There's no logistical problem importing food into Singapore. The issue is political. Malaysia is a Muslim country dominated by Malay people; Singapore is a secular country whose population is 74% Chinese. There is significant potential for trouble, and at times there actually has been. Singapore was once part of Malaysia and seceded because its people were poorly treated by the dominant Malay Muslims. Singapore is therefore quite interested in avoiding dependence on Malaysia. Similar considerations apply to Indonesia.
The Romans and the Mongols generally operated on different models. The Mongol approach was to overcome resistance by terror. In the absence of some prior dispute, when they came to a city they asked that it submit to them. If it did not, and they succeeded in capturing it, as they usually did, they were brutal: they would generally kill all of the men of military age and the elderly. Younger women and children would often be enslaved and if not, killed. The city would be looted. If, however, the city capitulated, they were actually pretty nice. They would take control but otherwise largely leave things as they were.
The Mongols were tough and prepared to be brutal, but they were not mere bandits, and they were not a mob. The Mongol Empire was well organized, with an excellent courier system and the rule of law. Unlike contemporary European countries, they were religiously tolerant (except for the Ilkhans, in Persia, after 1295 when they converted to Islam.) The Mongol legal code, the Yassa, was, from what survives of it, pretty reasonable for its time.
Given what you've said about who is doing the porting, I wonder if there is a difference in the extent to which Unix ways of doing things are preserved. As a hard-core Unix person who prefers the command-line for most things, I am sometimes frustrated by the extent to which GNU/Linux has come to cater to people coming from MS Windows in doing more and more with the GUI and and moving away from the Unix way of doing things. Probably the worst thing is the way programs with a GUI do not pay attention to the working directory. I wonder if PC-BSD would be more to the liking of people like me?
There was a funny story in the news ten years ago or so about someone from New Mexico who wrote to a federal agency, Social Security, I think, and received the reply that they did not deal with people living in Mexico!
No, RMS does not advocate necrophilia. He says that with the consent of the deceased (which is rarely if ever the case in actual prosecutions) he doesn't see that it should be illegal. There's a big difference between advocating something and thinking that it shouldn't be a crime.
Well, no. "ethnic cleansing" refers to expulsion and/or killing.
In any case, the convention that you cite is inapplicable because Judea and Samaria are not "occupied". Occupation in international law refers to the control by one state of territory belonging to another. Even when Israel fully controlled Judea and Samaria, there was no occupation because Judea and Samaria were not part of any state. Legally, since the Arabs rejected the 1948 partition, Judea and Samaria are unresolved Mandate territory and the governing legislation is that of the Mandate, under which Jews are free to settle and live anywhere in the Mandate. Furthermore, when the Arabs captured Judea and Samaria, they killed or expelled all of the long-standing Jewish population. Jews are perfectly entitled, legally and morally, to return. You may wish to note that the Arab policy of ethnic cleansing predates the creation of Israel. In 1923, when two thirds of the Palestine Mandate was given to the Arabs to form the Kingdom of Jordan, all of the resident Jews were expelled. It has since been illegal under Jordanian law for Jews to live in Jordan.
At present, there is an additional problem with claiming that Judea and Samaria are "occupied" since Israel has relinquished control of all but "Area C", which is a very small fraction of the area. The Palestinian Authority controls the security forces, education, utilities, medical care, etc. Israeli "settlements" occupy less than 1% of the land and have not displaced any Arabs.
Nonsense. Jerusalem has had a Jewish plurality since statistics became available, which is 1860. The only ethnic cleansing that has taken place in modern times in Jerusalem was in 1948 when the Arab Legion captured the eastern portion of the city, which includes the Jewish Quarter, and expelled all of the surviving Jews, after which it systematically destroyed all but one of the more than 50 synagogues. Since the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967, so-called Jewish "settlement" has consisted merely of the reclamation of occupied Jewish property. The Arab population of Jerusalem has not been expelled. Evictions take place only by court order and only in cases where Arabs have been squatting on illegally seized Jewish property. Polls by neutral organizations consistently show that the Arab population of the eastern part of Jerusalem prefers Israeli rule to becoming part of a Palestinian Arab state. Indeed, a large minority say that if the eastern part of Jerusalem were to become part of a Palestinian Arab state, given the opportunity they would move to remain in Israel.
