Lots of reasons. If you're somewhere where you're not supposed to be -- for instance, you told your wife that you're working late, but you're instead drinking suds with your pals, or in a hotel room with your secretary, you may not want to admit it...
Or, if the police are remarkably ineffective in your area (stubborn witnesses generally not making it to trial, for instance), you may not want anyone to know. Sure, it'd be for the cause of justice, but many folks wouldn't casually toss away their life for that if they don't think it'll make a long-term impact.
The assertion being tripped would, however, be a useful diagnostic if you prefer to know when something is being freed twice. For instance, if there exist two separate pointers to an object, which itself contains a pointer that gets set to NULL when freed, a well-placed assertion would tell you if you've got a logical error -- trying to deallocate a dangling pointer, basically.
Simply clearing it to NULL means that such won't be found, which may hide related errors. Letting it be freed twice would simply be sloppy and asking for trouble.
You could write a script using 'nm' and 'grep' -- once you identify some functions in zlib. If they have a common prefix, search on that.
Of course, if you stripped the symbols out of the binaries, then the function names won't be there for nm to find and you're quite screwed -- basically you'd have to go grab the sources again and scan the Makefiles and perhaps the code itself for zlib references.
If memory serves, Bomber Harris's Bomber Command killed many more in the Dresden firebombing, and arguably for far less actual gain. Keegan commented to the effect that Bomber Command's rationale may have been a classist approach -- that the proles were weak and easily broken, and that killing them in large numbers was allegedly a good way to do that.
The US is currently working with the Yemeni government and assisting the Yemeni crackdown on al-Qaeda members; they're not really a candidate for "regime change" unless it turns out that they're really yanking our chain. Likewise, while their are US forces deployed in the Philippines, and will be some in Georgia, those are both by invitation, and both are training missions -- the host government's forces will be doing the actual combat.
Hm, the thermobarics. Afghanistan is the first place where the US has used them -- or at least, these particular versions -- if memory serves. Guess we'll find out how well they've done in not that long. *shrug*
Part of that hatred is incompatible doctrines. I don't think that bin Laden could have been bought off, for instance, and probably numerous of his followers -- the ones who haven't decided to become ex-Taliban and ex-al-Qaeda, but still resist -- share his particular vision. Which, irritatingly enough, includes the instigation of worldwide religious war and the annihilation of the infidels. Hm. Oh, and they wanted to retain Islamic culture, harking back to hundreds of years of tradition, instead of admitting that progress could ever be good.
Likewise, Somalia. The UN sent a *lot* of aid into Somalia... and the aid merely ended up being a tool of the warlords. Now, unless you're suggesting that the US saddle up and go on a worldwide spree of crushing warlords, tyrants and brigands, and forcibly rebuilding nations to have democratic systems -- which many members of the UN would *not* appreciate, since they'd be on the hit list -- you're going to have conflicts and hostiles, and you're not going to be able to please everybody.
Hell, you have people -- large numbers of them -- who still believe that Arabs were the victims on 9/11, that they were set up by Mossad and the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and that bin Laden and the Taliban are completely innocent. Oh, and that Israel basically rules the world, and that's why the so-superior Islamic religion hasn't brought prosperity to the Arabs. Would you suggest taking over their school systems and media, as well?
If you were in Europe, you should be thankful for the existence of nuclear weapons. The Warsaw Pact's conventional forces were of highly nontrivial strength, and they had the advantage of not having to cross an ocean if push came to shove.
Of course, it helped that the Soviets appreciated the power of nuclear weapons, and did not relish being annihilated; neither did the United States, hence the success of MAD doctrine. But most governments share a healthy regard for their own well-being, if not necessarily for that of their subjects.
The point of military operations is to achieve a political goal -- well, at least when there are reasonably stable political systems in charge. That may or may not involve obliterating an enemy's military, industrial base, or political will. Certainly, the NVA and Viet Cong were fully aware that they were not, militarily speaking, defeating the US -- but that wasn't their objective.
Nor was it the US/UN objective in Desert Storm; what was left of the Iraqi military was permitted to survive as the objective of liberating Kuwait had been achieved. The Congressional Democrats had already stated that the war was a bad idea in the first place, and the other nations in the UN had limited the mandate to Kuwait, not permitting the removal of Hussein.
