I'm a retired business systems (operations, not computer focused) consultant. I still do some consulting and contracting and 'odd jobs'. Everything I do is company specific so I guess the closest is 'specialized projects'. The only time I leave here is when I absolutely, have to be at a client site. I'll be gone the last week of July - San Francisco area - for a week. Actually August will be a 'full' month as I'll be gone 3 weeks (counting that last week in July) - San Francisco/Santa Cruz for a week, then a week home, then New York for 4 days then Boston for a week. But that's unusual. I'm rarely gone more than a week a month, if that. Most months I don't leave at all. When I have to travel my lady friend stays here evenings and monitors everything for me (which I pay her for - it's a business expense), but even then I VPN back to my main computer here and work off of it. If something starts happening (like a database starts throwing errors, or a server decides to freeze or otherwise go offline), emails hit my cell phone, so I just VPN in and see what the problem is and work on it. I take a cheap PC with me when I travel, so if it's lost or stolen it's not a problem.
I've been planning for quite a while, starting renovations of the bungalo about 3 years ago. I use 60% less energy now than I did prior to the renovations, so electric can go up quite a bit before I start getting hit, so to speak.
I know I can't plan for every potential 'event', but short of a direct hit by a tornado (or an earthquake which are extremely rare where I live - southern Ohio) I'm relatively well covered. I even have a functioning cistern. I do have and use city water, but if that goes out I flip one water transfer valve and I'm on filtered cistern water (the cistern was here when I bought the house which was built before there was city water or sewer in the area). I have a small distiller with capacity to distill 10 gallons a day for drinking and cooking.
I guess the point is we all have different circumstances and reasons for what we do. I lucked into what I do and even with the economy going to heck I do quite well. But, I do live very simply and cheaply. The only time I feel 'guilty' about my carbon footprint is when I travel. It never ceases to amaze me how much energy businesses and homes totally waste.
If you want to see where I live, including the house layout, go to cheechwiz.com/page_1.html I don't keep that site updated any longer, but the house exterior picture and layout are pretty much the same now.
I only gas up my car every 3 to 5 weeks. I'm almost 60 years old and don't go out often other than for groceries (got past the bar scenes and all that years ago). I live simply in a 1100 sq foot 2 bedroom bungalo. My lady friend stops by 3 nights a week and we cook dinner here (we rarely go out to eat, as I'm a pretty good cook). I conduct *almost* all my business from here and love it. I use WebEx a lot to interface with clients on projects. I keep a few web sites online (both here at home and on server farms) and monitor them closely. I used to travel extensively, but I technically retired about 8 years ago. I have a very small energy footprint, down to the best insulated windows and doors I could buy and 20" of insulation in the attic, Mitsubishi Mr. Slim super efficient AC and electric heat (I put those in about 16 months ago). And whilst I have a standby generator, I'm not an apocalypse nut. I don't even own a gun. I do keep at least a week of food in during the winter in case a serious snow storm hits and I can't get out.
That might help clarify why I want (need?) to be 'connected' to the internet and have reliable electricity 24/7/365. The only thing I have a current need for is ISP redundancy which I have been thinking about because about a month ago my RoadRunner business line would not connect to a server I was monitoring. When I contacted the RR people, they could connect but could not tell my why I could not connect. It was a level 3 router issue they said. They said they could route around it there but they couldn't set anything up for me. It lasted about 3 days during which I had to use a dialup to connect to that one server. That's why this discussion thread interested me. I can get ADSL here so I'll probably do that and get a Red Brick or Linksys or something like that.
Well, back to monitoring a forum on one of my servers. Sunday isn't a day off for me...
All my electronic equipment is on six 1500VA APC battery UPS boxes, and I have a 17KW/~70 amp Kohler standby backup generator which runs on natural gas (start-up and switchover time is less than 10 seconds). The backup generator has kicked in several times this year. When you DO need electric power, a standby generator is really, really nice. Since I work at home (no gasoline commuting expenses!) and all my work is done on computers, the investment (and a business deduction) is well worth while. The last outage here was a couple weeks ago and lasted almost 11 hours.