As for the foundation of Israel resting on systematic ethnic cleansing, again you're wrong. Israel did not expel the Arabs. The evidence is overwhelming that the great majority of Arabs who left did so voluntarily or under pressure from other Arabs, to make way for the invading Arab armies. As you should know, a large Arab population remained in Israel and received full citizenship. Israel even readmitted 100,000 of the Arabs who left. Mahmoud Abbas himself wrote in March , 1976 in Falastin el-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
You really should learn some actual history rather than relying on bigoted Arab propaganda.
So because of your objection to ethnic cleansing and brutal racism you oppose investment in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya?
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), an organization known for both efficiency and heroism. They provide medical care where it is badly needed, including war zones.
Correction: it happened a few centuries after the establishment of Islam. The flourishing of science in Islam was fairly brief and roughly coincides with the period of strong Mu'tazilite influence beginning about 850CE and ending a couple of centuries later. When the opposing Asharites came to prominence, science and philosophy fell into decline. The problem with the Asharite view is that they believe that everything that happens is due to the direct action of god and that it is impossible to obtain real knowledge other than by revelation. Strictly speaking, they believe that when a stone is dropped from a height the reason it falls to the ground is not gravity but the divine will, not the divine will that created a universe in which the law of gravity holds but the divine will that directly caused the stone to fall. Scientific laws on this view are just descriptions of the way god usually does things. This position is devastating to any kind of rational thought. Unfortunately, it is the overwhelmingly dominant view of Sunni Muslims and held to a lesser extent by Shi'a.
Civil libertarians do and have objected to this Thai law, but objections to censorship of commentary on Islam are more widespread and vehement because censorship of discussion of Islam is a much greater problem: (a) Thailand is one small country; there are 51 countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; (b) this law is enforced only within Thailand while Muslims attempt to enforce censorship everywhere; (c) the penalties in Thailand are relatively modest while Muslims call for the death of critics and sometimes actually murder them; (d) the Thai monarchy has little importance outside of Thailand so most people in the world have nothing to say about it while Islam has great influence and from the point of view of many people around the world is a nefarious influence deserving of criticism.
This is a misconception. When properly done, slashing the neck results in immediate loss of consciousness due to the drop in blood pressure in the brain. Death follows within seconds. Proper kosher slaughter is not a matter of slowly sawing away at the neck like you see in videos of Muslim terrorists murdering hostages. I have myself had to kill a crippled deer with a knife, which was a little harder and less efficient since it was only a relatively small hunting knife. Nonetheless, as soon as the carotid arteries were cut the deer's head dropped and struggling ceased.
That is a dubious ex post facto rationalization for the rules of halal slaughter. Actually, they probably have the same origin as the Jewish rules of shehita, and in neither case are they due to the belief that a carcass drained of blood spoils less quickly than otherwise. Judaism has a fairly clear taboo on blood, which underlies both the rules governing slaughter and the rules surrounding menstruation. Islam appears either to have continued ancient Semitic taboos of the same sort or to have adopted them from Judaism. (It's hard to say because we don't know very much about pre-Islamic Arab life.)
Because Jews are not of the view that those prophecies were fulfilled, and for that matter, do not agree with Christians as to what the prophecies mean.
For those who don't know the US legal system, in general criminal law is a state matter. Federal criminal applies only in certain areas, such as crimes committed on federal property (e.g. in a national park), against federal officials, by members of the armed forces, involving interstate commerce, espionage, treason, counterfeiting, and so forth. Most ordinary crimes - murders, assaults, thefts, etc. - are purely state matters. All that the federal prosecutor said in this case was: "No, there isn't any federal crime here." The state prosecutor almost certainly already knew that and was only checking just in case some provision of federal law that he didn' tknow about provided a way around the state statute of limitations.
Another consideration is whether the charge is actually copyright infringement. I've noticed that the press, like much of the general public, doesn't understand the different kinds of intellectual property. The information in question might, for example, be considered a trade secret.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no logistical problem importing food into Singapore. The issue is political. Malaysia is a Muslim country dominated by Malay people; Singapore is a secular country whose population is 74% Chinese. There is significant potential for trouble, and at times there actually has been. Singapore was once part of Malaysia and seceded because its people were poorly treated by the dominant Malay Muslims. Singapore is therefore quite interested in avoiding dependence on Malaysia. Similar considerations apply to Indonesia.
