MAD only works when both actors care about self preservation. That is not necessarily the case with Iran as a result of their particular eschatology and belief that if you die while fighting in the cause of Allah, you automatically go to paradise. From a twelver perspective, MAD may be an incentive, not a deterrent.
Of course they wouldn't want to kill the Jews in Iran. The Jews in Iran are a major deterrent to any Israeli military action. They are hostages. They cannot leave Iran and cannot have any contact with Israel. To the extent they openly support the Iranian regime they do so to avoid the obvious consequences. The Jews in Terezin had great things to say about the Nazis too, and the red cross inspectors found nothing out of the ordinary when they visited. Having token jews is a great thing for Iran, strategically. It allows them to pretend it's just about "Zionism". If you want a more open and honest viewpoint of what Iran's agenda is, look at those of their proxies. Notice the rhetoric is directed sharply against the Jews as a whole and not just "Zionists".
As far as that article goes, yes WND was the first to report it, but it was later run on Iranian state websites, such as Fars News Agency. Here's a link. No, they didn't publish it in English for obvious reasons, but even with Google translate you can get the gist of what they're trying to say. Many other news outlets covered it as well -- though perhaps not the ones you read. You catch the "cancer" comment last month, or did that one pass you by as well?
Xenophobic? Have you watched Palestinian TV? The Muslim arabs never were friendly to Jews. During WWII the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had his own SS brigade. He was one of the few Hitler trusted enough to share his final solution with. He wanted to construct gas chambers in the middle east. Have you read what the Qur'an says about jews? To this day, leaders all over the middle east endorse the Protocols of Zion is authentic. It's part of the curriculum in Saudi Arabia The Jews are right to be terrified of their neighbors, they all want to kill them and since the day of Israel's inception haven't stopped trying. 1948, 1068, 1973... Any land the Palestinians lost is their fault. If you attack my land, and in the resulting war you lose some of your land, you don't get it back. If such land was given back it would eliminate any negative consequence for war and invite further attempts.
If it could happen just as easily, why hasn't it? It's not like there is a shortage of Christians. The answer is that Christianity lacks the legal and political structure that Islam has. Sharia is a lot more than a code of family law of simple dietary laws. It's a comprehensive legal and governmental system dictating everything from how you wash yourself, to how foreign policy should be handled. Because of this built-in structure, and inability to separate church from state (such would be blasphemy) Islamic states render themselves unable to change (at least peacefully). It's why in 1400 years since the inception of Islam, no significant progress has been made towards any sort of liberalization or modernization (apart from war technology, which is permitted, and advancements appropriated from the Infidels).
Christianity, on the other hand, has no such restriction and as such, can be separated from the state without upsetting believers. While obviously not all Christians would lend themselves to this viewpoint, the fact remains that the holy book itself makes no requirement that a Christian state be established. Jesus himself said "render unto Caesar..." and "my kingdom is not of this world". It's only when a religion is seperated from the state that it's influence can begin to diminish at any significant speed (see sex, drugs, and rock n roll). It's because of this weakness, Christianity can be seen as a vestigial organ in our society's evolution -- destined to disappear -- where Islam, on the other hand, can best be viewed as a terminal cancer -- spreading uncontrollably and sending everything it touches back to the dark ages. Look at Boko Haram's current rampage in Nigeria (translates as "any reading not connected to Islam is a sin" or more commonly "western education is a sin"). Were Islam just a religion, it wouldn't be so bad, but that is simply not the case.
No, actually you couldn't say it. While you are correct that stoning was a punishment for adultery in the old testament, Jesus explicitly canceled the punishment in the New Testament (see John 8:7). But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Only followers of one religion in the world stone people today -- that's Islam, and it's hardly a rare occurrence
But let's say for the sake of argument Christianity was as bad -- it still wouldn't make Islam good. I'm not saying Christianity is good -- it's not. Any irrational ideology is dangerous -- religious or otherwise, but it's beyond stupid to pretend all religions and all cultures are equally humane or civilized just because we desire it to be so -- because it's much more palatable to swallow. The truth is Islam is an irredeemably barbaric political, legal, and religious system that deserves no respect and deserves no place in the modern world. I'll never understand why so many Atheists call Christianity without bothering to give the same treatment to Islam. And before you ask -- no -- i'm not a Christian.