This thread is VERY helpful to me precisely because redundant ISPs was on my mind. I have a business cable connection. I think I'll go for DSL and a XiNCOM or Linksys to tie them in together.
This [bls.gov] (table 2) shows the very lowest income bracket spends more on random things then the two brackets above it. I downloaded the report and read it. Personally I believe the report uses bad math, to say the least, but in general I rarely believe government reports. As to 'intelligence', that word in and of its self has so many definitions it is practically a useless word. What, exactly, is the definition of 'intelligence'?
actually, it's pretty specific in how it caters to people who need their hands held every step of the way. Which is the majority of computer buyers these days.
"These people have never been to a Fry's. If you've never been to one, picture this: they sell porn and energy drinks within 20 feet of each other." And bring the wife and the kids!
"Finally, you say sattelite is not available... How is that possible? Sattelites are are accessible as long as you can position your dish correctly."
I have 5 dishes including one from the 'dark ages' of the 1980's (I still have my old 'BUG' dish). I've been playing with satellite reception for quite a few years. If he lives on the north side of a hill or mountain, the signals would have to travel through the hill, which they don't.
My girl friend tried to get satellite where she lives. It actually does have a southern 'view', but a neighbor's tree is in the way. It's a big tree, but none the less it's enough to block reception. While it is possible that in the winter when the leaves are off the tree she might be able to get decent reception, in the summer there is no way she could get the signal through the leaves on that tree.
It is not simply a matter of aiming a dish. You have to have a clear, unobstructed line of sight to the satellite (which are all equatorial, so in N America you have to have a southern view). This is more problematic the further north one is. The dish has to be aimed lower to catch th satellites so obstructions are more of a problem than in the south.
"It was a disingenuous statement and it'd be nice if more politicians were held accountable for that type of spin."
As compared to Bush's outright lies, even back then, Al Gore's statement was of such little consequence that to even bring it up these days is simply stupid. Gore's statement was hardly spin, anyway, compared to what's coming out of the Bush administration from every corner, every day.
Al Gore did a lot to get funding and such very early in the game. People should be thanking him for what he did to jump start and push it into the public domain so the internet as we know it today exists. Gore's 'spin' didn't, and isn't, costing US taxpayers US$4 billion a week, not to mention hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And try looking over your own life, too, and ask your self - Can you honestly say you've never 'spun' something (aka embellishment)? Maybe you should be held accountable for the times in your life that you've 'spun' one thing or another.
That's really the problem in its entirety. Governments are absolutely terrible at providing services to people. Private enterprise is always more efficient... Poppy cock. If you believe that, you haven't worked in private enterprise business(es). Did Enron or Worldcom deliver? I'll grant you Walmart. But to say governments are terrible at providing services and not taking into account the problems with private enterprise businesses is silly. As a current example, look to Michael Moore's "Sicko".
By the way - In addition to joining up with either the US military or a mercenary company, why don't you send the US government a few thousand US$ (minimum considering it's costing over US$12 BILLION a month) more than your tax return calls for to 'support' the Iraq and Afghanistan 'wars'. Hey - You support them. Give 'till it hurts!
As I have said, If you believe, You should be there helping as a mercenary or US soldier. Good luck!
I bet Bush II was an idiot and financially I have won and continue to win by betting the price of gold and oil going up.
Our military achieved an astounding victory... Tee hee hee... Yeah. The US 'beat' a tiny nation into a quagmire. What a great accomplishment. I'm really impressed... You do, however, have republican talking points deeply embedded in your belief system. Don't be a 'chicken hawk'. Go there! Be part of the 'solution'!
Moderation: -1 (Blatant plagiarism) I'm lazy. So be it. Bottom line is the truth (facts) hurt. Not to mention I'm not posting as an 'anonymous coward' as you are...
By all means, join the US armed services or the mercenaries, get on over and help out. Or are you a 'chicken hawk'????
As an "I told you so" person (who doesn't post as an 'anonymous coward') I get excuses all the time from people who spend years trying to justify idiot things like the Viet Nam war. My mother still, at 90 and a staunch republican, still believes the Viet Nam war was a 'good' thing and universal health care is a communist plot.