Here's an example of the tools used by the IDF: MATADOR.
I found that claim strange too. I don't believe it. I have kept Chinese dried fish more than three years and used it without any problem.
Coelocanths are Creationists?
The Romans and the Mongols generally operated on different models. The Mongol approach was to overcome resistance by terror. In the absence of some prior dispute, when they came to a city they asked that it submit to them. If it did not, and they succeeded in capturing it, as they usually did, they were brutal: they would generally kill all of the men of military age and the elderly. Younger women and children would often be enslaved and if not, killed. The city would be looted. If, however, the city capitulated, they were actually pretty nice. They would take control but otherwise largely leave things as they were.
The Mongols were tough and prepared to be brutal, but they were not mere bandits, and they were not a mob. The Mongol Empire was well organized, with an excellent courier system and the rule of law. Unlike contemporary European countries, they were religiously tolerant (except for the Ilkhans, in Persia, after 1295 when they converted to Islam.) The Mongol legal code, the Yassa, was, from what survives of it, pretty reasonable for its time.
I make a lot of diagrams using PIC (part of GNU groff).
Given what you've said about who is doing the porting, I wonder if there is a difference in the extent to which Unix ways of doing things are preserved. As a hard-core Unix person who prefers the command-line for most things, I am sometimes frustrated by the extent to which GNU/Linux has come to cater to people coming from MS Windows in doing more and more with the GUI and and moving away from the Unix way of doing things. Probably the worst thing is the way programs with a GUI do not pay attention to the working directory. I wonder if PC-BSD would be more to the liking of people like me?
So they're worried that terrorists will take over a train and crash it into the Hancock Tower or the Prudential Building?
There was a funny story in the news ten years ago or so about someone from New Mexico who wrote to a federal agency, Social Security, I think, and received the reply that they did not deal with people living in Mexico!
No, RMS does not advocate necrophilia. He says that with the consent of the deceased (which is rarely if ever the case in actual prosecutions) he doesn't see that it should be illegal. There's a big difference between advocating something and thinking that it shouldn't be a crime.
In any case, the convention that you cite is inapplicable because Judea and Samaria are not "occupied". Occupation in international law refers to the control by one state of territory belonging to another. Even when Israel fully controlled Judea and Samaria, there was no occupation because Judea and Samaria were not part of any state. Legally, since the Arabs rejected the 1948 partition, Judea and Samaria are unresolved Mandate territory and the governing legislation is that of the Mandate, under which Jews are free to settle and live anywhere in the Mandate. Furthermore, when the Arabs captured Judea and Samaria, they killed or expelled all of the long-standing Jewish population. Jews are perfectly entitled, legally and morally, to return. You may wish to note that the Arab policy of ethnic cleansing predates the creation of Israel. In 1923, when two thirds of the Palestine Mandate was given to the Arabs to form the Kingdom of Jordan, all of the resident Jews were expelled. It has since been illegal under Jordanian law for Jews to live in Jordan.
At present, there is an additional problem with claiming that Judea and Samaria are "occupied" since Israel has relinquished control of all but "Area C", which is a very small fraction of the area. The Palestinian Authority controls the security forces, education, utilities, medical care, etc. Israeli "settlements" occupy less than 1% of the land and have not displaced any Arabs.
Nonsense. Jerusalem has had a Jewish plurality since statistics became available, which is 1860. The only ethnic cleansing that has taken place in modern times in Jerusalem was in 1948 when the Arab Legion captured the eastern portion of the city, which includes the Jewish Quarter, and expelled all of the surviving Jews, after which it systematically destroyed all but one of the more than 50 synagogues. Since the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967, so-called Jewish "settlement" has consisted merely of the reclamation of occupied Jewish property. The Arab population of Jerusalem has not been expelled. Evictions take place only by court order and only in cases where Arabs have been squatting on illegally seized Jewish property. Polls by neutral organizations consistently show that the Arab population of the eastern part of Jerusalem prefers Israeli rule to becoming part of a Palestinian Arab state. Indeed, a large minority say that if the eastern part of Jerusalem were to become part of a Palestinian Arab state, given the opportunity they would move to remain in Israel. As for the foundation of Israel resting on systematic ethnic cleansing, again you're wrong. Israel did not expel the Arabs. The evidence is overwhelming that the great majority of Arabs who left did so voluntarily or under pressure from other Arabs, to make way for the invading Arab armies. As you should know, a large Arab population remained in Israel and received full citizenship. Israel even readmitted 100,000 of the Arabs who left. Mahmoud Abbas himself wrote in March , 1976 in Falastin el-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live." You really should learn some actual history rather than relying on bigoted Arab propaganda.
