardless of being provided by the industry or people capturing and uploading. Which site would you go to? PirateBay etc or a super iTunes like site that had all content for all shows that you've ever seen watch or heard of. In all honesty would that model not be plenty sufficient to largely eliminate piracy as well as provide 'we the people' with what we've been clamouring for?
Also if they can keep detailed records about every other aspect of our lives implementing a system where they remember what you purchased and give you a highly discounted copy if you rerequest lost copies. Trivial to implement the issue being keeping the content viewers happy or controlling the market:)
Not to mention with a largely free content delivery mechanism with people being used to click and buy whatever the barriers to entry dramatically go down.
If it was a tenth of that cost they would start probably kickstart a revolution. Central Server + One WallJack PC for each room (say @ construction time) and you can hook up monitors etc @ will in each room , similar stuff for office Space. I wonder how much of the cost is Win CE and if that could be replaced by Damn Small Linux w/RDP. I would definitely hook up family members using it if it was significantly cheaper
At its root, Islam asks that each individual Muslim question for themselves the essence of their faith and the meaning of its philosophy. Blindly accepting rules and "facts" set out by others does not make one a "good Muslim".
I whole heartedly agree and for me as a muslim the most striking example of that is (according to Islamic history) the first verse spoken to the prophet was Read (Sura Al Alaq 96:1)
From what I've read about alcohol the stance was that originally it wasn't prohibited but was prohibited after the Prophet migrated to Medina. Hence (chronologically) earlier Ayat do not mention a ban while later ones do.
How about we tally all the subsidies they've received and have an accounting firm go over their expenditures and see how they match up with the discounts they've received?
To quote Save The Internet
Approaching the situation through a slightly different lens, AT&T's path back to Ma Bell status involved the conglomeration of SBC, Ameritech, PacBell, SNET, and AT&T Wireless, at a cost of roughly $140 billion. In the process, their market capitalization increased only $40 billion. Ironically, the $100 billion that disappeared is roughly what it would cost to run fiber to every American household.
How about spending the 300 billion on researching basic sciences and attracting more and capable minds to it. You can't honestly tell me that doubling the amount of capable people working on understanding the universe won't accelerate our understanding of the same (not to mention unforeseen applied sciences advantages)
Time / Is America Flunking Science Government spending on research
Also I know that there isn't a 1:1 correlation the point is the more you expand scientific knowledge of all kinds, the larger the potential for new discoveries (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that)
In the Koran/Quran, it states that Mohammed married Aisha when she was six years old and then consumated the marriage when she was nine years old. That means the the Prophet Mohammed had sex with a nine year old girl. Having sex with a nine year old child is the act of a pedophile.
There is no such thing mentioned in the Quran. The age of Aisha is mentioned in oral traditions (Hadith) which were transcribed well over a hundred years after the prophets demise. Additionally most of the Hadith mentioning Aisha's young age are attributed to one narrator, her age may or may not be accurate but in either case its NOT in the Quran. And fyi only the Quran is considered sacrosanct in Islam
Also the problem isn't Islam itself read the Quran yourself before passing judgement on it. The problem is a sense of disenfranchisement and being on the receiving end of injust treatment (for which the US is responsible to a degree, read the history of Bin Laden, Saddam, Mossadeq, Shah of Iran, patronage of the Saudi family etc). To top that off there's a very active but rapidly growing minority who view Islam as being militant and blame ALL problems faced by Muslims as being caused by the US and jewry instead of looking inward. (Presume you've read Herman Goerring's quote about how to control people?)
The sad thing is people on both sides refuse to actually think for themselves. Islam categorically denies Muslims from waging an offensive war
4:90
Except those who join a group between whom and you there is a treaty (of peace), or those who approach you with hearts restraining them from fighting you as well as fighting their own people. If Allah had pleased, He could have given them power over you, and they would have fought you: Therefore if they withdraw from you but fight you not, and (instead) send you (Guarantees of) peace, then Allah Hath opened no way for you (to war against them).
2:190 Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors
There are ayat that mention fighting and slaying opponents/non muslims, these are frequently used to drum up anti islamic sentiment. But these specifically stipulate defense against oppression. For example the first part of 2:191 is often used for this purpose but if you read the last part of it, its quite clear that its meant for those who would prevent freedom of religion.
2:190 And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith
I had an argument with a friend last night who (is a muslim and) firmly believed that it is our sacred duty to spread Islam by Force until the entire world converts. He refused to believe any of the evidence to the contrary I pointed out to him, even the Quran itself. Which goes back to my original point unless people actually start thinking for themselves, we'll simply continue this downward spiral based on various agenda's of people on both extremes.
