"But they don't have a mind for policy and no one chose them to choose it."
I assure you very few politicians have a "mind for policy" either especially when it comes to space, science and engineering.
How about let Mike Griffin make the decisions since he is in charge of the agency, he should be held responsibile for success and failure, and that means he should have the power and money so that he has a chance to succeed. From the stuff I've read he seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders, and is a VAST improvement over O'Keefe who was both gutless and clueless. NASA desperately needs one person with some smarts, guts and vision setting one direction and also someone will to make some deep and painful cuts to get NASA on a course that isn't broken, which the current one surely is, and get rid of all the dead wood and dead weight.
If you let Congressman set the policy their #1 priority is to turn NASA in to a jobs program to create jobs in their districts. Costs balloon, nothing gets done, reference Shuttle and ISS. That is all our government does anymore, churn out pork to create jobs and line pockets.
At one point there were 6,000 people directly employed full time just on the Shuttle not counting contractors making parts. The Shuttle has over its life averaged $1.3 billion per launch far in excess of what was advertized.
Congressman with big shuttle and ISS pork, especially Florida and Texas, are already making threats Griffin's way if he tries to cut back jobs on the the shuttle and ISS to free money for CEV and beyond.
Politicians need maybe need to set the target, and insure adequate funds for the long haul and then get completely out of the way for the execution.
The answer to 90% of this is Dell isn't in the OS business. They aren't going to develop an OS, test it, support it, fix the bugs in it, etc. They assemble hardware as cheaply as possible and slap someone elses OS on it. They want an OS that doesn't require a geek to tweak it, that has lots of application support and that everyone knows how to use and support.
" both RH9 (used as desktop) and Debian Stable"
You missed the point, they usually work but if you are running a KDE app on a GNOME desktop it doesn't fit and you are running two huge sets of api's that are mostly duplicative in what they do and if the admin is a GNOME biggot the KDE stuff wont be there at all and vice versa.
Running is also not the same as running consistently, like standard accelerator conventions, menu layout, cut and paste, drag and drop, especially beyond just text, etc. If you use just KDE apps everything is consistent like that. Then run OpenOffice and Firebird. They look out of place, they load like a 100 MB of different UI libraries, and they don't interoperate well. Geeks will rationalize and ignore but it will bug the hell out of an average Windows or OSX user.
"This fragmentation is a natural consequence of the open nature of the system. You can adapt it to different tasks,"
You can rationalize it all you want and this is a strength if your adapting it to widely varied niche tasks. But, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you want to gain marketshare on the desktop. Most people don't want to deal with the decision point between Red Hat, SUSE, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian, KDE and GNOME. Ordinary people simply don't care and they don't want to hear about your rationalization about what each one excels at, they want one OS that excels at everything. These aren't geeks we are talking about, these are people who just want apps that work and don't want to read HOWTO files.
"What do you mean ? SDL seems to work just fine."
Or is it gstreamer, jack, esd, arts, OSS, ALSA and thats just audio.
You would have to use BeOS or better yet develop for it to understand. Its a node based architecture with audio and video nodes, producers and consumers. You can connect together producers and consumers to build advanced apps from simple app nodes.
Whe you creat a new audio source it registers with the OS and volume sliders, mono or stereo, appear in the media preference dialog automaticly. Each slider is labled by app name or audio file name. It is increadibly simple to adjust audio levels up and down for the audio streams you want to hear at the moment.
Look a the level settings in Linux, you find a bunch of cryptic things most of which are useless, or its unbvious what they are, and if you want to turn audio in MP3 up and browser down its either hard, unobvious or impossible.
SDL is a toolkit. BeOS has one coordinated multimedia system every app uses, and uses consistently, and lets audio and video be easily communicated between apps. Its totally slick. Unless you've used BeOS you just wont get the difference. If you have a free partition download the free version and try it, there are free docs on the API's too. Very nice, all C++, consistently designed. To bad they didn't open source it from day one, it would be what we all run today.
"Uhh, as far as I understand most of them are Japenese?"
Uhhh, I think you are thinking about the fabs. I'm talking about the companies that manufacture the expensive and non trivial equipment that goes in to the fabs. My memory is hazy but for example Applied Materials and Novellus. I imgagine IBM is in there too. There are some in Korea, Japan and Taiwan too imagine, though I don't think any fab equipment manufacturers in China yet for some reaosn. I suspect they value their IP and they know if they share it with the Chinese they will clone and steal it. Saying that is not racism or anything, its just a fact. The Chinese are trying to go from nowhere to global economic domination in a few decades and they are cutting every corner they can, and stealing IP everyplace they can find it.
Fab equipment, CPU design and manufacture are some of the few places where America still holds a position. They are not businesses you can just jump in to overnight. There is a lot of intellectual property and expertise required especially for the latest generation. Hopefully someone wont be stupid enough to give it to the Chinese for nothing.
I think the Chinese are mostly buying used fabs that are phased out elsewhere, and sold off cheap, which is why they are 2 generations behind the leading edge.
That a pretty silly number. The amount Microsoft charges for the software they ship on computers, especially the base OS is really low. They make their money because:
A) Software costs next to nothing to ship per unit, after the R&D is paid for.
B) they have very high volume thanks to a monopoly
Yes Dell could slap a free version of Linux on it and save maybe $30-50. If Dell actually cut a deal to License Red Hat or SUSE I'm willing to bet it would end up costing the same or more than Windows.
$30-50 is more significant now that PC prices have dropped so much, but on the laptops everyone prefers these days its still really not much of the cost. Office is more but you seldom have to buy Office from a PC vendor so you can slap OpenOffice on instead.
Trying to make a financial arguement here is silly, switching to a different OS isn't going to save anyone money, it will just go into different pockets.
The fundamental problem is its just a monopoly and one company has complete control of all personal computing. If they do a good job and charge fair prices its not so bad, but if they screw the pooch and start jacking up prices you can't do anything about it until the monopoly is broken.
I can see OSX being a viable alternative now but there you are locked in to both their hardware and software so its a potentially worse monopoly than Wintel unless they open up the IA32 platform.
I guess you could start shipping Linux but there are a few basic problems:
- There are about 100 distros to choose from every one somewhat different. Total nightmare for application developers, end users, and to support
- There are two major desktops and GUI frameworks, and a whole bunch more little ones, again a total nightmare for application developers and to support. Applications written to one still dont integrate with the other. Users hate that. They want everything to behave consistently like OSX. Developer hate that because the want to write and test to one API and have it run everywhere.
- Most people can't fix the stuff that doesn't just work, especially audio, networking, display and printing. Networking is different on every distro. Audio and printing are some better but there are 10 different approaches to each and again for application development audio support is a complete disaster. At this point queue all the people that will say, just use audio API X and you will have no problem, except you will get 10 people saying this and every one of them will substitute a different API for X.
Until Linux stops fragmenting, and focuses on applications and a friendly platform for application development its simply never going to unseat Windows on the desktop and has a great potential to get beat by OSX. Hell I'd take BeOS on the desktop in a lot of ways. BeOS multimedia support, especially audio completly embarrases Linux. After 10 years you would think the Linux world would have got a clue and ported/cloned it because it works, versus Linux multimedia which is a fragmented catastrophe. There are still companies using BeOS for multimedia for example n demanding theatrical productions because it is so well done.
"First of all, they do have some data. They can simulate the models of weapons they had before and make sure the simulations match up with what actually happened in the test. This sort of thing is also useful for things like fusion/fission reactors, and other far out stuff."
If they have good real data then why do you need simulations. If the simulations just match what you already know they don't tell you anything. Simulations are only useful when they tell you something you don't already now, and then you do real world tests to see if they match. When they don't then you figure out why. If you spend year after year doing sims with no real tests the sims have great potential to turn in to fantasy, especially as the nuclear stockpile ages beyond anything thats ever been test fired.
"At the end of the day, it's pure research. There is very little pure research that is not (eventually) worth it."
If they are studying nuclear reactions that would be of value in producing energy maybe but at the stagnant rate of research in nuclear energy i doubt they are used much for that.