But when it comes to deterrence, it's helpful if your deterrence does NOT include weakness like insisting on not damaging major cities.
They're contingency plans only. And, as others have noted, it serves the purpose of warning nations that massive hostile activity will not be tolerated, which is quite reasonable. All the nuclear weapons in the world are quite useless as a deterrent if the opponent believes that you're weak-willed, as Kruschev thought of Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs incident, and as bin Laden probably thought of after eight years of Clinton and naught but occasional Tomahawk pin-pricks.
Individual terrorists may be suicidal -- although leaders generally are not. Osama bin Laden, for instance, apparently chose to save his own hide rather than stay and fight.
Governments, however, rarely are suicidal in the least, and they tend to be far more easy to locate. For instance, military bases tend to be immobile.
Saddam Hussein is not a religious fanatic. He's quite pragmatic, actually, as he knows that *his* most favorable outcome comes from pleasing Russia and France with the potential for economic favoritism and getting those two, plus the other Arab nations, to oppose any further actions against them. If he were a fanatic, he'd probably already be dead.
No, the United States does not recognize Taiwan as a separate nation. US policy on the matter has, in fact, been rather odd for quite some time.
a) The US considers Taiwan as part of China. Very, very few countries recognize Taiwan as a country, partly because China is quite willing to leverage its economic power to punish nations which would otherwise do so. b) The US maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing not Taipei. c) The US does NOT advocate Taiwanese independence. d) Yet, the US also not only warns against the PRC using military force versus what the US says is part of the PRC, but under US law is obligated to provide the means to *defend* one piece of the PRC against the rest.
It's quite bizarre, but it's aimed at trying to push eventual reconcilliation and, presumably, unification under a democratic government. Thus, we diplomatically ignore the practical reality that neither side rules the other.
...if you ignore the interconnect issues, of course. Which, for spatial situations, you generally *can't* -- I'd think that the dynamics would involve a whole horde of PDEs at different points in space, each of which needs to do a LOT of communication with its neighbors every iteration. That's the sort of thing that needs real computers with real bandwidth, not desktop toys with DSL connections.
Not to mention that you'd be distributing the software to every country on Earth that's interested in nuclear weapons simulation, which would be STUPID.
It's a warning against complacency, hubris and an excessively backwards-looking attitude.
1 -- At some point, they pretty much decided that they had everything they needed, refusing forms of payment except silver... at least, until the British successfully created a demand for opium.
2 -- Part of that was a belief that they were better than everybody else, reinforced by a) bad conception of the world and other civillizations, and b) their immediate neighbors being at a similar or worse level, development-wise.
3 -- Combine all that with the rise of Kung Fu-Tze's stability-minded philosophy and a Civil Service whose examinations were largely based on classics and traditions instead of practicals and analytical thinking, and you get a recipe for stagnation on a national scale.
Good god. Unless those are highly automatable (e.g. select a BUNCH of files to send via AIM with a shift-click or similar mechanism; I've never used AIM, so I wouldn't know how their file transfer system works), the sheer *pain* of doing that -- eek.
You'd think that if Greene 'specially asked for *web* downloads, that they'd write some script to use the search engines and grab anything that looked like an.mp3 or.ogg (if that's the typical extension for Ogg Vorbis) URL.
Ah. That might explain the "NPR is leftist" sentiment I've sometimes seen on this forum -- I pretty much only listen to their morning report when waking up, instead of their more artsy programs.
He's saying that CNN is on the left compared to most Americans, not that the United States is on the left.
Incidentally, you did notice that Bush gave the Taliban an out, right? Diplomatic recognition, plus continuation of humanitarian aid (see the Green Book) and, for all practical purposes, forgiveness (complete lack of retribution to Taliban figures) in exchange for turning over their al-Qaeda "guests". It's a better deal than most criminal conspirators get offered.
The difficulty with a signature-based system is that it favors a) incumbents, since they have the name recognition and existing machinery, b) ideologues with highly motivated power bases, c) the independently wealthy who can run on their own. A newcomer who's insufficiently fiery (or bizarre) to energize people might have trouble getting name recognition.