Do yourself a favor, familiarize yourself with abrogation in Islam, then read the last chapter written in the Qur'an (sura 9). Then try and tell me violent Muslims misinterpret their religion. The reason so many mainstream Muslims are peaceful is precisely because they ignore the core teachings of their religion. Muhammad was a warlord cult leader who spread his religion by the sword. Do you really think he was pushing peace and tolerance in his later days? No. That was only in the beginning when Muslims were in the minority.
Say Canada attacks the US, and I join Canada's ministry of propaganda, creating war propaganda promoting the murder of innocent civilians. Say I contact sympathetic Americans and convince them to... shoot up places like Hassan, or blow stuff up like the Christmas day bomber, or any other of Awlaki's many examples. Now you could argue that all I did was talk, and that I didn't actually do anything directly to kill Americans, but that's like saying the Mafia don is innocent because he doesn't do the killing by his own hand -- merely ordering it. Now normally I could be arrested, but let's say i'm hiding in some Canadian cave somewhere and that's not possible. Does that mean i'm immune from all punishment? Does my status as an american citizen make me immune from any response at all, since to kill me would be unconstitutional? Sorry, but constitutional or not, I would need to be silenced. Awlaki was an admitted terrorist and just because he happened to be American doesn't mean he didn't deserve exactly what he got. I'm not a huge fan of Obama, but in this case, I think he made the right choice.
Bin Ladin was opposed to the Saudi *monarchy*, not the religious aspect of the society governed by Shariah. Nothing about the enforcement of Shariah would change. In fact, it would likely get a lot worse without the secular leaning Monarchy to help moderate things. That's not even mentioning what it would do to the country's relations with the west. A revolution in Saudi Arabia, with today's dependence on oil, would mean an end to modern civilization as we know it. With an inability to ship food cheaply around the world, billions would die. The world economy would collapse. People would turn to their survival instincts and rioting, rape, and murder would be a daily occurrence everywhere. You want democracy in Saudi Arabia? Be careful what you wish for with your pollyanna hippie nonsense.
Sorry, but it's Islam too. If rape cannot be proven (requiring *four male witnesses* since female testimony is inadmissable) then the accusation of rape then becomes a confession of Zina (unlawful intercourse) on the part of the female victim, the punishment for which is often stoning. You can deny this is the case but this happens all the time in the Middle East. Clearly somebody over there agrees with this interpretation of the Shariah. Christianity has nothing to do with this topic. Let me know when you find a news article of a Christian stoning a woman to death for the crime of being raped.
"And Iran has the upper hand because the US isn't saying one word."
We could run with what Iran said. We could say "yeah, they hacked into our control systems and stole the drone from over the Afghanistan border. See how dangerous they are!" They lie about us. I see no reason why we shouldn't respond in kind, especially when it fits within their narrative. Stealing one of our drones by such means could even be considered and act of war. Considering everybody is waiting for somebody to make the "first move" here, i'd say it's be a very good think if Iran can be percieved to have made the first act of agression. That way when we blow all their nuclear facilities off the face of the planet we can argue "well, they did it first". How we've been handling the whole situation has been horrible.
No. All letting it free would do is to let an exploit into the wild with no patch. What if there is no cure, or it can't be formulated before the disease has run it's course? You really want to risk the lives of billions of people? This isn't information science. The way I see it, this sort of thing needs to be tightly controlled like nukes -- even more so given the projected casualties. Releasing the information would be reckless. Sure, the other guy might figure it out on his own but why give him a head start? There are assholes still struggling to get nukes. Furthermore, not every actor on the world stage is rational. Some believe the sky fairy will save them, or that dying is noble and guarantees a place in paradise. Sure it might be unlikely that such weapons could be used, but do you really think it's such a good idea to bet half the world's population on it?