Pure research in building better nuclear bombs is pure insanity and will never be "worth it". Nuclear bombs are worthless and everyone knows it now, except maybe the Bush administration. They are weapons you can never use without inviting escalation and total annihaliation. North Korea ever uses one on the U.S. North Korea will be incinerated. They are a last use weapon for madmen.
A. Have good software that does something useful and gives you good answers B. You actually do something something useful with the results
Spending billions to simulate nuclear bombs is a pretty useless waste of money, as are the hundreds or was it thousands of holes they've punched in the Nevada desert and Pacific atolls.
Its a lot like the original poster and Japan building super bridges to no place in particular. Its something the U.S. started doing, cant stop and if the day every comes again when they are useful it will be a bad day for this planet and the life on it.
I'm sure all that computer power is potentially useful but most of them are sitting in classified labs which tends to dramaticly limit their use for peacful purposes.
I guess you missed the point. People these days spend way to much time fiddling with computers for the sake of fiddling with computers and often forget to do anything real with the result, and maybe even have forgotten how to do anything beyond computer simulation.
"The same will be true of the next reusable orbital craft. It will be intensely designed, it will be better than the shuttle in every way, and presumably safer as well."
Actually I think the next shuttle is going to be a capsule, maybe it will be exceptionally well designed but it wont be much different from the ones built 40 years ago. Lockheed wants to build a minime shuttle but everyone is so sick of reusable craft at this point I doubt it has a chance.
Its only 95% compatible because they didn't implement some instructions that are patented by MIPS presumably so they can sell products using them in the U.S. without getting sued and without paying MIPS any royalties.
The Chinese are masters at avoiding the payment of royalties for IP.
The worst problem they have is their fab technology is a couple generations out of date. They are actively seeking suckers... err... fab equipment makers who want to partner with them while they steal.... err.... license their technology.
I get the impression that chip equipment makers are one of the few industries that have seen the peril in partnering with China, turning over all their IP to them, and then being put of business by them. I wonder why other industries weren't so bright.
Problem with the 6000 is that its expensive enough I'd just as soon have a laptop with a bigger screen and keyboard. I guess if you are a serious road warrior or running around an office doing admin work maybe the small form is worth it.
My use for the USB is it would have made it interesting to embed in little projects that need I/O, at that point it would be torn apart and not even a PDA, just a cheap SBC with handy display and keyboard for diag work. Guess I'm not really typical:)
Much of the U.S. fixation goes back to the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996. The U.S. had a bunch of powerful labs full of top scientists whose job in life was to build and test nuclear weapons. This treaty pretty much put them out of business. Clinton distracted them by giving them millions of dollars to build gigantic supercomputers. The goal was to simulate nuclear explosions, predict how the U.S. nuclear stockpile would age and insure it would still work if the need arose without ever testing it ever again. They use to prove this by taking one out and setting it off in Nevada to make sure it still worked. Now they write simulations. Maybe the are very good at those simulations and they can in fact insure the nuclear arsenal is sage and potent. Unfortunately if they never set one off again they will never now if their simulations are any good. They might just be wasting billions of dollars.
In many respects the national labs are like NASA, they are high tech job programs for deep thinkers who would be dangerous if they were unemployed like their counterparts in Russia.
So they build giant computers, and hopefully figure out useful code to run on them though its not clear if they do have anything useful to run on them. There are always weather sims and protein foldings to do.
The worst problem is the tyranny of Moore's law. They take years to complete and by the time they are fully operational they are obsolete so you just start building a new one.
You wonder how people designed engineered marvels like the first fission and fusion bombs, Apollo and the SR-71 back in the day when they had next to no computing power. Now we have this extraordinary computing power but we have real problems building interesting things in the real world. The Shuttle made massive use of CFD, CAE etc but its a complete lemon. We keeping doing massive simulations of nuclear bombs but we never actually set any off and really don't even want them anymore. Well thats not true the Bush administration is in fact trying to restart development of new nukes and in fact want to build one for busting bunkers and caves. If they manage to get it built not only will the test ban treaty be out the window but the U.S. will start using them as a matter of routine in conventional wars and maybe just to take out a suspected nest of terrorists here and there. Maybe all this computing power will help make them in to exceptionally good tactical weapons which will get a lot of mileage.
"My argument is, and has been, one basic point: American Christian != Taliban."...I dont know who you are arguing with. I never said they were equal. They are so different you couldn't even correlate them. The only point I made, quite rightly is they both seek to inject their personal, extreme, religious views in to government and in so doing inflict it on all the unfortunates who happen to live in their respective countries and don't share their religious fanaticism. Me I'm live and let live, if you want live a life consumed by your Christianity go for it, JUST DON'T FORCE IT ON ANYONE ELSE, ESPECIALLY ME.
I'll make it clear one more time, none of my verbal assault is aimed at all Christians, especially the Christians who actually understand and practice what Christ taught. The assault is aimed entirely at the right wing, white born agains who've seized control of the Republican party, the U.S. government and through its massive miliary of the entire world. They are execptionally dangerous and the don't seem to understand a single thing Christ taught or stood for.
The Republican party of today has next to nothing in common with the old Republican party. The Christian right mostly siezed control of it in 2000 and they solidified that control on 9/11 and further in 2004. They've turned it in to a radical right wing Christian party teetering on Fascist. The true conservative business types don't even recognize their party any more but they have no place to flee to. Republicans used to be fiscally responsible, anti foreign intervention, pro small government and against government intruding in peoples lives. The new radical Republican party is the antithesis of that.
As for your 4 points they aren't even worth rebutting, they are nonsense. You dredged up stuff that happened under Clinton for Christ's sake. That is ancient history now, try focusing on the realities post 2000 and post 9/11 because everythings changed.
"Christians have far less influence now than they had when the Constitution was written"
It was diminishing, again you are living in a now distant past. They are reasserting that influence now with a vengence. Its a great saw, our influence is so diminished, please look the other way while we sieze more power than we've ever had in history.
The point you keep missing is the founding fathers were for the most part devoutly Christian but they knew better than anyone that they didn't want their religion intruded in to secular government and vice versa. They forbad the government from meddling in religion, and they laid a framework in which religion had no role in secular government. Again it is sound government to keep the to separated. Anyone who doesn't grasp the wisdom in that seperation is either dangerous or dumb.
This is turning in to a total waste of time. Later. You can have the last word but I'm not reading it.
"I'm glad you got the Air Force story from CSPAN instead of CNN. I listen to a lot of CSPAN radio because it's a lot of raw data instead of opinion."
Nice, I provide an authoritative source, you compliment me and completely duck the fact that born agains are trying to convert or drive everyont out of the U.S. Air Force officer corp anyone who doesn't think like them. Got to love people who claim to be devout Christians training for a profession in which they will be called upon to kill people, often innocent people, in large numbers. Personally I don't want people waiting for apocolypse and the rapture to have their finger on buttons that drop nuclear weapons.
" "Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding."
Dude you proved my whole point right here. That statement is totally scary. Wouldn't be if they were just a christian zealot school with no chance of doing it, but THIS school's students are being groomed by the Republican's to take over, and being given red carpet treatment to internships and jobs in the Federal government to get the ball rolling.
As for the rest of your rant there is one simple fact you gloss over. A basic tenent of our society and government is seperation of church and state. Injecting religion in to government is completely different than injecting issues, like the environment, in to government.
Many of the founding fathers, and a LOT of America's early colonists fled religious persecution in Europe. They knew exactly how bad it was when religion is injected in to government. The sect in power, almost inevitably persecutes and discriminates against sects of which they don't approve. The Founding fathers did their best to severe direct ties between church and state for a reason, today it seems they failed.
When you have state endorsed religion you have an invitation to disaster. Why because religions have an horrendous tendancy for sectarianism. People turn rabid on what is correct religious doctrine and practice and what is blasphemy. As soon as you let religion in the door at a government level the government goes down a road where it will start endorsing acceptable sects and persecuting unacceptable sects. Right now Christianity and Judaism in, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist out. Down the road you can see Protestant in, Catholic out. What next, you have to be "born again" or you are an abomination.
Its also equally bad for religions to let government intrude in to them, and start exerting control over them which is the double edged sword of Bush's faith based initiative. In exchange for lots of our tax dollars they get government auditors and regulators, and are supposed to be precluded from prosletyzing when they are spending government money. The government also picks demonitations who get money and those who don't. BAD...BAD...BAD.