The current matching-funds system isn't particularly great (it's still tough on newcomers) but they do have some chance at least. Of course, one might have separate rules for newcomers and for those running against the wealthy... hrm. I wonder if those would pass Constitutional muster.
Hmmmmm. I seem to remember that the RIAA was once investigated for price-fixing with regards to CDs, but I don't recall the results.
With financing... unless you can show explicit bribery, rather than merely "we're contributing to your campaign because we like your record, or we hate your opponents", or another violation of campaign laws like exceeding hard money contribution limits via the use of straw donors... not really.
The individual limit is $1000 per donator per candidate per election cycle. There's also a total limit per election cycle, if memory serves. It doesn't matter that much if you're Bill Gates or not, however, if you're looking mostly at your own representatives (1 Fed rep, 2 state senators, and 1 Pres.).
It does matter to a certain degree in that if you don't have that much discretionary spending, you may not fill the limit... but the limit is not THAT high(*). Somebody who is upper-middle-class could probably meet contribute on a fairly regular basis if he put politics at a high priority, compared to eating out less, being more discriminating with music and movies, and so forth. Or toys, like graphics cards (how much do the latest nVidia ones cost?) and digital cameras (which go into the thousands...).
(*) The current version of McCain-Feingold will double it, to compensate for the complete removal of soft money donations to national political parties.
Fox News Channel does claim to be even-handed, if memory serves, even while some of their commentators were were all-Condit-all-the-time (I mean, *extreme* overkill clearly trying to nail him. Sure, he deserved to be nailed, but beyond his constituents and those who knew Levy, was it really that important? *shrug*)
On the other hand, their broadcast program (Fox News Sunday) is actually pretty decent. Their interviewers seem capable of noticing dodgy, uninformative answers and asking direct questions, even of GOPers like Rumsfeld or Lott. Likewise, one week they might interview an Israeli official, the next a Palestinian Authority spokeswoman.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of reasons. If you're somewhere where you're not supposed to be -- for instance, you told your wife that you're working late, but you're instead drinking suds with your pals, or in a hotel room with your secretary, you may not want to admit it...
Or, if the police are remarkably ineffective in your area (stubborn witnesses generally not making it to trial, for instance), you may not want anyone to know. Sure, it'd be for the cause of justice, but many folks wouldn't casually toss away their life for that if they don't think it'll make a long-term impact.
The assertion being tripped would, however, be a useful diagnostic if you prefer to know when something is being freed twice. For instance, if there exist two separate pointers to an object, which itself contains a pointer that gets set to NULL when freed, a well-placed assertion would tell you if you've got a logical error -- trying to deallocate a dangling pointer, basically.
Simply clearing it to NULL means that such won't be found, which may hide related errors. Letting it be freed twice would simply be sloppy and asking for trouble.
You could write a script using 'nm' and 'grep' -- once you identify some functions in zlib. If they have a common prefix, search on that.
Of course, if you stripped the symbols out of the binaries, then the function names won't be there for nm to find and you're quite screwed -- basically you'd have to go grab the sources again and scan the Makefiles and perhaps the code itself for zlib references.
:::insert image of orcs chanting:
"Where there's a well, there's a way..."
If memory serves, Bomber Harris's Bomber Command killed many more in the Dresden firebombing, and arguably for far less actual gain. Keegan commented to the effect that Bomber Command's rationale may have been a classist approach -- that the proles were weak and easily broken, and that killing them in large numbers was allegedly a good way to do that.
The US is currently working with the Yemeni government and assisting the Yemeni crackdown on al-Qaeda members; they're not really a candidate for "regime change" unless it turns out that they're really yanking our chain. Likewise, while their are US forces deployed in the Philippines, and will be some in Georgia, those are both by invitation, and both are training missions -- the host government's forces will be doing the actual combat.
Hm, the thermobarics. Afghanistan is the first place where the US has used them -- or at least, these particular versions -- if memory serves. Guess we'll find out how well they've done in not that long. *shrug*
Part of that hatred is incompatible doctrines. I don't think that bin Laden could have been bought off, for instance, and probably numerous of his followers -- the ones who haven't decided to become ex-Taliban and ex-al-Qaeda, but still resist -- share his particular vision. Which, irritatingly enough, includes the instigation of worldwide religious war and the annihilation of the infidels. Hm. Oh, and they wanted to retain Islamic culture, harking back to hundreds of years of tradition, instead of admitting that progress could ever be good.