Why would they waste the processing horsepower? It would eat the battery if it was even at all possible. They can do higher quality recognition on their servers anyway. The customer does not need to know where the processing is done as long as "it just works". To the consumer, and even some more technically inclined, it's magic -- and that is the real genius in the way Apple presents it's products. They make people feel like they're somehow in the future, that they're talking to an intelligent phone, that Saint Steve has somehow created artificial life and they get to own a piece of this future for the price of a modest chunk of change and a two year contract.
When they have a competing product? If people want easier to use content creation, they use flash. Most artists learn, use, and most importantly pay for flash. Why should adobe make html5 more popular when they cannot control it?
It is nearly impossible to perma-brick an iPhone. Sounds like your engineer may be misinformed. Let me guess: you have a 3gs, you flashed on the iPad baseband, and now it's stuck at a recovery mode screen? Here's what you do: create a custom 4.1 firmware image with Pwnagetool or Snowbreeze (default settings should be fine). Make sure you have no overrides to gs.apple.com in your hosts file (apple is still as of writing signing 4.1 on the 3Gs). If you have shsh blobs saved, you'll have more restore options, but 4.1 is at the moment always a safe bet. Then put your device in "Pwned DFU mode" using a tool such as iReb (on a mac, it's easiest to use redsn0w). After you've done this, shift (or option) click the restore button in iTunes and select the custom firmware image you've made. Unless there is a hardware issue, you should have no problem restoring. If you have 3g, the process is the same, but you should create an image for 4.2.1 (apple is still signing this).
And with anything but a Nexus, you're lucky if you get a single firmware upgrade -- and even if there are custom roms floating around it's very unlikely you'll end up with full driver support. WiFi won't work, or GPS won't work, or GPU performance will be poor, or you'll lose features. That's not a worry with IOS. As you've pointed out, 3 years of support is pretty much the norm, which is world better than your *average* android phone (we're not talking about developer phones here).
So everybody has to keep a constant log of everywhere they go to avoid a ridiculous search? If a person is doing nothing wrong, they should not be stopped. This is unreasonable and an invasion of privacy. This has no real effect on security (as you've pointed out, those who have something to hide can go around). This is government out of control. Have you flown anywhere recently? Do you really want one of those rude, intrusive little bureaucratic pricks to pull you over when you're doing nothing wrong and go through all your stuff, including private stuff. Now they can even download the contents of your cell phone. Maybe you took some photos / videos with somebody close to you and you don't want gone through by some total stranger who, for all you know could be getting a hard on. You sure this law is a good idea?
Re:And ease of use has tanked since Steve died...
on
iOS 5 Update Available
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Is it a 16xx Error? Try putting it into DFU and restoring with another computer, use another USB port, or rebooting.
Generally the fundamentalist refrain is that each person has an individual plan for their lives and it's necessary some things happen for God's larger plan. It's an attempt to explain the random, the unjust, the horiffic -- the paradox you point out. The point of getting people to accept a paradox -- accept the illogical -- is to shut down or short circuit logic. You believe you know something. You don't know for a fact. You believe. And belief overrides all. You come to believe that the mere act of questioning your beliefs might result in death or worse -- eternal torment in some genocidal vision of a supposedly benevolent and just god.
You believe because the terror of nothingness after death and no justice in the universe is the alternative. Belief is a defense mechanism against that fear and the consequences of such knowledge. You believe because others around you believe. You believe because you've been brought up from a very early age to believe. There are many reasons we believe the irrational (and it's not just religion). There is no reason or logic in it. Religions are nothing but the remnants of long defunct cults who have lost their leaders and over the span of time have been granted elevated status in society.
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MAD only works when both actors care about self preservation. That is not necessarily the case with Iran as a result of their particular eschatology and belief that if you die while fighting in the cause of Allah, you automatically go to paradise. From a twelver perspective, MAD may be an incentive, not a deterrent.