Seperation of church and state is just fundementally good government. The people in power now completely fail to understand that or why which is why they are SO dangerous. Yes they should pray, yes they can use the word God when they speak if they choose, but when it comes time to make policy and laws they should check their religion at the door.
" That is their right, and it is a legitimate action in a democratic society."
Yes it is except when the extremists assassinate abortion doctors, bomb clinics and block access to something that is legal. You see there are extremists among Christians and Jews just like there are extremists among Muslims. You choose to focus on all the Christian moderates and the Muslim extremists. 99% of Muslims are moderate too. You are just so massively biased you don't recognize that all religions have extremists, and they are all bad.
Whatever methods they are using anti abortion fanatics have driven abortion clinics out of some states and down to one in an entire state in others. Through their action they are managing to mak
USB Host controller is the biggest thing missing IMHO. If you had that it would be a lot more interesting. Pretty sure the USB support is client only. Is there a CF or SD USB Host which would be nice but still sucks versus a built in USB host?
Integrated wifi is #2. The plugin wifi cards suck all the power all the time.
My opinion of most PDA's and cell phones trying to be PDA's, the screens are just to small to browse the web and aren't even very good for email.
Add on to this wifi isn't reliably available, in the U.S. the cell phone soviet ministries charge an arm and a leg for data access, and most cell phones are excruciatingly closed in what you run on them, you can see why mobile devices in the U.S. tend to be, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.
Me personally I'm sick of batteries and chargers. How many bloody chargers do you have laying around, used and unused all of which do the same thing slightly differently. What a waste.
"the Air Force Academy story is straight out of CNN"
Very weak argument, well no argument at all. Does it have to be on Fox for you to give it creedance. Thought so....
In this case I watched CSPAN and the congressional hearing where the Air Force General sent to inspect the incidents and white wash them attempted to brush it under the rug. He didn't do a very good job on the whitewashing part. Some of the cadet and faculty practices described in the hearing and which are admitted as facts are DEEPLY disturbing. Cadets have every right to practice their faith to the hilt, they have no right to try to force others to adopt it or ostracize and discriminate against those who don't, in particular Jews, agnostics and athiests or in fact even religious people who aren't "born again". That is not what this country is about and our Constitution forbids injecting your religious bias in to government institutions.
"Your Patrick Henry College story is out of the *New Yorker*, for crying out loud."
Dude the messenger doesn't change the facts and the fact is on the outskirts of Washington, there is a new College founded in 2000 that its exclusively for home schooled Christians being groomed for leadership positions in the New Washington. I doubt the right wing Christians want to advertise they are giving preferential treatement to its students for government and policy jobs, and in fact they apparently even discriminating against good Christians tainted by public schools.
Why don't you try making a coherent argement instead of just saying, gee that was in the news, therefor lets dismiss it.
"The truth is that the Christian community is highly heterogenous"
Dude I love Christians who practices the teachings of Christ. The right wing fundementalists and born agains who've siezed control of the Repulican party and the U.S. governments are unfortunatley very homogenous and uniform in their doctrine. Most are homophobes, thats how they won the last election by playing the homophobia over gay marriage to the hilt. Most are anti abortion, some aren't, but it is obviously the dominiant view of the Republican base now. Their only problem is if they ever overturn Roe V. Wade there will be a mass exodus of women back to the Democrats because a lot of women voting Republican lately don't want to be force to have an unwanted baby.
" Bush and Rove will be out of power; someone else will be in."
Yea but its not likely they will be any better and may well be worse. The Christian right is a cohesive and mobilized block. The Democrats are in collapse, there is no viable third party. The Republicans control all branches of government or soon will once they stack the Supreme court. Once a party establishes that kind of power and control of the national the message it is very hard to unseat them. Look how long the Democrats held power and they completely sucked for the duration.
"The United States is far too large of a country to be painted with a brush of a single color."
Not painting it a single color. It is pretty obviously more or less two colors, the blue shrinking, the red drowning the nation.
"Cuts in governement spending, easy when the EU pays the bill. Pro Growth pro competition. That is lower the taxes at the expense of someone else."
Uh no, the concept is totally foreign to most people especially in America but you can cut government spending and taxes and be a lot healtier country. Most governments are drowning in waste, inefficiency, subsidies, payola, handouts etc. If you cut your spending back to just the essentials, you can cut taxes for everyone and not deficit spend.
Not sure if that is the case in Ireland but it kind of looks like it.
The fundemental problem achieving it is its nearly impossible to find fiscally responsible politicians and bureaucrats. They acquire and hold their power base by spending tax dollars to the benefits of their friends, not saving them In the U.S. the Republicans run a great line about fiscal responsibility when they aren't in power but whenever they are they spend and borrow worse than the Democrats so in a defacto two party system its impossible to vote for fiscal responsibility.
I think the EU is only one factor. If being in the EU was such a boon why is Ireland one of the few EU countries booming.
Some others:
- fiscal policy, dramatic cuts in government spending - pro growth, pro comeptition government - peace in Northern Ireland removed a cloud over the whole island - there was an inflow of investment from U.S. companies because, like Canada, the wage costs are low relative to the U.S. - The Irish speak English which is a lot less pain than outsourcing to China - Education system works better than the U.S. and U.K in particular, and a lot of well educated former emigres are returning now that Ireland's economy is no longer in the tank.
Look at the chart relative to the rest of the EU. Ireland is just about the only western country sustaining growth rates found only in Asia these days.
In 1987 Irish GDP per person was 69% of the EU average (adjusted to EU 15); by 2003, it had reached 136%. Unemployment fell from 17% in 1987 to 4% in 2003; and government debt shrank from 112% of GDP to 33%.
Putting a person who works for polluters in charge of environmental concerns is like putting a fox in charge of a chicken coop. He is inevitably going to relax pollution control at every turn because it saves his masters money.
In this he is working for an industry that is rabidly trying to deny global warming is reality, and his government duty apparently involved handling and approving reports and scientific data on global warming. He apparently altered the studies to reflect the desires of his masters instead of the reality found by the researchers.
Its called conflict of interest and in this case it was blatant.
I might buy your arguement from British Petroleum because their is at least a chance they are environmentally conscious. But. Exxon has one of the worst environmental records of any oil company on the planet(remember the Exxon Valdez) and they ain't changing, they are just engaged in a full court press to deny and suppress global warming and to make sure limits are NEVER places on CO2 emmissions even if it means this planet turns uninhabitable. In this they are working hand in hand with the Bush administration so the U.S. will go another 4 years in denial on global warming, at least.
God you are such a pedant. His district offices are in Arlington and Ennis. He was born in Ennis. Ennis is just south of Dallas. Arlington is in squarly between Dallas and Ft. Worth, right next to IRVING.
Excuse me for living for saying he is from Dallas, technicly he is from the Dallas Suburbs, Whoooooopppppppeeeeeee you are so smart:)
The point is his district office in Arlington is a few miles from Exxon headquarters in Irving.
"However, it is also the case that when they do, they are acting in direct opposition to the tenets of their religion. See for example Romans 12:17-20. The same is *not* true of Islam, which gets mixed signals from the Koran (2.177 - 193, e.g.)."
Why yes it is mostly against the teaching of Christ but the bible as a whole gives just as much a mixed message as the Koran does. That doesn't change the fact that the U.S. military is massively Christian, the Air Force Academy has developed a rep for a fanatical cadre of born agains who try to convert or hound out anyone who hasn't found Jesus. Once the graduate they will no doubt go on to kill people with abandon from on high and in Jesus' name. Many Christian churches have been pro war and pro killing thoughout American history. The U.S. prays as it kills people in wars just as much as Muslims and Jews do. There are very few Christian sects who in fact practice non violence, like the Quakers and Amish. Some main stream churches are pro war to the point of being bloody thirsty.