When Bush II took office in 2001 I bought gold coins. Every business he was involved in failed so it was a shoe it. With Bush as pResident, I've done very well. Bush II did to the US what he did to the few companies his father's influence got him into. They all failed under Bush II's CEO 'leadership'. All were rescued by Saudi interests. Unfortunately, the US has, and will continue to suffer, the same --> Financial and reputation failure. So - I DO thank Bush II for improving my financial situation significantly. He couldn't run a successful business and he can't run the US government (well, then again, there's Cheney, Bush II's boss). About 7 years ago I bet, by buying gold, that Bush II was an idiot. I've won and continue to win. Thank You, pResident Bush!
I don't know where you got your facts from, but you are dead wrong. The United States did not arm Saddam's Iraq. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US only accounted for less than 1% of the total arms imports to Iraq between 1970 and 1991.
That's conventional arms, not biological agents. The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988. According to a New York Times article in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran. "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas." "It was just another way of killing people _ whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."
Details about Iraq killing Iranians with US-supplied chemical and biological weapons significantly deepens our understanding of the current hypocrisy. It began with "Iraq-gate" -- when US policy makers, financiers, arms-suppliers and makers, made massive profits from sales to Iraq of myriad chemical, biological, conventional weapons, and the equipment to make nuclear weapons. Reporter Russ Baker noted, for example, that, "on July 3, 1991, the Financial Times reported that a Florida company run by an Iraqi national had produced cyanide -- some of which went to Iraq for use in chemical weapons -- and had shipped it via a CIA contractor." This was just the tip of a mountain of scandals.
A major break in uncovering Iraqgate began with a riveting 1990 Nightline episode which revealed that top officials of the Reagan administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, C.I.A., and D.I.A., collectively engaged in a massive cover up of the USS Vincennes' whereabouts and actions when it shot down an Iranian airliner in 1987 killing over 200 civilians. The "massive cover up" Koppel explained, was designed to hide the US secret war against Iran, in which, among other actions, US Special Operations troops and Navy SEALS sunk half of Iran's navy while giving battle plans and logistical information to Iraqi ground forces in a coordinated offensive.
As Ted Koppel explained in June, 1990, "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush [Sr.], operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy." A PBS Frontline episode, "The Arming of Iraq" (1990) detailed much of the conventional and so-called "dual-use" weapons sold to Iraq. The public learned from other sources that at least since mid-1980s the US was selling chemical and biological material for weapons to Iraq and orchestrating private sales. These sales began soon after Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad in 1985 and met with Saddam Hussein as a private businessman on behalf of the Reagan administration. In the last major battle of the Iran-Iraq war, some 65,000 Iranians were killed, many by gas.
By late 1992, the sales of chemical and biological weapons were revealed. Congressional Records of Senator Riegle's investigation of the Gulf War Syndrome show that that the US government approved sales of large varieties of chemical and biological materials to Iraq. These included anthrax, components of mustard gas, botulinum toxins (which causes paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing and is often fatal), histoplasma capsulatum (which may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red nodules), and a host of other nasty chemicals materials.
Dream on. I remember how Reagan crowed about how the US won the cold war by bankrupting Russia through actions like CIA funding the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now it's the US's turn as Russia (not to mention China) rise as the new world powers in large part because of the US's military focus (All war, All the time). And with all the fuss about taxes in the US, the US spends more for 'defense' (offense, really) than all the other countries in the world combined.
Invade Iraq - What a great idea! Let's destabilize an important oil supplying country, leading to destabilizing an entire region, breeding thousands, if not 10's of thousands, more terrorists!
It's also interesting to note that the US military uses as much fuel (gasoline, jet fuel, etc.) as all the citizens in the US do. Pretty soon, as peak oil starts to hit home, the US will be fighting just to keep the military supplied with fuel.
History has shown colonialization does not work.
And just to remind, all but 1 or 2 of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia...