So because of your objection to ethnic cleansing and brutal racism you oppose investment in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya?
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), an organization known for both efficiency and heroism. They provide medical care where it is badly needed, including war zones.
Sorry I don't have mod points, but I agree. I'm also an atheist, but I have to say that the Salvation Army does very good work with very low overhead.
If I had mod points, I would be torn between "funny" and "insightful".
I wonder if the worms are any good at terra-forming?
Correction: it happened a few centuries after the establishment of Islam. The flourishing of science in Islam was fairly brief and roughly coincides with the period of strong Mu'tazilite influence beginning about 850CE and ending a couple of centuries later. When the opposing Asharites came to prominence, science and philosophy fell into decline. The problem with the Asharite view is that they believe that everything that happens is due to the direct action of god and that it is impossible to obtain real knowledge other than by revelation. Strictly speaking, they believe that when a stone is dropped from a height the reason it falls to the ground is not gravity but the divine will, not the divine will that created a universe in which the law of gravity holds but the divine will that directly caused the stone to fall. Scientific laws on this view are just descriptions of the way god usually does things. This position is devastating to any kind of rational thought. Unfortunately, it is the overwhelmingly dominant view of Sunni Muslims and held to a lesser extent by Shi'a.
Civil libertarians do and have objected to this Thai law, but objections to censorship of commentary on Islam are more widespread and vehement because censorship of discussion of Islam is a much greater problem: (a) Thailand is one small country; there are 51 countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; (b) this law is enforced only within Thailand while Muslims attempt to enforce censorship everywhere; (c) the penalties in Thailand are relatively modest while Muslims call for the death of critics and sometimes actually murder them; (d) the Thai monarchy has little importance outside of Thailand so most people in the world have nothing to say about it while Islam has great influence and from the point of view of many people around the world is a nefarious influence deserving of criticism.
This is a misconception. When properly done, slashing the neck results in immediate loss of consciousness due to the drop in blood pressure in the brain. Death follows within seconds. Proper kosher slaughter is not a matter of slowly sawing away at the neck like you see in videos of Muslim terrorists murdering hostages. I have myself had to kill a crippled deer with a knife, which was a little harder and less efficient since it was only a relatively small hunting knife. Nonetheless, as soon as the carotid arteries were cut the deer's head dropped and struggling ceased.
That is a dubious ex post facto rationalization for the rules of halal slaughter. Actually, they probably have the same origin as the Jewish rules of shehita, and in neither case are they due to the belief that a carcass drained of blood spoils less quickly than otherwise. Judaism has a fairly clear taboo on blood, which underlies both the rules governing slaughter and the rules surrounding menstruation. Islam appears either to have continued ancient Semitic taboos of the same sort or to have adopted them from Judaism. (It's hard to say because we don't know very much about pre-Islamic Arab life.)
Because Jews are not of the view that those prophecies were fulfilled, and for that matter, do not agree with Christians as to what the prophecies mean.
Copyright infringement is a federal matter, but beating your child for it is not.
For those who don't know the US legal system, in general criminal law is a state matter. Federal criminal applies only in certain areas, such as crimes committed on federal property (e.g. in a national park), against federal officials, by members of the armed forces, involving interstate commerce, espionage, treason, counterfeiting, and so forth. Most ordinary crimes - murders, assaults, thefts, etc. - are purely state matters. All that the federal prosecutor said in this case was: "No, there isn't any federal crime here." The state prosecutor almost certainly already knew that and was only checking just in case some provision of federal law that he didn' tknow about provided a way around the state statute of limitations.
Another consideration is whether the charge is actually copyright infringement. I've noticed that the press, like much of the general public, doesn't understand the different kinds of intellectual property. The information in question might, for example, be considered a trade secret.