Likewise, Somalia. The UN sent a *lot* of aid into Somalia... and the aid merely ended up being a tool of the warlords. Now, unless you're suggesting that the US saddle up and go on a worldwide spree of crushing warlords, tyrants and brigands, and forcibly rebuilding nations to have democratic systems -- which many members of the UN would *not* appreciate, since they'd be on the hit list -- you're going to have conflicts and hostiles, and you're not going to be able to please everybody.
Hell, you have people -- large numbers of them -- who still believe that Arabs were the victims on 9/11, that they were set up by Mossad and the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and that bin Laden and the Taliban are completely innocent. Oh, and that Israel basically rules the world, and that's why the so-superior Islamic religion hasn't brought prosperity to the Arabs. Would you suggest taking over their school systems and media, as well?
How much effect do incendiaries have on underground bunker complexes compared to nuclear weapons?
Were you alive during the Cold War?
If you were in Europe, you should be thankful for the existence of nuclear weapons. The Warsaw Pact's conventional forces were of highly nontrivial strength, and they had the advantage of not having to cross an ocean if push came to shove.
Of course, it helped that the Soviets appreciated the power of nuclear weapons, and did not relish being annihilated; neither did the United States, hence the success of MAD doctrine. But most governments share a healthy regard for their own well-being, if not necessarily for that of their subjects.
The point of military operations is to achieve a political goal -- well, at least when there are reasonably stable political systems in charge. That may or may not involve obliterating an enemy's military, industrial base, or political will. Certainly, the NVA and Viet Cong were fully aware that they were not, militarily speaking, defeating the US -- but that wasn't their objective.
Nor was it the US/UN objective in Desert Storm; what was left of the Iraqi military was permitted to survive as the objective of liberating Kuwait had been achieved. The Congressional Democrats had already stated that the war was a bad idea in the first place, and the other nations in the UN had limited the mandate to Kuwait, not permitting the removal of Hussein.
But when it comes to deterrence, it's helpful if your deterrence does NOT include weakness like insisting on not damaging major cities.
They're contingency plans only. And, as others have noted, it serves the purpose of warning nations that massive hostile activity will not be tolerated, which is quite reasonable. All the nuclear weapons in the world are quite useless as a deterrent if the opponent believes that you're weak-willed, as Kruschev thought of Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs incident, and as bin Laden probably thought of after eight years of Clinton and naught but occasional Tomahawk pin-pricks.
Individual terrorists may be suicidal -- although leaders generally are not. Osama bin Laden, for instance, apparently chose to save his own hide rather than stay and fight.
Governments, however, rarely are suicidal in the least, and they tend to be far more easy to locate. For instance, military bases tend to be immobile.
Saddam Hussein is not a religious fanatic. He's quite pragmatic, actually, as he knows that *his* most favorable outcome comes from pleasing Russia and France with the potential for economic favoritism and getting those two, plus the other Arab nations, to oppose any further actions against them. If he were a fanatic, he'd probably already be dead.
No, the United States does not recognize Taiwan as a separate nation. US policy on the matter has, in fact, been rather odd for quite some time.
a) The US considers Taiwan as part of China. Very, very few countries recognize Taiwan as a country, partly because China is quite willing to leverage its economic power to punish nations which would otherwise do so.
b) The US maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing not Taipei.
c) The US does NOT advocate Taiwanese independence.
d) Yet, the US also not only warns against the PRC using military force versus what the US says is part of the PRC, but under US law is obligated to provide the means to *defend* one piece of the PRC against the rest.
It's quite bizarre, but it's aimed at trying to push eventual reconcilliation and, presumably, unification under a democratic government. Thus, we diplomatically ignore the practical reality that neither side rules the other.