Right now the terrorists in Iraq (as opposed to the insurgents, who just want their country back) have no capability to project power. But if they get control of the government, army/police, oil stockpiles, the one semi-deep-water port, the international airport, etc., then they have the potential to project power beyond the borders of Iraq. If the US leaves Iraq, it is likely the Iraqis will kick out the 'outside' terrorists (who are currently getting great training in Iraq). Essentially the only way the US can 'win' in Iraq is to kill 80 to 90% of all the Iraq population (as was done in the early days in the US with the Indians {The only good Indian is a dead Indian} under the banner of Manifest Destiny) and set Iraq up as the 51st US state at great (to say the least) expense.
The world witnessed Saddam use his WMD against the Iranians and Kurds on multiple occasions. This takes the notion that he had WMD out of the "belief" realm and plants it solidly in the "proven fact" category. Poppycock. What have you been smoking? That was during the 1980's when the US government (then president / 'actor' Ronald "Ray Gun" Reagan) was supplying Iraq with the WMD to use against Iran. US supplies weapons, Iraq uses them as directed by the US, then 10+ years the US complains... Not to mention --> After the Gulf War they were destroyed which is why none were found during or after the 'latest' invasion.
You been under a rock for a few years or something, or have I mis-understood your comment?
Right now the US is paying over 12 Billion US$ a month just for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and for what?
the hawks in government pushing him to do it were the Republicans in Congress You need to check your history. The republicans accused Clinton of trying to draw attention away from the Lewinski 'scandal'. The republicans complained about Clinton's actions back then.
You must have a lot of hate in you to be bring Clinton into this. The man has been out of office for years. Clinton gets a blow job and 'lies' about it. Big frigging deal. A US$60 million investigation that ran what - 7 years - and the best they could do was nail him for 'lying' about getting a blow job. Get over it. I've come to the conclusion that the people with the most hate for Clinton are simply jealous of him.
While Apple computers are more expensive up front No, they are not more expensive than windows computers when equal components are used for the comparison.
Most, if not all, of the status lights on different equipment I have I prefer for status information they provide. If one doesn't like status lights, some can be disconnected internally or covered externally.
In my case, there are several devices I have which I wish had brighter status lights so I could see them more clearly in the day - e.g.: I have a couple of external hard drives with dim status lights.
"The sad fact is personal computers are too big. Build an energy efficent unit inside the flat panel monitor and we won't need huge bulky cases that put out more heat than old tube type televisions"
"Unfortunately it lasted only a few hours and some registered contributor who wrote the original article reversed it all."
Same experience here. So, I go there when I need general information (When was Buster Keaton born?) but usually go to multiple sources for anything 'important'.
I like Wikipedia OK, though. I don't think it is 'failing'. It's just that one must use it like any other resource - It should be one stop on the trail when researching something.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a retired business systems (operations, not computer focused) consultant. I still do some consulting and contracting and 'odd jobs'. Everything I do is company specific so I guess the closest is 'specialized projects'. The only time I leave here is when I absolutely, have to be at a client site. I'll be gone the last week of July - San Francisco area - for a week. Actually August will be a 'full' month as I'll be gone 3 weeks (counting that last week in July) - San Francisco/Santa Cruz for a week, then a week home, then New York for 4 days then Boston for a week. But that's unusual. I'm rarely gone more than a week a month, if that. Most months I don't leave at all. When I have to travel my lady friend stays here evenings and monitors everything for me (which I pay her for - it's a business expense), but even then I VPN back to my main computer here and work off of it. If something starts happening (like a database starts throwing errors, or a server decides to freeze or otherwise go offline), emails hit my cell phone, so I just VPN in and see what the problem is and work on it. I take a cheap PC with me when I travel, so if it's lost or stolen it's not a problem.
I've been planning for quite a while, starting renovations of the bungalo about 3 years ago. I use 60% less energy now than I did prior to the renovations, so electric can go up quite a bit before I start getting hit, so to speak.