"Third, your point about the veils is bizarre. No one has *ever* said to *anyone* in a wedding "you must wear a veil." My wife wore one -- her choice, mind you -- because she thought it was pretty"
You missed the point, it is a cultural tradition to wear a veil at Christian weddings, its a cultural tradition and Islamic doctrine for women to cover their heads if not their entire head all the time. Christian nuns cover their heads too. The point is if you have this uncontrollable urge to inflict your cultural biases on other cultures, I'm of the opinion they should be able to tell you to not do things that offend them. For example how would Americans feel if Muslim countries forced Americans to stop consuming alcohol. They have a good case for that, alcohol is a devestatingly bad drug, they are on the right side of the issue. If you want to tell them what women can and can't wear is it OK if they tell you what you can and can't do?
"But don't blame it on some cabal of "Washington Christians"
Dude you aren't paying attention. There IS a cabal of "Washington Christians" along with some "Washington Jews" and they are killing, disappearing and torturing people with abandon, all of whom happen to be Muslim.
A bizarre example covered in New Yorker recently is Patrick Henry College. It was founded in 2000 when the Republicans swept in to power. Its student body is entirely home schooled Christians, people who have never been corrupted by contact with the public education system, or heathens. Their entire student body is actively working in Republican political campaigns and they all get fast tracks to internships in top spots in the Federal government including the White House and Karl Roves office, and leading conservative think tanks. They ARE a "Washington Chrisitan Cabal" being groomed to reign over America from now to eternity, or at least until the rapture takes them all to Jesus.
"The claim was made that conservative Christians are just the same as the Taliban."
"Just the same" is a stretch but there is a lot of disturbing" similarity which is why people keep drawing the parallel. Born again Christians are hell bent on trying to inflict their world view on people who don't like or want their world view. They don't approve of abortion so they want to force women to ride out unwanted pregnancies and raise unwanted kids who have a propensity to turn in to criminals, or put a new wave of kids in to foster care, orphanages and adoption. They don't approve of homosexuality so they want to drive people who are unavoidably gay back in to the closet if not out of society. The whole problem here is when some Muslim country tries to force their ideaology on people you get your panties in a twist. When American Christians do the same thing you rationalize and turn a blind eye becuase you wear cultural blinders, your culture always good, everyone elses culture always bad (unless of course they make it exactly like yours).
Bottomline learn to live and let live. Forgive and forget. Don't pass judgement on others. That is a world view Christ would have approved of.
I'm thinking Ireland. They have a booming, economy, speak English, like to party and I think have a shortage of high tech workers. Their government is unfortunately a little pro Bush for my liking sometimes, and they are in NATO, but they have a pretty stong and vocal anti Bush faction.
From this article I gather the anti Iraq war movement there is doing their best to offer all the large number of U.S. soldiers that transit through Ireland on the way to Iraq asylum if they don't want to kill (often civilians) and be killed in a war based on lies.
Its obviously a very Catholic country which has its issues but I'll take Catholics over born again nut jobs most days.
Canada is #2 and New Zealand #3 on my list assuming you want an English speaking country. I wish Australia could be on the list but their government is as whacked in the head as the U.S. and U.K.
The big problem emmigrating these days is thanks to globalization and a global American empire its getting harder and harder to find a corner of the world that hasn't been ruined by the influence of the U.S and its multinational corporations.
With troops in about 120 countries, CIA and FBI probably the same number, programs like Rendition in which the U.S. can snatch anyone, anywhere and send them to be tortured, there really isn't any place to get away from the U.S. anymore. At some point people are going to have to start saying no to the insanity currently infecting America before it infects the whole world.
Imagine my shock when I learned that a Congressman from Dallas, Texas would be trying to stifle information on global warming. I don't think Joe's Arlington district includes Irving, Texas but its right next door.
What's in Irving, why the headquarters of Exxon Mobile, one of the corporations most rabidly fighting any suggestion their products might be wrecking the climate. I doubt you are going to find many politicians from Texas, including the President, who are going to give global warming a fair hearing if they value there political careers and their power base in Texas.
Exxon is the one who hired Philip Cooney, Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality the day after he quit amid controversy. The irony of a former and now once again oil man heading anything on enviromental quality. He resigned when it was exposed that he had been repeatedly altering, or maybe doctoring is a better word, government reports on global warming to downplay it, to suppress data showing it might be happening and that burning fossil fuels might be contributing to it.
I'm pretty sure I was using it in my sig before Michael Moore did. I had a set of Bushism's I used to rotate through my sig before he got reelected. He's great because he's stuck his foot in his mouth so many times on tape, which is why Moore saw a movie in him. Now we are stuck with him so no point, this quote is a favorite, especially remember him the tux and white tie, smirking while he said it. Doesn't matter that Al Gore was sitting next to him a tux when he said it either. Fact is anyone who lands a Presidential nomination these days has nothing but fat cats as their base, maybe a different set but all fat cats all the time, and a lot of the fat cats are switch hitters.
" American Christians do not issue fatwas on their opponents." . Well duh. A Fatwah is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar[WordNet]. Aren't a lot if Islamic scholars among American Christians:)
Perhaps you were overgeneralizing and are really refering to a few specific Fatwahs which were issued to justify a death sentence against Rushdi or the one's Al Qaeda have issued to justify there actions. They were issued by extemists and its debatable if they really confrom to Islamic law. Whatever they are pretty exceptional.
American Christian's don't quite do Fatwas because their isn't nearly as much Christian law as their is Islamic law, especially once you get past the ten commandments.
But Christians do most assuredly exact revenge on opponents, launch Jihads and kill the enemies of their faith. Thats petty much what the Crusades were multiple times, over hundreds of years. Crusaders did round up, slaught and brutalize people for their faith. Christians over the centuries have done it just as much as any religion.
I'd be inclined to say the Bush administration basicly issued a Fatwah against Saddam Hussein, and Manuel Noriega and when the U.S. issues a Fatwah it has the weapons to make it stick.
I'd say all the multimillion dollar rewards for the capture of terrorist like Bin Laden are pretty much modern Fatwah's backed by cash, just like the one issued against Rushdi. For some reason the Fatwah against Bin Laden and his right hand man hasn't worked. I wonder why that is?
I'd say the semi secret Rendition program is an exceptionally good Fatwah program. The Christians in Washington identify a potential Muslim enemy anywhere in the world, and they are all Muslim. a jet with a team of masked men sweep in, snatch him and send him to be tortured for his sins. Same...Same.
"They don't force women to wear veils"
Well it sure is a common practice at Christian weddings. Granted its over the top when women are forced to wear veils, especially burka class, but dude that is part of culture. Most cultures and religions have quirky traits that have been there for centuries to millenia. It obviously ticks you off because you want everyone else to adopt your cultural standards, but some people find American cultural standards offensive too. You can't really get all holier than thou about women's rights. Women have had rights in the U.S. for a VERY brief period by historical standards. I'm sure you want to force this very new standard on the world very fast because American's tend to be in a hurry, just beware cultures that have been around for a thousand years or more may not appreciate you trying to inflict your very new culture on them overnight. The U.S. tried it in Iraq. What did you do. You took Iraq from a secular dictator where women had more rights than in most Muslim countries, didn't wear burkha, had careers, and turned it over to a Shia majority which is as we speak is writing a consitution based on Islamic law and are MAKING women wear veils when the didn't have to under Saddam. I gather Basra, the Shia heartland is starting to resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban.
"don't carry out suicide bombings for the sake of their cause."
They don't have to, they have F-16's and Apache helicopers to drop the bombs without the suicide part. Suicide bombings are the last resort of desperate people, sometimes brainwashed but not always, who are severely outgunned, mostly by the U.S. and Israel. Affluent American Christians are fat, happy and in power. You don't get suicide bombers from that demographic. If American Christians were run out of their homes at the end of gun, pushed in to refugee camps in grinding poverty, had what homes they have bulldozed, spat on and killed by occupying soldiers, they would be suicide bomber too. Please stop the holier than thou crap. Its easy to be sanctimonious when you are rich, well fed and powerful.
Dude, get a life and stop posting about a sig. I've heard it about 50 times and I DON'T CARE. Much truth is said in jest and it says pretty much everything you need to know about the Bush family.
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"But they don't have a mind for policy and no one chose them to choose it."
I assure you very few politicians have a "mind for policy" either especially when it comes to space, science and engineering.