Better than the middle east where you get executed for a bit off weed (or at the very very least, jailed for life).
Of course they wouldn't want to kill the Jews in Iran. The Jews in Iran are a major deterrent to any Israeli military action. They are hostages. They cannot leave Iran and cannot have any contact with Israel. To the extent they openly support the Iranian regime they do so to avoid the obvious consequences. The Jews in Terezin had great things to say about the Nazis too, and the red cross inspectors found nothing out of the ordinary when they visited. Having token jews is a great thing for Iran, strategically. It allows them to pretend it's just about "Zionism". If you want a more open and honest viewpoint of what Iran's agenda is, look at those of their proxies. Notice the rhetoric is directed sharply against the Jews as a whole and not just "Zionists".
As far as that article goes, yes WND was the first to report it, but it was later run on Iranian state websites, such as Fars News Agency. Here's a link. No, they didn't publish it in English for obvious reasons, but even with Google translate you can get the gist of what they're trying to say. Many other news outlets covered it as well -- though perhaps not the ones you read. You catch the "cancer" comment last month, or did that one pass you by as well?
Xenophobic? Have you watched Palestinian TV? The Muslim arabs never were friendly to Jews. During WWII the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had his own SS brigade. He was one of the few Hitler trusted enough to share his final solution with. He wanted to construct gas chambers in the middle east. Have you read what the Qur'an says about jews? To this day, leaders all over the middle east endorse the Protocols of Zion is authentic. It's part of the curriculum in Saudi Arabia The Jews are right to be terrified of their neighbors, they all want to kill them and since the day of Israel's inception haven't stopped trying. 1948, 1068, 1973... Any land the Palestinians lost is their fault. If you attack my land, and in the resulting war you lose some of your land, you don't get it back. If such land was given back it would eliminate any negative consequence for war and invite further attempts.
Parchin? All of it?
If it could happen just as easily, why hasn't it? It's not like there is a shortage of Christians. The answer is that Christianity lacks the legal and political structure that Islam has. Sharia is a lot more than a code of family law of simple dietary laws. It's a comprehensive legal and governmental system dictating everything from how you wash yourself, to how foreign policy should be handled. Because of this built-in structure, and inability to separate church from state (such would be blasphemy) Islamic states render themselves unable to change (at least peacefully). It's why in 1400 years since the inception of Islam, no significant progress has been made towards any sort of liberalization or modernization (apart from war technology, which is permitted, and advancements appropriated from the Infidels).
Christianity, on the other hand, has no such restriction and as such, can be separated from the state without upsetting believers. While obviously not all Christians would lend themselves to this viewpoint, the fact remains that the holy book itself makes no requirement that a Christian state be established. Jesus himself said "render unto Caesar..." and "my kingdom is not of this world". It's only when a religion is seperated from the state that it's influence can begin to diminish at any significant speed (see sex, drugs, and rock n roll). It's because of this weakness, Christianity can be seen as a vestigial organ in our society's evolution -- destined to disappear -- where Islam, on the other hand, can best be viewed as a terminal cancer -- spreading uncontrollably and sending everything it touches back to the dark ages. Look at Boko Haram's current rampage in Nigeria (translates as "any reading not connected to Islam is a sin" or more commonly "western education is a sin"). Were Islam just a religion, it wouldn't be so bad, but that is simply not the case.
No, actually you couldn't say it. While you are correct that stoning was a punishment for adultery in the old testament, Jesus explicitly canceled the punishment in the New Testament (see John 8:7). But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Only followers of one religion in the world stone people today -- that's Islam, and it's hardly a rare occurrence
But let's say for the sake of argument Christianity was as bad -- it still wouldn't make Islam good. I'm not saying Christianity is good -- it's not. Any irrational ideology is dangerous -- religious or otherwise, but it's beyond stupid to pretend all religions and all cultures are equally humane or civilized just because we desire it to be so -- because it's much more palatable to swallow. The truth is Islam is an irredeemably barbaric political, legal, and religious system that deserves no respect and deserves no place in the modern world. I'll never understand why so many Atheists call Christianity without bothering to give the same treatment to Islam. And before you ask -- no -- i'm not a Christian.