How much faster do current generation Cell Phone CPU's have to be to do this without a delay and seamlessly. If this was an option that the phone could negotiate transparently AND IF (big if) they made some good looking phones (omg pink ponies) they may have a chance of gaining larger market share but beyond a significant percentage of people using these they wouldnt help with the blanket surveillance problem (none of the people you talk to would be using it)
Which war are you talking about? The one on false pretexts (WMD) to invade an oil rich country and topple a dictator we installed (Saddam) or the upcoming one against another oil rich country which hasnt done anything illegal (allowed nuclear fuel cycle acc to the NPT).
How about instead of waging illegal wars we cut the size of our military spending from about equal to the rest of the world put together to a tenth of that and use the money to repay our debt to china and research alternative fuel sources eliminating the need to invade countries on false pretexts:)
Btw watch The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear...very enlightening (by the BBC)
Wonder if something like this could be used to get out of cell phone contracts from Cingular and Verizon. Most of my friends use Cingular, most people I know would be willing to make the switch (to tmobile, sprint nextel) but not if they have to pay a 150-250 dollar penalty (cost of freedom?:))
What I was thinking yesterday was why not put the Senate, the White House and the Pentagon under surveillance 24 hour live broadcast with specific people monitoring the transmission for any discontinuities or deliberate malfunctions etc. Security > Privacy in the administrations opinion so have them deal with the ramifications of it
Plane Hijackings, murders etc have all been going on for a while. One has to wonder why immediately after the fall of the USSR did Terrorism become the clear n present danger we all 'know' it o be:)
Can a concept similar to BlueFrogs be utilized for weeding out these sites?
For example a toolbar in Firefox that allows you to tag sites as spam and the results being transmitted to Google / Yahoo etc (any that want them) and they could incorporate those results in reducing weightage of a site?
Or to take it a step further a la BlueFrog actually accumulate those results daily / hourly and complain to the host / registrar etc?
Bingo
They're basic mirror images , both designed to oppress, instill fear and create a facade of a great relentless enemy.
Bin Laden:
US is evil, they'll rape your women, plunder your lands (resources/oil) and hate your religion
Bush / his ilk:
Muslims / Arabs are evil, they'll blow up your women and children and hate your 'freedom'
Bottom line: Most people aren't evil, most (virtually all?) governments and religious figureheads are evil. We the people regardless of anything mostly all want to live in peace, raise kids have good food and live a half decent life.
Sorry for the Rant O:-)
Slashdot Mirror
And no i'm not saying they were mistreated in their childhood poor them we must 'understand' them, it wasn't their fault. Murder is murder is murder but that swings both ways (be it state sponsored individual or a 'terrorist' organization)
The only way to prevent people from taking up arms against you is to not give them a reason to do so. Try spending the hundreds of billions a year we spend on war on elimination of hunger on creation of jobs and on propping up democratic institutions (encouraging checks and balances in other countries and the like) and watch the difference it can make.
Violence begets violence and we're the only ones with the means to break the cycle
How about telling me which other group as a whole has suffered more because of the US? The US supports numerous dictators amongst the muslim world (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, most of the oil-rich small sheikhdoms in the Middle East, Pakistan, until 1990 Iraq so on and so forth). Not to mention the countless CIA managed coup's against democracies instilling dictators (Iraq used to be a democracy way back in the day). People tend to have long memories and rarely forget atrocities committed against them.
Yes violence especially violence against innocent civilians is wrong in every way possible (and is condemned / forbidden by Islam) but there will always by a certain percentage of nuts out of every population. By rapidly ramping up the percentage of people that hate America the percentage of nuts correspondingly also increases. Not to mention people like Bin Laden are largely impotent without a large replenishable supply of foot soldiers which we conveniently provide Iraq creating new breed of jihadists, says CIA
Most of the current generation of foot soldiers have been trained and bred by the CIA during their operations for the Afghan war in the 70's and 80's, cue Iraq war and we're creating a whole new generation...
To summarize
1) To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
2) An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - Mahatma Gandhi
From my understanding 1080i requires over 20Mbits/sec throw in 1080p and higher capacities, maybe better frame rates and we can max it out today. What about background torrents? Caching other movies perhaps? Something like RDP with video support? Streaming US Channels through your RDP session @ home to your cafe in england? How about actual work, data intensive work? 100 megabyte binaries flying around? I could go on and on, no matter how much bandwidth you dream up there will be far smarter people dreaming ways to max it out.