I know I can't plan for every potential 'event', but short of a direct hit by a tornado (or an earthquake which are extremely rare where I live - southern Ohio) I'm relatively well covered. I even have a functioning cistern. I do have and use city water, but if that goes out I flip one water transfer valve and I'm on filtered cistern water (the cistern was here when I bought the house which was built before there was city water or sewer in the area). I have a small distiller with capacity to distill 10 gallons a day for drinking and cooking.
I guess the point is we all have different circumstances and reasons for what we do. I lucked into what I do and even with the economy going to heck I do quite well. But, I do live very simply and cheaply. The only time I feel 'guilty' about my carbon footprint is when I travel. It never ceases to amaze me how much energy businesses and homes totally waste.
If you want to see where I live, including the house layout, go to cheechwiz.com/page_1.html I don't keep that site updated any longer, but the house exterior picture and layout are pretty much the same now.
I only gas up my car every 3 to 5 weeks. I'm almost 60 years old and don't go out often other than for groceries (got past the bar scenes and all that years ago). I live simply in a 1100 sq foot 2 bedroom bungalo. My lady friend stops by 3 nights a week and we cook dinner here (we rarely go out to eat, as I'm a pretty good cook). I conduct *almost* all my business from here and love it. I use WebEx a lot to interface with clients on projects. I keep a few web sites online (both here at home and on server farms) and monitor them closely. I used to travel extensively, but I technically retired about 8 years ago. I have a very small energy footprint, down to the best insulated windows and doors I could buy and 20" of insulation in the attic, Mitsubishi Mr. Slim super efficient AC and electric heat (I put those in about 16 months ago). And whilst I have a standby generator, I'm not an apocalypse nut. I don't even own a gun. I do keep at least a week of food in during the winter in case a serious snow storm hits and I can't get out.
That might help clarify why I want (need?) to be 'connected' to the internet and have reliable electricity 24/7/365. The only thing I have a current need for is ISP redundancy which I have been thinking about because about a month ago my RoadRunner business line would not connect to a server I was monitoring. When I contacted the RR people, they could connect but could not tell my why I could not connect. It was a level 3 router issue they said. They said they could route around it there but they couldn't set anything up for me. It lasted about 3 days during which I had to use a dialup to connect to that one server. That's why this discussion thread interested me. I can get ADSL here so I'll probably do that and get a Red Brick or Linksys or something like that.
Well, back to monitoring a forum on one of my servers. Sunday isn't a day off for me...
All my electronic equipment is on six 1500VA APC battery UPS boxes, and I have a 17KW/~70 amp Kohler standby backup generator which runs on natural gas (start-up and switchover time is less than 10 seconds). The backup generator has kicked in several times this year. When you DO need electric power, a standby generator is really, really nice. Since I work at home (no gasoline commuting expenses!) and all my work is done on computers, the investment (and a business deduction) is well worth while. The last outage here was a couple weeks ago and lasted almost 11 hours.
This thread is VERY helpful to me precisely because redundant ISPs was on my mind. I have a business cable connection. I think I'll go for DSL and a XiNCOM or Linksys to tie them in together.
An admitted 'plug', for extended discussions of Process Documentation in many scenarios read through http://elsmar.com/Forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16
Process documentation is very company and scenario specific.
Which is the majority of computer buyers these days.
And bring the wife and the kids!
"Finally, you say sattelite is not available... How is that possible? Sattelites are are accessible as long as you can position your dish correctly."
I have 5 dishes including one from the 'dark ages' of the 1980's (I still have my old 'BUG' dish). I've been playing with satellite reception for quite a few years. If he lives on the north side of a hill or mountain, the signals would have to travel through the hill, which they don't.
My girl friend tried to get satellite where she lives. It actually does have a southern 'view', but a neighbor's tree is in the way. It's a big tree, but none the less it's enough to block reception. While it is possible that in the winter when the leaves are off the tree she might be able to get decent reception, in the summer there is no way she could get the signal through the leaves on that tree.
It is not simply a matter of aiming a dish. You have to have a clear, unobstructed line of sight to the satellite (which are all equatorial, so in N America you have to have a southern view). This is more problematic the further north one is. The dish has to be aimed lower to catch th satellites so obstructions are more of a problem than in the south.