How about let Mike Griffin make the decisions since he is in charge of the agency, he should be held responsibile for success and failure, and that means he should have the power and money so that he has a chance to succeed. From the stuff I've read he seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders, and is a VAST improvement over O'Keefe who was both gutless and clueless. NASA desperately needs one person with some smarts, guts and vision setting one direction and also someone will to make some deep and painful cuts to get NASA on a course that isn't broken, which the current one surely is, and get rid of all the dead wood and dead weight.
If you let Congressman set the policy their #1 priority is to turn NASA in to a jobs program to create jobs in their districts. Costs balloon, nothing gets done, reference Shuttle and ISS. That is all our government does anymore, churn out pork to create jobs and line pockets.
At one point there were 6,000 people directly employed full time just on the Shuttle not counting contractors making parts. The Shuttle has over its life averaged $1.3 billion per launch far in excess of what was advertized.
Congressman with big shuttle and ISS pork, especially Florida and Texas, are already making threats Griffin's way if he tries to cut back jobs on the the shuttle and ISS to free money for CEV and beyond.
Politicians need maybe need to set the target, and insure adequate funds for the long haul and then get completely out of the way for the execution.
The answer to 90% of this is Dell isn't in the OS business. They aren't going to develop an OS, test it, support it, fix the bugs in it, etc. They assemble hardware as cheaply as possible and slap someone elses OS on it. They want an OS that doesn't require a geek to tweak it, that has lots of application support and that everyone knows how to use and support.
" both RH9 (used as desktop) and Debian Stable"
You missed the point, they usually work but if you are running a KDE app on a GNOME desktop it doesn't fit and you are running two huge sets of api's that are mostly duplicative in what they do and if the admin is a GNOME biggot the KDE stuff wont be there at all and vice versa.
Running is also not the same as running consistently, like standard accelerator conventions, menu layout, cut and paste, drag and drop, especially beyond just text, etc. If you use just KDE apps everything is consistent like that. Then run OpenOffice and Firebird. They look out of place, they load like a 100 MB of different UI libraries, and they don't interoperate well. Geeks will rationalize and ignore but it will bug the hell out of an average Windows or OSX user.
"This fragmentation is a natural consequence of the open nature of the system. You can adapt it to different tasks,"
You can rationalize it all you want and this is a strength if your adapting it to widely varied niche tasks. But, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you want to gain marketshare on the desktop. Most people don't want to deal with the decision point between Red Hat, SUSE, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian, KDE and GNOME. Ordinary people simply don't care and they don't want to hear about your rationalization about what each one excels at, they want one OS that excels at everything. These aren't geeks we are talking about, these are people who just want apps that work and don't want to read HOWTO files.
"What do you mean ? SDL seems to work just fine."
Or is it gstreamer, jack, esd, arts, OSS, ALSA and thats just audio.
You would have to use BeOS or better yet develop for it to understand. Its a node based architecture with audio and video nodes, producers and consumers. You can connect together producers and consumers to build advanced apps from simple app nodes.
Whe you creat a new audio source it registers with the OS and volume sliders, mono or stereo, appear in the media preference dialog automaticly. Each slider is labled by app name or audio file name. It is increadibly simple to adjust audio levels up and down for the audio streams you want to hear at the moment.
Look a the level settings in Linux, you find a bunch of cryptic things most of which are useless, or its unbvious what they are, and if you want to turn audio in MP3 up and browser down its either hard, unobvious or impossible.
SDL is a toolkit. BeOS has one coordinated multimedia system every app uses, and uses consistently, and lets audio and video be easily communicated between apps. Its totally slick. Unless you've used BeOS you just wont get the difference. If you have a free partition download the free version and try it, there are free docs on the API's too. Very nice, all C++, consistently designed. To bad they didn't open source it from day one, it would be what we all run today.
"Uhh, as far as I understand most of them are Japenese?"
Uhhh, I think you are thinking about the fabs. I'm talking about the companies that manufacture the expensive and non trivial equipment that goes in to the fabs. My memory is hazy but for example Applied Materials and Novellus. I imgagine IBM is in there too. There are some in Korea, Japan and Taiwan too imagine, though I don't think any fab equipment manufacturers in China yet for some reaosn. I suspect they value their IP and they know if they share it with the Chinese they will clone and steal it. Saying that is not racism or anything, its just a fact. The Chinese are trying to go from nowhere to global economic domination in a few decades and they are cutting every corner they can, and stealing IP everyplace they can find it.
Fab equipment, CPU design and manufacture are some of the few places where America still holds a position. They are not businesses you can just jump in to overnight. There is a lot of intellectual property and expertise required especially for the latest generation. Hopefully someone wont be stupid enough to give it to the Chinese for nothing.
I think the Chinese are mostly buying used fabs that are phased out elsewhere, and sold off cheap, which is why they are 2 generations behind the leading edge.
That a pretty silly number. The amount Microsoft charges for the software they ship on computers, especially the base OS is really low. They make their money because:
A) Software costs next to nothing to ship per unit, after the R&D is paid for.
B) they have very high volume thanks to a monopoly
Yes Dell could slap a free version of Linux on it and save maybe $30-50. If Dell actually cut a deal to License Red Hat or SUSE I'm willing to bet it would end up costing the same or more than Windows.
$30-50 is more significant now that PC prices have dropped so much, but on the laptops everyone prefers these days its still really not much of the cost. Office is more but you seldom have to buy Office from a PC vendor so you can slap OpenOffice on instead.
Trying to make a financial arguement here is silly, switching to a different OS isn't going to save anyone money, it will just go into different pockets.
The fundamental problem is its just a monopoly and one company has complete control of all personal computing. If they do a good job and charge fair prices its not so bad, but if they screw the pooch and start jacking up prices you can't do anything about it until the monopoly is broken.
I can see OSX being a viable alternative now but there you are locked in to both their hardware and software so its a potentially worse monopoly than Wintel unless they open up the IA32 platform.
I guess you could start shipping Linux but there are a few basic problems:
- There are about 100 distros to choose from every one somewhat different. Total nightmare for application developers, end users, and to support
- There are two major desktops and GUI frameworks, and a whole bunch more little ones, again a total nightmare for application developers and to support. Applications written to one still dont integrate with the other. Users hate that. They want everything to behave consistently like OSX. Developer hate that because the want to write and test to one API and have it run everywhere.
- Most people can't fix the stuff that doesn't just work, especially audio, networking, display and printing. Networking is different on every distro. Audio and printing are some better but there are 10 different approaches to each and again for application development audio support is a complete disaster. At this point queue all the people that will say, just use audio API X and you will have no problem, except you will get 10 people saying this and every one of them will substitute a different API for X.
Until Linux stops fragmenting, and focuses on applications and a friendly platform for application development its simply never going to unseat Windows on the desktop and has a great potential to get beat by OSX. Hell I'd take BeOS on the desktop in a lot of ways. BeOS multimedia support, especially audio completly embarrases Linux. After 10 years you would think the Linux world would have got a clue and ported/cloned it because it works, versus Linux multimedia which is a fragmented catastrophe. There are still companies using BeOS for multimedia for example n demanding theatrical productions because it is so well done.
"First of all, they do have some data. They can simulate the models of weapons they had before and make sure the simulations match up with what actually happened in the test. This sort of thing is also useful for things like fusion/fission reactors, and other far out stuff."
If they have good real data then why do you need simulations. If the simulations just match what you already know they don't tell you anything. Simulations are only useful when they tell you something you don't already now, and then you do real world tests to see if they match. When they don't then you figure out why. If you spend year after year doing sims with no real tests the sims have great potential to turn in to fantasy, especially as the nuclear stockpile ages beyond anything thats ever been test fired.
"At the end of the day, it's pure research. There is very little pure research that is not (eventually) worth it."
If they are studying nuclear reactions that would be of value in producing energy maybe but at the stagnant rate of research in nuclear energy i doubt they are used much for that.
Pure research in building better nuclear bombs is pure insanity and will never be "worth it". Nuclear bombs are worthless and everyone knows it now, except maybe the Bush administration. They are weapons you can never use without inviting escalation and total annihaliation. North Korea ever uses one on the U.S. North Korea will be incinerated. They are a last use weapon for madmen.