Similar weird story about GoDaddy. I had a couple of domains with them one of which was about to expire I applied for a transfer to another registrar which never went through b/c of some issue with their privacy guard feature. I didnt follow it up rigorously since i didnt think it would be an issue (obscure name) , turned out it was turned into a google link site (not sure what the exact site is but basically a bunch of links for other sites to boost google pagerank). In any case registered for a year, cool somewhat understandable shit happens. Within a few weeks of that the domain was suddenly available again
With invasive DRM and its ilk people that would've been willing to pay are driven to pirate since its more convenient. Also since they've been refusing to adapt their business model to a changing world the quantity of people that pirate will continue to keep going up (free AND more convenient you say?). Again imho once people begin downloading media its relatively unusual for them to quit and switch to paying especially without a significantly more convenient alternative.
I guess one possibility could be local net caching of some sort. Have a couple of dozen torrent servers that are local to large networks/metro areas , with fat pipes and the close network proximity they may be able to compete on download speeds. I've got a 30 megabit downlink which @ peak speeds should be able to download a movie in under 7 minutes (1.4 gb) and a TV episode (350mb) in 1.6 minutes. Give consumers that and watch the tide turn, but if they refuse to compete with p2p and not provide what people want they'll slowly but surely shrink and wither away.
How about this, 1) Give me fast torrents for all the shows I want to see with a single commercial embedded every 10 minutes (very little incentive to bother to click to forward through it) 2) Give me 10 cents an episode torrents with no ads at all. Fast easy to download in any format I want. At 10 cents an episode a show like Lost / American Idol (upwards of 20 million viewers) would be earning a cool 2 million an episode. Perhaps peanuts compared to current advertising budgets but plenty sufficient to cover production costs + profits and thats without considering the massive pays actors get. Note that that is factoring in the first time it runs not syndication or international figures etc which would pad it significantly. Now we all know that they'll be available online within hours regardless of being provided by the industry or people capturing and uploading. Which site would you go to? PirateBay etc or a super iTunes like site that had all content for all shows that you've ever seen watch or heard of. In all honesty would that model not be plenty sufficient to largely eliminate piracy as well as provide 'we the people' with what we've been clamouring for? Also if they can keep detailed records about every other aspect of our lives implementing a system where they remember what you purchased and give you a highly discounted copy if you rerequest lost copies. Trivial to implement the issue being keeping the content viewers happy or controlling the market :)
Not to mention with a largely free content delivery mechanism with people being used to click and buy whatever the barriers to entry dramatically go down.
If it was a tenth of that cost they would start probably kickstart a revolution. Central Server + One WallJack PC for each room (say @ construction time) and you can hook up monitors etc @ will in each room , similar stuff for office Space. I wonder how much of the cost is Win CE and if that could be replaced by Damn Small Linux w/RDP. I would definitely hook up family members using it if it was significantly cheaper
I whole heartedly agree and for me as a muslim the most striking example of that is (according to Islamic history) the first verse spoken to the prophet was Read (Sura Al Alaq 96:1)
From what I've read about alcohol the stance was that originally it wasn't prohibited but was prohibited after the Prophet migrated to Medina. Hence (chronologically) earlier Ayat do not mention a ban while later ones do.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has - Margaret Mead
To quote Save The Internet Approaching the situation through a slightly different lens, AT&T's path back to Ma Bell status involved the conglomeration of SBC, Ameritech, PacBell, SNET, and AT&T Wireless, at a cost of roughly $140 billion. In the process, their market capitalization increased only $40 billion. Ironically, the $100 billion that disappeared is roughly what it would cost to run fiber to every American household.
Check out Internet Freedom
Perfect. It'll be able to provide the 1.21 gigawatts those cores will need
How about spending the 300 billion on researching basic sciences and attracting more and capable minds to it. You can't honestly tell me that doubling the amount of capable people working on understanding the universe won't accelerate our understanding of the same (not to mention unforeseen applied sciences advantages)
Time / Is America Flunking Science
Government spending on research
Also I know that there isn't a 1:1 correlation the point is the more you expand scientific knowledge of all kinds, the larger the potential for new discoveries (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that)
There is no such thing mentioned in the Quran. The age of Aisha is mentioned in oral traditions (Hadith) which were transcribed well over a hundred years after the prophets demise. Additionally most of the Hadith mentioning Aisha's young age are attributed to one narrator, her age may or may not be accurate but in either case its NOT in the Quran. And fyi only the Quran is considered sacrosanct in Islam
Also the problem isn't Islam itself read the Quran yourself before passing judgement on it. The problem is a sense of disenfranchisement and being on the receiving end of injust treatment (for which the US is responsible to a degree, read the history of Bin Laden, Saddam, Mossadeq, Shah of Iran, patronage of the Saudi family etc). To top that off there's a very active but rapidly growing minority who view Islam as being militant and blame ALL problems faced by Muslims as being caused by the US and jewry instead of looking inward. (Presume you've read Herman Goerring's quote about how to control people?)