More work for the US Navy. They'll have to get down there and tap that sucker like they have with the telecom undersea cables....
"It was a disingenuous statement and it'd be nice if more politicians were held accountable for that type of spin."
As compared to Bush's outright lies, even back then, Al Gore's statement was of such little consequence that to even bring it up these days is simply stupid. Gore's statement was hardly spin, anyway, compared to what's coming out of the Bush administration from every corner, every day.
Al Gore did a lot to get funding and such very early in the game. People should be thanking him for what he did to jump start and push it into the public domain so the internet as we know it today exists. Gore's 'spin' didn't, and isn't, costing US taxpayers US$4 billion a week, not to mention hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And try looking over your own life, too, and ask your self - Can you honestly say you've never 'spun' something (aka embellishment)? Maybe you should be held accountable for the times in your life that you've 'spun' one thing or another.
By the way - In addition to joining up with either the US military or a mercenary company, why don't you send the US government a few thousand US$ (minimum considering it's costing over US$12 BILLION a month) more than your tax return calls for to 'support' the Iraq and Afghanistan 'wars'. Hey - You support them. Give 'till it hurts!
I bet Bush II was an idiot and financially I have won and continue to win by betting the price of gold and oil going up. Our military achieved an astounding victory... Tee hee hee... Yeah. The US 'beat' a tiny nation into a quagmire. What a great accomplishment. I'm really impressed... You do, however, have republican talking points deeply embedded in your belief system. Don't be a 'chicken hawk'. Go there! Be part of the 'solution'!
By all means, join the US armed services or the mercenaries, get on over and help out. Or are you a 'chicken hawk'????
As an "I told you so" person (who doesn't post as an 'anonymous coward') I get excuses all the time from people who spend years trying to justify idiot things like the Viet Nam war. My mother still, at 90 and a staunch republican, still believes the Viet Nam war was a 'good' thing and universal health care is a communist plot.
When Bush II took office in 2001 I bought gold coins. Every business he was involved in failed so it was a shoe it. With Bush as pResident, I've done very well. Bush II did to the US what he did to the few companies his father's influence got him into. They all failed under Bush II's CEO 'leadership'. All were rescued by Saudi interests. Unfortunately, the US has, and will continue to suffer, the same --> Financial and reputation failure. So - I DO thank Bush II for improving my financial situation significantly. He couldn't run a successful business and he can't run the US government (well, then again, there's Cheney, Bush II's boss). About 7 years ago I bet, by buying gold, that Bush II was an idiot. I've won and continue to win. Thank You, pResident Bush!
Dream on...
I don't know where you got your facts from, but you are dead wrong. The United States did not arm Saddam's Iraq. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US only accounted for less than 1% of the total arms imports to Iraq between 1970 and 1991.
That's conventional arms, not biological agents. The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988. According to a New York Times article in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran. "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas." "It was just another way of killing people _ whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."
Details about Iraq killing Iranians with US-supplied chemical and biological weapons significantly deepens our understanding of the current hypocrisy. It began with "Iraq-gate" -- when US policy makers, financiers, arms-suppliers and makers, made massive profits from sales to Iraq of myriad chemical, biological, conventional weapons, and the equipment to make nuclear weapons. Reporter Russ Baker noted, for example, that, "on July 3, 1991, the Financial Times reported that a Florida company run by an Iraqi national had produced cyanide -- some of which went to Iraq for use in chemical weapons -- and had shipped it via a CIA contractor." This was just the tip of a mountain of scandals.
A major break in uncovering Iraqgate began with a riveting 1990 Nightline episode which revealed that top officials of the Reagan administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, C.I.A., and D.I.A., collectively engaged in a massive cover up of the USS Vincennes' whereabouts and actions when it shot down an Iranian airliner in 1987 killing over 200 civilians. The "massive cover up" Koppel explained, was designed to hide the US secret war against Iran, in which, among other actions, US Special Operations troops and Navy SEALS sunk half of Iran's navy while giving battle plans and logistical information to Iraqi ground forces in a coordinated offensive.