Not unless you:
A. Have good software that does something useful and gives you good answers
B. You actually do something something useful with the results
Spending billions to simulate nuclear bombs is a pretty useless waste of money, as are the hundreds or was it thousands of holes they've punched in the Nevada desert and Pacific atolls.
Its a lot like the original poster and Japan building super bridges to no place in particular. Its something the U.S. started doing, cant stop and if the day every comes again when they are useful it will be a bad day for this planet and the life on it.
I'm sure all that computer power is potentially useful but most of them are sitting in classified labs which tends to dramaticly limit their use for peacful purposes.
I guess you missed the point. People these days spend way to much time fiddling with computers for the sake of fiddling with computers and often forget to do anything real with the result, and maybe even have forgotten how to do anything beyond computer simulation.
"The same will be true of the next reusable orbital craft. It will be intensely designed, it will be better than the shuttle in every way, and presumably safer as well."
Actually I think the next shuttle is going to be a capsule, maybe it will be exceptionally well designed but it wont be much different from the ones built 40 years ago. Lockheed wants to build a minime shuttle but everyone is so sick of reusable craft at this point I doubt it has a chance.
Its only 95% compatible because they didn't implement some instructions that are patented by MIPS presumably so they can sell products using them in the U.S. without getting sued and without paying MIPS any royalties.
... fab equipment makers who want to partner with them while they steal .... err .... license their technology.
The Chinese are masters at avoiding the payment of royalties for IP.
The worst problem they have is their fab technology is a couple generations out of date. They are actively seeking suckers... err
I get the impression that chip equipment makers are one of the few industries that have seen the peril in partnering with China, turning over all their IP to them, and then being put of business by them. I wonder why other industries weren't so bright.
Problem with the 6000 is that its expensive enough I'd just as soon have a laptop with a bigger screen and keyboard. I guess if you are a serious road warrior or running around an office doing admin work maybe the small form is worth it.
:)
My use for the USB is it would have made it interesting to embed in little projects that need I/O, at that point it would be torn apart and not even a PDA, just a cheap SBC with handy display and keyboard for diag work. Guess I'm not really typical
Much of the U.S. fixation goes back to the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996. The U.S. had a bunch of powerful labs full of top scientists whose job in life was to build and test nuclear weapons. This treaty pretty much put them out of business. Clinton distracted them by giving them millions of dollars to build gigantic supercomputers. The goal was to simulate nuclear explosions, predict how the U.S. nuclear stockpile would age and insure it would still work if the need arose without ever testing it ever again. They use to prove this by taking one out and setting it off in Nevada to make sure it still worked. Now they write simulations. Maybe the are very good at those simulations and they can in fact insure the nuclear arsenal is sage and potent. Unfortunately if they never set one off again they will never now if their simulations are any good. They might just be wasting billions of dollars.
In many respects the national labs are like NASA, they are high tech job programs for deep thinkers who would be dangerous if they were unemployed like their counterparts in Russia.
So they build giant computers, and hopefully figure out useful code to run on them though its not clear if they do have anything useful to run on them. There are always weather sims and protein foldings to do.
The worst problem is the tyranny of Moore's law. They take years to complete and by the time they are fully operational they are obsolete so you just start building a new one.
You wonder how people designed engineered marvels like the first fission and fusion bombs, Apollo and the SR-71 back in the day when they had next to no computing power. Now we have this extraordinary computing power but we have real problems building interesting things in the real world. The Shuttle made massive use of CFD, CAE etc but its a complete lemon. We keeping doing massive simulations of nuclear bombs but we never actually set any off and really don't even want them anymore. Well thats not true the Bush administration is in fact trying to restart development of new nukes and in fact want to build one for busting bunkers and caves. If they manage to get it built not only will the test ban treaty be out the window but the U.S. will start using them as a matter of routine in conventional wars and maybe just to take out a suspected nest of terrorists here and there. Maybe all this computing power will help make them in to exceptionally good tactical weapons which will get a lot of mileage.
"My argument is, and has been, one basic point: American Christian != Taliban." ...I dont know who you are arguing with. I never said they were equal. They are so different you couldn't even correlate them. The only point I made, quite rightly is they both seek to inject their personal, extreme, religious views in to government and in so doing inflict it on all the unfortunates who happen to live in their respective countries and don't share their religious fanaticism. Me I'm live and let live, if you want live a life consumed by your Christianity go for it, JUST DON'T FORCE IT ON ANYONE ELSE, ESPECIALLY ME.
I'll make it clear one more time, none of my verbal assault is aimed at all Christians, especially the Christians who actually understand and practice what Christ taught. The assault is aimed entirely at the right wing, white born agains who've seized control of the Republican party, the U.S. government and through its massive miliary of the entire world. They are execptionally dangerous and the don't seem to understand a single thing Christ taught or stood for.
The Republican party of today has next to nothing in common with the old Republican party. The Christian right mostly siezed control of it in 2000 and they solidified that control on 9/11 and further in 2004. They've turned it in to a radical right wing Christian party teetering on Fascist. The true conservative business types don't even recognize their party any more but they have no place to flee to. Republicans used to be fiscally responsible, anti foreign intervention, pro small government and against government intruding in peoples lives. The new radical Republican party is the antithesis of that.
As for your 4 points they aren't even worth rebutting, they are nonsense. You dredged up stuff that happened under Clinton for Christ's sake. That is ancient history now, try focusing on the realities post 2000 and post 9/11 because everythings changed.
"Christians have far less influence now than they had when the Constitution was written"
It was diminishing, again you are living in a now distant past. They are reasserting that influence now with a vengence. Its a great saw, our influence is so diminished, please look the other way while we sieze more power than we've ever had in history.
The point you keep missing is the founding fathers were for the most part devoutly Christian but they knew better than anyone that they didn't want their religion intruded in to secular government and vice versa. They forbad the government from meddling in religion, and they laid a framework in which religion had no role in secular government. Again it is sound government to keep the to separated. Anyone who doesn't grasp the wisdom in that seperation is either dangerous or dumb.
This is turning in to a total waste of time. Later. You can have the last word but I'm not reading it.
"I'm glad you got the Air Force story from CSPAN instead of CNN. I listen to a lot of CSPAN radio because it's a lot of raw data instead of opinion."
Nice, I provide an authoritative source, you compliment me and completely duck the fact that born agains are trying to convert or drive everyont out of the U.S. Air Force officer corp anyone who doesn't think like them. Got to love people who claim to be devout Christians training for a profession in which they will be called upon to kill people, often innocent people, in large numbers. Personally I don't want people waiting for apocolypse and the rapture to have their finger on buttons that drop nuclear weapons.
" "Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding."
Dude you proved my whole point right here. That statement is totally scary. Wouldn't be if they were just a christian zealot school with no chance of doing it, but THIS school's students are being groomed by the Republican's to take over, and being given red carpet treatment to internships and jobs in the Federal government to get the ball rolling.
As for the rest of your rant there is one simple fact you gloss over. A basic tenent of our society and government is seperation of church and state. Injecting religion in to government is completely different than injecting issues, like the environment, in to government.
Many of the founding fathers, and a LOT of America's early colonists fled religious persecution in Europe. They knew exactly how bad it was when religion is injected in to government. The sect in power, almost inevitably persecutes and discriminates against sects of which they don't approve. The Founding fathers did their best to severe direct ties between church and state for a reason, today it seems they failed.
When you have state endorsed religion you have an invitation to disaster. Why because religions have an horrendous tendancy for sectarianism. People turn rabid on what is correct religious doctrine and practice and what is blasphemy. As soon as you let religion in the door at a government level the government goes down a road where it will start endorsing acceptable sects and persecuting unacceptable sects. Right now Christianity and Judaism in, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist out. Down the road you can see Protestant in, Catholic out. What next, you have to be "born again" or you are an abomination.
Its also equally bad for religions to let government intrude in to them, and start exerting control over them which is the double edged sword of Bush's faith based initiative. In exchange for lots of our tax dollars they get government auditors and regulators, and are supposed to be precluded from prosletyzing when they are spending government money. The government also picks demonitations who get money and those who don't. BAD...BAD...BAD.