Do yourself a favor, familiarize yourself with abrogation in Islam, then read the last chapter written in the Qur'an (sura 9). Then try and tell me violent Muslims misinterpret their religion. The reason so many mainstream Muslims are peaceful is precisely because they ignore the core teachings of their religion. Muhammad was a warlord cult leader who spread his religion by the sword. Do you really think he was pushing peace and tolerance in his later days? No. That was only in the beginning when Muslims were in the minority.
Say Canada attacks the US, and I join Canada's ministry of propaganda, creating war propaganda promoting the murder of innocent civilians. Say I contact sympathetic Americans and convince them to ... shoot up places like Hassan, or blow stuff up like the Christmas day bomber, or any other of Awlaki's many examples. Now you could argue that all I did was talk, and that I didn't actually do anything directly to kill Americans, but that's like saying the Mafia don is innocent because he doesn't do the killing by his own hand -- merely ordering it. Now normally I could be arrested, but let's say i'm hiding in some Canadian cave somewhere and that's not possible. Does that mean i'm immune from all punishment? Does my status as an american citizen make me immune from any response at all, since to kill me would be unconstitutional? Sorry, but constitutional or not, I would need to be silenced. Awlaki was an admitted terrorist and just because he happened to be American doesn't mean he didn't deserve exactly what he got. I'm not a huge fan of Obama, but in this case, I think he made the right choice.
Bin Ladin was opposed to the Saudi *monarchy*, not the religious aspect of the society governed by Shariah. Nothing about the enforcement of Shariah would change. In fact, it would likely get a lot worse without the secular leaning Monarchy to help moderate things. That's not even mentioning what it would do to the country's relations with the west. A revolution in Saudi Arabia, with today's dependence on oil, would mean an end to modern civilization as we know it. With an inability to ship food cheaply around the world, billions would die. The world economy would collapse. People would turn to their survival instincts and rioting, rape, and murder would be a daily occurrence everywhere. You want democracy in Saudi Arabia? Be careful what you wish for with your pollyanna hippie nonsense.
It's required that all Muslims pray for Muhammad. He publicly refused ("I will not pray for you"). That, among other things, sealed the deal.
Sorry, but it's Islam too. If rape cannot be proven (requiring *four male witnesses* since female testimony is inadmissable) then the accusation of rape then becomes a confession of Zina (unlawful intercourse) on the part of the female victim, the punishment for which is often stoning. You can deny this is the case but this happens all the time in the Middle East. Clearly somebody over there agrees with this interpretation of the Shariah. Christianity has nothing to do with this topic. Let me know when you find a news article of a Christian stoning a woman to death for the crime of being raped.
We could run with what Iran said. We could say "yeah, they hacked into our control systems and stole the drone from over the Afghanistan border. See how dangerous they are!" They lie about us. I see no reason why we shouldn't respond in kind, especially when it fits within their narrative. Stealing one of our drones by such means could even be considered and act of war. Considering everybody is waiting for somebody to make the "first move" here, i'd say it's be a very good think if Iran can be percieved to have made the first act of agression. That way when we blow all their nuclear facilities off the face of the planet we can argue "well, they did it first". How we've been handling the whole situation has been horrible.
Nah. We're more resilient than that. We'd crawl back from the ashes, form a new civilization, and then kill ourselves for good.
What if there is no patch, or if by the time you write one for the latest 0 day(unique strain), billions of people have died?
No. All letting it free would do is to let an exploit into the wild with no patch. What if there is no cure, or it can't be formulated before the disease has run it's course? You really want to risk the lives of billions of people? This isn't information science. The way I see it, this sort of thing needs to be tightly controlled like nukes -- even more so given the projected casualties. Releasing the information would be reckless. Sure, the other guy might figure it out on his own but why give him a head start? There are assholes still struggling to get nukes. Furthermore, not every actor on the world stage is rational. Some believe the sky fairy will save them, or that dying is noble and guarantees a place in paradise. Sure it might be unlikely that such weapons could be used, but do you really think it's such a good idea to bet half the world's population on it?
