(Although to kill a russian woman might well take the amount of force required to kill a Western man, da?)
That would have been so much more amusing if you had made it into a "In Soviet Russia..." joke. I can not in good conscious mod you up;) That and I've already commented in this article;)
(Legitimate resistance against combatants of an occupying force is something else, however).
Against combatants yes. Driving a truck bomb into a US Marines barracks is a legitimate activity of resistance. Strapping explosives to your chest and walking into a pizzeria with the objective of killing as many civilians as possible is not, IMHO anyway. Many countries (including my own) have managed to obtain their independence without blowing up women and children.
I hope people don't conclude from that Islamic faith is the problem but look into the root cause
I don't think that Islam is the problem. I just wish people would stop using it as justification for their own political agendas. Christianity has much the same problem -- people who murder abortion doctors come to mind -- but Christian extremists haven't been able to inflict as much suffering on the World as Islamic ones have (in our generation that is), so they don't get as much attention.
As a random thought I've never understood why the Palestinians don't borrow some lessons from Gandhi or Mandela. Americans would certainly look at their struggle in a whole new light if they stopped bombing civilians and undertook a campaign of civil disobedience. As it stands right now all we see are people blowing up women and children -- and you can imagine how people react to images like those.
No, it's not. But it could be a defense with the FCC/Congress or other regulatory agencies. Just wait until some Congresscritter can't VPN back into his office because of a policy like this -- that's when attention will start being paid to these issues.
Kind of like how nobody in power gave a shit about the Gestapo^WTSA until some Congressman/Senator had to take HIS shoes off or found HIMSELF on the no fly list.
(I know it's beside your point, but the evidence I cited was from Hadith, not the Quran, and I'd rather not have the two confused!)
I realized that sometime after I hit submit, but alas/. doesn't give you the ability to go back and edit mistakes, so all I can do is apologize for my error.
A little ironic but I think it's better for both sides that false information about Islam stops spreading.
I would agree with that. But I think my point is still valid. I don't really care if the guy who killed me did so because his faith told him to or because of socioeconomic conditions that left him hopeless and despondent. I'm just as dead either way.
Time just had a very interesting article about suicide bombers. It was focused specifically on female suicide bombers but it still gives a pretty interesting look at what motivates them. Faith is an undeniable part of it. It might be a twisted reading of that faith but it's still there nonetheless.
because many there believe (and rightly so IMHO) that the US enables Israel to commit human rights violations by supplying them with weapons and protecting them from critical UN resolutions
Many in the US believe that elements of the Muslim world would be all to happy to push Israel back into the ocean if they had the chance. How many wars of aggression have been launched against Israel?
Take the UN vote on the security barrier for example. The barrier was voted as illegal by 150 nations and only 6 nations
If you want Americans to take the UN seriously then stand up and speak out against those that use the General Assembly as a forum for their not-so-thinly veiled antisemitism. If you want us to take the UN seriously then let's start making the member nations actually live up to the ideals of the UN -- starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
If I was an Israeli I wouldn't give a shit about the rest of World thinking the security barrier was illegal. All I'd care about is whether or not it would reduce the number of suicide bombings in my country. I admire your ideals but I wonder how long they'd survive if you ran the risk of being blown up every time you went out for pizza or groceries.
The US is regularly the lone vetoer of UN resolutions critical of Israel and has used 8 of its last 10 vetoes to prevent criticism against Israel - in total 36 out of 77.
And China and Russia are regularly the sole countries that prevent the UN from taking meaningful action on any number of issues (starting with Iran's flagrant violations of the NPT and the ongoing genocide in Sudan) -- so what's your point? That nations look out after their own (perceived or actual) interests instead of living up the ideals of the UN charter?
Would you not be cheering if US executed some communist/whatever spies that spied against you and your country and trying to hurt you from within?
No, I wouldn't be cheering. And there's a bit of a difference between a Government doing it after all due process was accorded to the accused and a group of militants doing it in public with the intent of scaring the local population.
She commented on how friendly and welcoming the people were there, and that she did not feel threatened at any time.
The people aren't the problem. The people are rarely the problem. The Government is the problem. The people have actually tried to change it through the Democratic process -- and the Mullahs overrode them and forbade the opposition parties from being on the ballot.
Anyone whom thinks the Iranian people are the problem hasn't looked very deeply at the situation.
And killing of women, children or elderly in war is directly forbidden
Who cares if the Koran says that killing women and children in war is forbidden? I only care about actions -- and you can't deny that the Islamic terrorist types are killing women and children. Granted, we are killing them too ("collateral damage") so I'm not trying to pretend that we are perfect -- but I'm wondering why you even bothered to use that quote when nobody we are fighting actually lives up to that ideal?
Either the shareholders will start wondering why so much of the company's profit is being spent on stupid shit, and begin firing all the top management
I take that you didn't read the way that GOOG sells it's shares. My understanding is that the regular shareholders will never have enough voting power to override Google's overlords. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Sony was screwed. And hey, they may still be screwed. They certainly lost the lucrative console market
And your giving all the credit for that to MSFT? Didn't this thing have something to do with it? Does MSFT have an answer for that yet?