Seperation of church and state is just fundementally good government. The people in power now completely fail to understand that or why which is why they are SO dangerous. Yes they should pray, yes they can use the word God when they speak if they choose, but when it comes time to make policy and laws they should check their religion at the door.
" That is their right, and it is a legitimate action in a democratic society."
Yes it is except when the extremists assassinate abortion doctors, bomb clinics and block access to something that is legal. You see there are extremists among Christians and Jews just like there are extremists among Muslims. You choose to focus on all the Christian moderates and the Muslim extremists. 99% of Muslims are moderate too. You are just so massively biased you don't recognize that all religions have extremists, and they are all bad.
Whatever methods they are using anti abortion fanatics have driven abortion clinics out of some states and down to one in an entire state in others. Through their action they are managing to mak
USB Host controller is the biggest thing missing IMHO. If you had that it would be a lot more interesting. Pretty sure the USB support is client only. Is there a CF or SD USB Host which would be nice but still sucks versus a built in USB host?
Integrated wifi is #2. The plugin wifi cards suck all the power all the time.
My opinion of most PDA's and cell phones trying to be PDA's, the screens are just to small to browse the web and aren't even very good for email.
Add on to this wifi isn't reliably available, in the U.S. the cell phone soviet ministries charge an arm and a leg for data access, and most cell phones are excruciatingly closed in what you run on them, you can see why mobile devices in the U.S. tend to be, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.
Me personally I'm sick of batteries and chargers. How many bloody chargers do you have laying around, used and unused all of which do the same thing slightly differently. What a waste.
"the Air Force Academy story is straight out of CNN"
Very weak argument, well no argument at all. Does it have to be on Fox for you to give it creedance. Thought so....
In this case I watched CSPAN and the congressional hearing where the Air Force General sent to inspect the incidents and white wash them attempted to brush it under the rug. He didn't do a very good job on the whitewashing part. Some of the cadet and faculty practices described in the hearing and which are admitted as facts are DEEPLY disturbing. Cadets have every right to practice their faith to the hilt, they have no right to try to force others to adopt it or ostracize and discriminate against those who don't, in particular Jews, agnostics and athiests or in fact even religious people who aren't "born again". That is not what this country is about and our Constitution forbids injecting your religious bias in to government institutions.
"Your Patrick Henry College story is out of the *New Yorker*, for crying out loud."
Dude the messenger doesn't change the facts and the fact is on the outskirts of Washington, there is a new College founded in 2000 that its exclusively for home schooled Christians being groomed for leadership positions in the New Washington. I doubt the right wing Christians want to advertise they are giving preferential treatement to its students for government and policy jobs, and in fact they apparently even discriminating against good Christians tainted by public schools.
Why don't you try making a coherent argement instead of just saying, gee that was in the news, therefor lets dismiss it.
"The truth is that the Christian community is highly heterogenous"
Dude I love Christians who practices the teachings of Christ. The right wing fundementalists and born agains who've siezed control of the Repulican party and the U.S. governments are unfortunatley very homogenous and uniform in their doctrine. Most are homophobes, thats how they won the last election by playing the homophobia over gay marriage to the hilt. Most are anti abortion, some aren't, but it is obviously the dominiant view of the Republican base now. Their only problem is if they ever overturn Roe V. Wade there will be a mass exodus of women back to the Democrats because a lot of women voting Republican lately don't want to be force to have an unwanted baby.
" Bush and Rove will be out of power; someone else will be in."
Yea but its not likely they will be any better and may well be worse. The Christian right is a cohesive and mobilized block. The Democrats are in collapse, there is no viable third party. The Republicans control all branches of government or soon will once they stack the Supreme court. Once a party establishes that kind of power and control of the national the message it is very hard to unseat them. Look how long the Democrats held power and they completely sucked for the duration.
"The United States is far too large of a country to be painted with a brush of a single color."
Not painting it a single color. It is pretty obviously more or less two colors, the blue shrinking, the red drowning the nation.
"Cuts in governement spending, easy when the EU pays the bill.
Pro Growth pro competition. That is lower the taxes at the expense of someone else."
Uh no, the concept is totally foreign to most people especially in America but you can cut government spending and taxes and be a lot healtier country. Most governments are drowning in waste, inefficiency, subsidies, payola, handouts etc. If you cut your spending back to just the essentials, you can cut taxes for everyone and not deficit spend.
Not sure if that is the case in Ireland but it kind of looks like it.
The fundemental problem achieving it is its nearly impossible to find fiscally responsible politicians and bureaucrats. They acquire and hold their power base by spending tax dollars to the benefits of their friends, not saving them In the U.S. the Republicans run a great line about fiscal responsibility when they aren't in power but whenever they are they spend and borrow worse than the Democrats so in a defacto two party system its impossible to vote for fiscal responsibility.
I think the EU is only one factor. If being in the EU was such a boon why is Ireland one of the few EU countries booming.
Some others:
- fiscal policy, dramatic cuts in government spending
- pro growth, pro comeptition government
- peace in Northern Ireland removed a cloud over the whole island
- there was an inflow of investment from U.S. companies because, like Canada, the wage costs are low relative to the U.S.
- The Irish speak English which is a lot less pain than outsourcing to China
- Education system works better than the U.S. and U.K in particular, and a lot of well educated former emigres are returning now that Ireland's economy is no longer in the tank.
Look at the chart relative to the rest of the EU. Ireland is just about the only western country sustaining growth rates found only in Asia these days.
In 1987 Irish GDP per person was 69% of the EU average (adjusted to EU 15); by 2003, it had reached 136%. Unemployment fell from 17% in 1987 to 4% in 2003; and government debt shrank from 112% of GDP to 33%.
Putting a person who works for polluters in charge of environmental concerns is like putting a fox in charge of a chicken coop. He is inevitably going to relax pollution control at every turn because it saves his masters money.
In this he is working for an industry that is rabidly trying to deny global warming is reality, and his government duty apparently involved handling and approving reports and scientific data on global warming. He apparently altered the studies to reflect the desires of his masters instead of the reality found by the researchers.
Its called conflict of interest and in this case it was blatant.
I might buy your arguement from British Petroleum because their is at least a chance they are environmentally conscious. But. Exxon has one of the worst environmental records of any oil company on the planet(remember the Exxon Valdez) and they ain't changing, they are just engaged in a full court press to deny and suppress global warming and to make sure limits are NEVER places on CO2 emmissions even if it means this planet turns uninhabitable. In this they are working hand in hand with the Bush administration so the U.S. will go another 4 years in denial on global warming, at least.
God you are such a pedant. His district offices are in Arlington and Ennis. He was born in Ennis. Ennis is just south of Dallas. Arlington is in squarly between Dallas and Ft. Worth, right next to IRVING.
:)
Excuse me for living for saying he is from Dallas, technicly he is from the Dallas Suburbs, Whoooooopppppppeeeeeee you are so smart
The point is his district office in Arlington is a few miles from Exxon headquarters in Irving.
"However, it is also the case that when they do, they are acting in direct opposition to the tenets of their religion. See for example Romans 12:17-20. The same is *not* true of Islam, which gets mixed signals from the Koran (2.177 - 193, e.g.)."
Why yes it is mostly against the teaching of Christ but the bible as a whole gives just as much a mixed message as the Koran does. That doesn't change the fact that the U.S. military is massively Christian, the Air Force Academy has developed a rep for a fanatical cadre of born agains who try to convert or hound out anyone who hasn't found Jesus. Once the graduate they will no doubt go on to kill people with abandon from on high and in Jesus' name. Many Christian churches have been pro war and pro killing thoughout American history. The U.S. prays as it kills people in wars just as much as Muslims and Jews do. There are very few Christian sects who in fact practice non violence, like the Quakers and Amish. Some main stream churches are pro war to the point of being bloody thirsty.
"Third, your point about the veils is bizarre. No one has *ever* said to *anyone* in a wedding "you must wear a veil." My wife wore one -- her choice, mind you -- because she thought it was pretty"
You missed the point, it is a cultural tradition to wear a veil at Christian weddings, its a cultural tradition and Islamic doctrine for women to cover their heads if not their entire head all the time. Christian nuns cover their heads too. The point is if you have this uncontrollable urge to inflict your cultural biases on other cultures, I'm of the opinion they should be able to tell you to not do things that offend them. For example how would Americans feel if Muslim countries forced Americans to stop consuming alcohol. They have a good case for that, alcohol is a devestatingly bad drug, they are on the right side of the issue. If you want to tell them what women can and can't wear is it OK if they tell you what you can and can't do?