As Ted Koppel explained in June, 1990, "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush [Sr.], operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy." A PBS Frontline episode, "The Arming of Iraq" (1990) detailed much of the conventional and so-called "dual-use" weapons sold to Iraq. The public learned from other sources that at least since mid-1980s the US was selling chemical and biological material for weapons to Iraq and orchestrating private sales. These sales began soon after Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad in 1985 and met with Saddam Hussein as a private businessman on behalf of the Reagan administration. In the last major battle of the Iran-Iraq war, some 65,000 Iranians were killed, many by gas.
By late 1992, the sales of chemical and biological weapons were revealed. Congressional Records of Senator Riegle's investigation of the Gulf War Syndrome show that that the US government approved sales of large varieties of chemical and biological materials to Iraq. These included anthrax, components of mustard gas, botulinum toxins (which causes paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing and is often fatal), histoplasma capsulatum (which may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red nodules), and a host of other nasty chemicals materials.
Invade Iraq - What a great idea! Let's destabilize an important oil supplying country, leading to destabilizing an entire region, breeding thousands, if not 10's of thousands, more terrorists!
It's also interesting to note that the US military uses as much fuel (gasoline, jet fuel, etc.) as all the citizens in the US do. Pretty soon, as peak oil starts to hit home, the US will be fighting just to keep the military supplied with fuel.
History has shown colonialization does not work.
And just to remind, all but 1 or 2 of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia... Right now the terrorists in Iraq (as opposed to the insurgents, who just want their country back) have no capability to project power. But if they get control of the government, army/police, oil stockpiles, the one semi-deep-water port, the international airport, etc., then they have the potential to project power beyond the borders of Iraq.
If the US leaves Iraq, it is likely the Iraqis will kick out the 'outside' terrorists (who are currently getting great training in Iraq). Essentially the only way the US can 'win' in Iraq is to kill 80 to 90% of all the Iraq population (as was done in the early days in the US with the Indians {The only good Indian is a dead Indian} under the banner of Manifest Destiny) and set Iraq up as the 51st US state at great (to say the least) expense.
Poppycock. What have you been smoking? That was during the 1980's when the US government (then president / 'actor' Ronald "Ray Gun" Reagan) was supplying Iraq with the WMD to use against Iran. US supplies weapons, Iraq uses them as directed by the US, then 10+ years the US complains... Not to mention --> After the Gulf War they were destroyed which is why none were found during or after the 'latest' invasion.
You been under a rock for a few years or something, or have I mis-understood your comment?
Right now the US is paying over 12 Billion US$ a month just for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and for what?
You must have a lot of hate in you to be bring Clinton into this. The man has been out of office for years. Clinton gets a blow job and 'lies' about it. Big frigging deal. A US$60 million investigation that ran what - 7 years - and the best they could do was nail him for 'lying' about getting a blow job. Get over it. I've come to the conclusion that the people with the most hate for Clinton are simply jealous of him.
No, they are not more expensive than windows computers when equal components are used for the comparison.
[quote]A giant but declining power[/quote] Hmmmm. Nope - Not in the least 'declining'....
Most, if not all, of the status lights on different equipment I have I prefer for status information they provide. If one doesn't like status lights, some can be disconnected internally or covered externally.
In my case, there are several devices I have which I wish had brighter status lights so I could see them more clearly in the day - e.g.: I have a couple of external hard drives with dim status lights.
Slow news day here?
"The sad fact is personal computers are too big. Build an energy efficent unit inside the flat panel monitor and we won't need huge bulky cases that put out more heat than old tube type televisions"
iMac
"Apple charges double for everything it sells."
Can you cite an example?
"Unfortunately it lasted only a few hours and some registered contributor who wrote the original article reversed it all."
Same experience here. So, I go there when I need general information (When was Buster Keaton born?) but usually go to multiple sources for anything 'important'.
I like Wikipedia OK, though. I don't think it is 'failing'. It's just that one must use it like any other resource - It should be one stop on the trail when researching something.