The sad thing is people on both sides refuse to actually think for themselves. Islam categorically denies Muslims from waging an offensive war
4:90 Except those who join a group between whom and you there is a treaty (of peace), or those who approach you with hearts restraining them from fighting you as well as fighting their own people. If Allah had pleased, He could have given them power over you, and they would have fought you: Therefore if they withdraw from you but fight you not, and (instead) send you (Guarantees of) peace, then Allah Hath opened no way for you (to war against them).
2:190 Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors
There are ayat that mention fighting and slaying opponents/non muslims, these are frequently used to drum up anti islamic sentiment. But these specifically stipulate defense against oppression. For example the first part of 2:191 is often used for this purpose but if you read the last part of it, its quite clear that its meant for those who would prevent freedom of religion.
2:190 And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith
I had an argument with a friend last night who (is a muslim and) firmly believed that it is our sacred duty to spread Islam by Force until the entire world converts. He refused to believe any of the evidence to the contrary I pointed out to him, even the Quran itself. Which goes back to my original point unless people actually start thinking for themselves, we'll simply continue this downward spiral based on various agenda's of people on both extremes.
How much faster do current generation Cell Phone CPU's have to be to do this without a delay and seamlessly. If this was an option that the phone could negotiate transparently AND IF (big if) they made some good looking phones (omg pink ponies) they may have a chance of gaining larger market share but beyond a significant percentage of people using these they wouldnt help with the blanket surveillance problem (none of the people you talk to would be using it)
Which war are you talking about? The one on false pretexts (WMD) to invade an oil rich country and topple a dictator we installed (Saddam) or the upcoming one against another oil rich country which hasnt done anything illegal (allowed nuclear fuel cycle acc to the NPT). :)
How about instead of waging illegal wars we cut the size of our military spending from about equal to the rest of the world put together to a tenth of that and use the money to repay our debt to china and research alternative fuel sources eliminating the need to invade countries on false pretexts
Btw watch The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear...very enlightening (by the BBC)
Wonder if something like this could be used to get out of cell phone contracts from Cingular and Verizon. Most of my friends use Cingular, most people I know would be willing to make the switch (to tmobile, sprint nextel) but not if they have to pay a 150-250 dollar penalty (cost of freedom? :))
What I was thinking yesterday was why not put the Senate, the White House and the Pentagon under surveillance 24 hour live broadcast with specific people monitoring the transmission for any discontinuities or deliberate malfunctions etc. Security > Privacy in the administrations opinion so have them deal with the ramifications of it
since last year? ;)
Plane Hijackings, murders etc have all been going on for a while. One has to wonder why immediately after the fall of the USSR did Terrorism become the clear n present danger we all 'know' it o be :)
He's saying sue Pfizer for every Viagra advert etc etc
Can a concept similar to BlueFrogs be utilized for weeding out these sites? For example a toolbar in Firefox that allows you to tag sites as spam and the results being transmitted to Google / Yahoo etc (any that want them) and they could incorporate those results in reducing weightage of a site? Or to take it a step further a la BlueFrog actually accumulate those results daily / hourly and complain to the host / registrar etc?
Bingo They're basic mirror images , both designed to oppress, instill fear and create a facade of a great relentless enemy. Bin Laden: US is evil, they'll rape your women, plunder your lands (resources/oil) and hate your religion Bush / his ilk: Muslims / Arabs are evil, they'll blow up your women and children and hate your 'freedom' Bottom line: Most people aren't evil, most (virtually all?) governments and religious figureheads are evil. We the people regardless of anything mostly all want to live in peace, raise kids have good food and live a half decent life. Sorry for the Rant O:-)
Since I had no idea what you guys were talkin about :P
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-715862862 672743260&q=1984+apple&pl=true
Gives a whole new meaning to 'rooted' :)
Wasnt nixon a conservative? Thought he said carter and nixon (i'm not sure either way, havent read up on it)