"But don't blame it on some cabal of "Washington Christians"
Dude you aren't paying attention. There IS a cabal of "Washington Christians" along with some "Washington Jews" and they are killing, disappearing and torturing people with abandon, all of whom happen to be Muslim.
A bizarre example covered in New Yorker recently is Patrick Henry College. It was founded in 2000 when the Republicans swept in to power. Its student body is entirely home schooled Christians, people who have never been corrupted by contact with the public education system, or heathens. Their entire student body is actively working in Republican political campaigns and they all get fast tracks to internships in top spots in the Federal government including the White House and Karl Roves office, and leading conservative think tanks. They ARE a "Washington Chrisitan Cabal" being groomed to reign over America from now to eternity, or at least until the rapture takes them all to Jesus.
"The claim was made that conservative Christians are just the same as the Taliban."
"Just the same" is a stretch but there is a lot of disturbing" similarity which is why people keep drawing the parallel. Born again Christians are hell bent on trying to inflict their world view on people who don't like or want their world view. They don't approve of abortion so they want to force women to ride out unwanted pregnancies and raise unwanted kids who have a propensity to turn in to criminals, or put a new wave of kids in to foster care, orphanages and adoption. They don't approve of homosexuality so they want to drive people who are unavoidably gay back in to the closet if not out of society. The whole problem here is when some Muslim country tries to force their ideaology on people you get your panties in a twist. When American Christians do the same thing you rationalize and turn a blind eye becuase you wear cultural blinders, your culture always good, everyone elses culture always bad (unless of course they make it exactly like yours).
Bottomline learn to live and let live. Forgive and forget. Don't pass judgement on others. That is a world view Christ would have approved of.
I'm thinking Ireland. They have a booming, economy, speak English, like to party and I think have a shortage of high tech workers. Their government is unfortunately a little pro Bush for my liking sometimes, and they are in NATO, but they have a pretty stong and vocal anti Bush faction.
From this article I gather the anti Iraq war movement there is doing their best to offer all the large number of U.S. soldiers that transit through Ireland on the way to Iraq asylum if they don't want to kill (often civilians) and be killed in a war based on lies.
Its obviously a very Catholic country which has its issues but I'll take Catholics over born again nut jobs most days.
Canada is #2 and New Zealand #3 on my list assuming you want an English speaking country. I wish Australia could be on the list but their government is as whacked in the head as the U.S. and U.K.
The big problem emmigrating these days is thanks to globalization and a global American empire its getting harder and harder to find a corner of the world that hasn't been ruined by the influence of the U.S and its multinational corporations.
With troops in about 120 countries, CIA and FBI probably the same number, programs like Rendition in which the U.S. can snatch anyone, anywhere and send them to be tortured, there really isn't any place to get away from the U.S. anymore. At some point people are going to have to start saying no to the insanity currently infecting America before it infects the whole world.
Imagine my shock when I learned that a Congressman from Dallas, Texas would be trying to stifle information on global warming. I don't think Joe's Arlington district includes Irving, Texas but its right next door.
What's in Irving, why the headquarters of Exxon Mobile, one of the corporations most rabidly fighting any suggestion their products might be wrecking the climate. I doubt you are going to find many politicians from Texas, including the President, who are going to give global warming a fair hearing if they value there political careers and their power base in Texas.
Exxon is the one who hired Philip Cooney, Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality the day after he quit amid controversy. The irony of a former and now once again oil man heading anything on enviromental quality. He resigned when it was exposed that he had been repeatedly altering, or maybe doctoring is a better word, government reports on global warming to downplay it, to suppress data showing it might be happening and that burning fossil fuels might be contributing to it.
I think SOSUS is manned, but by reservists, its slowly fading away not because the mission has dwindled, but because its obsolete.
Its been supplanted by IUSS(Integrated Undersea Surveillance System) which is monitored by regular Navy personel.
Lockheed has a $100-150 million dollar contract for Phase II IUSS which I think is coming online any time now.
There are still plenty of submarine threats in the world and the U.S. isn't going to stop tracking them anytime soon.
I'm pretty sure I was using it in my sig before Michael Moore did. I had a set of Bushism's I used to rotate through my sig before he got reelected. He's great because he's stuck his foot in his mouth so many times on tape, which is why Moore saw a movie in him. Now we are stuck with him so no point, this quote is a favorite, especially remember him the tux and white tie, smirking while he said it. Doesn't matter that Al Gore was sitting next to him a tux when he said it either. Fact is anyone who lands a Presidential nomination these days has nothing but fat cats as their base, maybe a different set but all fat cats all the time, and a lot of the fat cats are switch hitters.
" American Christians do not issue fatwas on their opponents." :)
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Well duh. A Fatwah is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar[WordNet]. Aren't a lot if Islamic scholars among American Christians
Perhaps you were overgeneralizing and are really refering to a few specific Fatwahs which were issued to justify a death sentence against Rushdi or the one's Al Qaeda have issued to justify there actions. They were issued by extemists and its debatable if they really confrom to Islamic law. Whatever they are pretty exceptional.
American Christian's don't quite do Fatwas because their isn't nearly as much Christian law as their is Islamic law, especially once you get past the ten commandments.
But Christians do most assuredly exact revenge on opponents, launch Jihads and kill the enemies of their faith. Thats petty much what the Crusades were multiple times, over hundreds of years. Crusaders did round up, slaught and brutalize people for their faith. Christians over the centuries have done it just as much as any religion.
I'd be inclined to say the Bush administration basicly issued a Fatwah against Saddam Hussein, and Manuel Noriega and when the U.S. issues a Fatwah it has the weapons to make it stick.
I'd say all the multimillion dollar rewards for the capture of terrorist like Bin Laden are pretty much modern Fatwah's backed by cash, just like the one issued against Rushdi. For some reason the Fatwah against Bin Laden and his right hand man hasn't worked. I wonder why that is?
I'd say the semi secret Rendition program is an exceptionally good Fatwah program. The Christians in Washington identify a potential Muslim enemy anywhere in the world, and they are all Muslim. a jet with a team of masked men sweep in, snatch him and send him to be tortured for his sins. Same...Same.
"They don't force women to wear veils"
Well it sure is a common practice at Christian weddings. Granted its over the top when women are forced to wear veils, especially burka class, but dude that is part of culture. Most cultures and religions have quirky traits that have been there for centuries to millenia. It obviously ticks you off because you want everyone else to adopt your cultural standards, but some people find American cultural standards offensive too. You can't really get all holier than thou about women's rights. Women have had rights in the U.S. for a VERY brief period by historical standards. I'm sure you want to force this very new standard on the world very fast because American's tend to be in a hurry, just beware cultures that have been around for a thousand years or more may not appreciate you trying to inflict your very new culture on them overnight. The U.S. tried it in Iraq. What did you do. You took Iraq from a secular dictator where women had more rights than in most Muslim countries, didn't wear burkha, had careers, and turned it over to a Shia majority which is as we speak is writing a consitution based on Islamic law and are MAKING women wear veils when the didn't have to under Saddam. I gather Basra, the Shia heartland is starting to resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban.
"don't carry out suicide bombings for the sake of their cause."
They don't have to, they have F-16's and Apache helicopers to drop the bombs without the suicide part. Suicide bombings are the last resort of desperate people, sometimes brainwashed but not always, who are severely outgunned, mostly by the U.S. and Israel. Affluent American Christians are fat, happy and in power. You don't get suicide bombers from that demographic. If American Christians were run out of their homes at the end of gun, pushed in to refugee camps in grinding poverty, had what homes they have bulldozed, spat on and killed by occupying soldiers, they would be suicide bomber too. Please stop the holier than thou crap. Its easy to be sanctimonious when you are rich, well fed and powerful.
Dude, get a life and stop posting about a sig. I've heard it about 50 times and I DON'T CARE. Much truth is said in jest and it says pretty much everything you need to know about the Bush family.