I, too am shocked at how many people didn't realize this was all done server side -- especially here.
Why would they waste the processing horsepower? It would eat the battery if it was even at all possible. They can do higher quality recognition on their servers anyway. The customer does not need to know where the processing is done as long as "it just works". To the consumer, and even some more technically inclined, it's magic -- and that is the real genius in the way Apple presents it's products. They make people feel like they're somehow in the future, that they're talking to an intelligent phone, that Saint Steve has somehow created artificial life and they get to own a piece of this future for the price of a modest chunk of change and a two year contract.
Yeah, I didn't rtfa. My bad. Mod me down.
When they have a competing product? If people want easier to use content creation, they use flash. Most artists learn, use, and most importantly pay for flash. Why should adobe make html5 more popular when they cannot control it?
It is nearly impossible to perma-brick an iPhone. Sounds like your engineer may be misinformed. Let me guess: you have a 3gs, you flashed on the iPad baseband, and now it's stuck at a recovery mode screen? Here's what you do: create a custom 4.1 firmware image with Pwnagetool or Snowbreeze (default settings should be fine). Make sure you have no overrides to gs.apple.com in your hosts file (apple is still as of writing signing 4.1 on the 3Gs). If you have shsh blobs saved, you'll have more restore options, but 4.1 is at the moment always a safe bet. Then put your device in "Pwned DFU mode" using a tool such as iReb (on a mac, it's easiest to use redsn0w). After you've done this, shift (or option) click the restore button in iTunes and select the custom firmware image you've made. Unless there is a hardware issue, you should have no problem restoring. If you have 3g, the process is the same, but you should create an image for 4.2.1 (apple is still signing this).
And with anything but a Nexus, you're lucky if you get a single firmware upgrade -- and even if there are custom roms floating around it's very unlikely you'll end up with full driver support. WiFi won't work, or GPS won't work, or GPU performance will be poor, or you'll lose features. That's not a worry with IOS. As you've pointed out, 3 years of support is pretty much the norm, which is world better than your *average* android phone (we're not talking about developer phones here).
So everybody has to keep a constant log of everywhere they go to avoid a ridiculous search? If a person is doing nothing wrong, they should not be stopped. This is unreasonable and an invasion of privacy. This has no real effect on security (as you've pointed out, those who have something to hide can go around). This is government out of control. Have you flown anywhere recently? Do you really want one of those rude, intrusive little bureaucratic pricks to pull you over when you're doing nothing wrong and go through all your stuff, including private stuff. Now they can even download the contents of your cell phone. Maybe you took some photos / videos with somebody close to you and you don't want gone through by some total stranger who, for all you know could be getting a hard on. You sure this law is a good idea?
Is it a 16xx Error? Try putting it into DFU and restoring with another computer, use another USB port, or rebooting.
Generally the fundamentalist refrain is that each person has an individual plan for their lives and it's necessary some things happen for God's larger plan. It's an attempt to explain the random, the unjust, the horiffic -- the paradox you point out. The point of getting people to accept a paradox -- accept the illogical -- is to shut down or short circuit logic. You believe you know something. You don't know for a fact. You believe. And belief overrides all. You come to believe that the mere act of questioning your beliefs might result in death or worse -- eternal torment in some genocidal vision of a supposedly benevolent and just god.
You believe because the terror of nothingness after death and no justice in the universe is the alternative. Belief is a defense mechanism against that fear and the consequences of such knowledge. You believe because others around you believe. You believe because you've been brought up from a very early age to believe. There are many reasons we believe the irrational (and it's not just religion). There is no reason or logic in it. Religions are nothing but the remnants of long defunct cults who have lost their leaders and over the span of time have been granted elevated status in society.