...if you ignore the interconnect issues, of course. Which, for spatial situations, you generally *can't* -- I'd think that the dynamics would involve a whole horde of PDEs at different points in space, each of which needs to do a LOT of communication with its neighbors every iteration. That's the sort of thing that needs real computers with real bandwidth, not desktop toys with DSL connections.
Not to mention that you'd be distributing the software to every country on Earth that's interested in nuclear weapons simulation, which would be STUPID.
It's a warning against complacency, hubris and an excessively backwards-looking attitude.
1 -- At some point, they pretty much decided that they had everything they needed, refusing forms of payment except silver... at least, until the British successfully created a demand for opium.
2 -- Part of that was a belief that they were better than everybody else, reinforced by a) bad conception of the world and other civillizations, and b) their immediate neighbors being at a similar or worse level, development-wise.
3 -- Combine all that with the rise of Kung Fu-Tze's stability-minded philosophy and a Civil Service whose examinations were largely based on classics and traditions instead of practicals and analytical thinking, and you get a recipe for stagnation on a national scale.
Ah, that makes more sense than requiring thousands of clicks. Danke.
But... through instant messages?
.mp3 or .ogg (if that's the typical extension for Ogg Vorbis) URL.
Good god. Unless those are highly automatable (e.g. select a BUNCH of files to send via AIM with a shift-click or similar mechanism; I've never used AIM, so I wouldn't know how their file transfer system works), the sheer *pain* of doing that -- eek.
You'd think that if Greene 'specially asked for *web* downloads, that they'd write some script to use the search engines and grab anything that looked like an
Ah. That might explain the "NPR is leftist" sentiment I've sometimes seen on this forum -- I pretty much only listen to their morning report when waking up, instead of their more artsy programs.
He's saying that CNN is on the left compared to most Americans, not that the United States is on the left.
Incidentally, you did notice that Bush gave the Taliban an out, right? Diplomatic recognition, plus continuation of humanitarian aid (see the Green Book) and, for all practical purposes, forgiveness (complete lack of retribution to Taliban figures) in exchange for turning over their al-Qaeda "guests". It's a better deal than most criminal conspirators get offered.
The difficulty with a signature-based system is that it favors a) incumbents, since they have the name recognition and existing machinery, b) ideologues with highly motivated power bases, c) the independently wealthy who can run on their own. A newcomer who's insufficiently fiery (or bizarre) to energize people might have trouble getting name recognition.
The current matching-funds system isn't particularly great (it's still tough on newcomers) but they do have some chance at least. Of course, one might have separate rules for newcomers and for those running against the wealthy... hrm. I wonder if those would pass Constitutional muster.
Hmmmmm. I seem to remember that the RIAA was once investigated for price-fixing with regards to CDs, but I don't recall the results.
With financing... unless you can show explicit bribery, rather than merely "we're contributing to your campaign because we like your record, or we hate your opponents", or another violation of campaign laws like exceeding hard money contribution limits via the use of straw donors... not really.
The individual limit is $1000 per donator per candidate per election cycle. There's also a total limit per election cycle, if memory serves. It doesn't matter that much if you're Bill Gates or not, however, if you're looking mostly at your own representatives (1 Fed rep, 2 state senators, and 1 Pres.).
It does matter to a certain degree in that if you don't have that much discretionary spending, you may not fill the limit... but the limit is not THAT high(*). Somebody who is upper-middle-class could probably meet contribute on a fairly regular basis if he put politics at a high priority, compared to eating out less, being more discriminating with music and movies, and so forth. Or toys, like graphics cards (how much do the latest nVidia ones cost?) and digital cameras (which go into the thousands...).
(*) The current version of McCain-Feingold will double it, to compensate for the complete removal of soft money donations to national political parties.
Fox News Channel does claim to be even-handed, if memory serves, even while some of their commentators were were all-Condit-all-the-time (I mean, *extreme* overkill clearly trying to nail him. Sure, he deserved to be nailed, but beyond his constituents and those who knew Levy, was it really that important? *shrug*)
On the other hand, their broadcast program (Fox News Sunday) is actually pretty decent. Their interviewers seem capable of noticing dodgy, uninformative answers and asking direct questions, even of GOPers like Rumsfeld or Lott. Likewise, one week they might interview an Israeli official, the next a Palestinian Authority spokeswoman.