Ballmer understands- Google is a one-trick pony. What do they make money on besides search?
And what happens if Google leverages it's internet operations into a application hosting platform that makes the PC into a fancy dumb terminal? What does MSFT look like if the Windows/Office monopoly goes away?
I don't know which one of them will win but I think you are being far too dismissive of Google and giving Ballmer way too much credit. If he thinks Google is a one trick pony and that search isn't all that why does he get wet every time he thinks about buying up Yahoo?
Slightly higher tax? In my state the total taxes on cigarettes approaches something like 350%.
I don't have a problem with the concept of taxes. I have a problem with the Government using tax policy to try and change behaviors of mine that it doesn't like for whatever reason. Freedom of choice and all that, remember?
I bet there's some vice where suddenly you'd change your tune. Would you intervene if a friend was getting into crack cocaine?
No, actually there isn't a vice that would make me change my tune. I'm getting pretty tired of our war on vice. I might have a talk with my friend if his usage of crack cocaine started to interfere with his life/work/studies -- but I'd do the same if he was abusing alcohol or fast food -- and the limit of my 'intervention' would be a conversation.
The fact that there's a sin tax indicates that the electorate, on balance, wants to interfere with your right to smoke cheaply (either that, or democracy isn't working - let's leave that discussion for another day) for your own good
No, the fact that there's a sin tax indicates that it's easier for politicians to raise money by increasing taxes on alcohol or cigarettes then it is for them to raise income taxes. I don't buy the bullshit argument that it's needed to recoup costs imposed by people who get sick over smoking/drinking. If that's the case then why the fuck did every local Government in Upstate New York spend their tobacco settlement money on pork barrel projects like a new justice building (in my area)? Gee, I thought that money was supposed to go into the Medicaid system and be used to treat lung cancer/other smoking related illnesses?
Whether/you/ see it as their business or not, is immaterial.
I'm sorry, as a citizen of a representative Democracy my opinions/concerns are as valid as yours and dismissing them as 'immaterial' reeks of arrogance.
Because friends don't let friends ${bad_thing}. So (if we lived in the same country) I am helping you, by voting for a government that dissuades you from ${bad_thing}.
Where I'm from friends don't impose their own views of what is and is not bad on you.
If I'm an adult and make an informed decision to smoke cigarettes I really don't see how that's any business of yours or the Governments.
A hell of a lot of it is cigarette filters, which generally takes years to degrade so they have to be picked-up. Why should I have to pay someone to do that from my taxes? Note that I feel the same way about chewing gum - there should be a hefty tax on it to pay for clearing the stuff up...
How about actually enforcing littering laws instead of taxing those that don't litter? Why should I pay extra for chewing gym because some people don't dispose of it properly?
Because what you do with your body ends up costing the government a lot of money in the long run... and by extension all the rest of us who choose *not* to engage in such risky behavior.
Why should I be forced to pay higher health insurance premiums and taxes because you get lung cancer, diabetes or emphysema that's directly related to your smoking?
In principle I understand where you are coming from -- now try to understand where I am coming from. We've already given up too much of our freedom of choice. If the cost of universal health care is the loss of my freedom to control my own body then I don't think it's worthwhile.
but I cant see how people can support taxing lower income folks who go through a pack a day but not this
We should get rid of cigarette taxes altogether, IMHO. It's a great idea in theory but why the hell should the Government be regulating what I do with my body?
AFAIK, drug testing has no impact on your medical insurance rates. If your piss comes back positive you may lose your job or suffer some form of disciplinary action depending on your employers policies but I don't think it has any direct relationship to your medical insurance. Ditto for drinking -- why they even bother to ask is beyond me -- I just lie and put down that I don't.
Well, there's having an opinion and then there's having an opinion that is completely unjustified if you study the history behind an event.
I hate to use a computer game to prove my point, but Hearts of Iron has a pretty good representation of the United States in the 30s. The game starts in 1936 -- and the ONLY branch of the American armed forces that is worth anything is the Navy. You spend most of the next five years catching up on research and building up your forces -- and you still aren't ready when 1941 rolls around.
There's a reason why in the real world it took until 1944 before the Allies had the capability to liberate Western Europe. It took that long to establish air superiority over Western Europe, train the forces involved and build the logistical apparatus to support them. And even with all that preparation the Allies still managed to outrun their supply lines and had to pause for several months at the German border before they could proceed further.
I'm saying they did comparatively little considering their size, wealth, and industrial capacity.
And why do you suppose that is?
Might it have been the bad taste left in the mouth of Americans after they intervened in the last European War? The bad taste caused by the failure of certain nations to repay their wartime loans to the United States. The bad tasted caused by France riding roughshod over Germany and imposing a harsh peace over Wilson's objections? The harsh peace that contributed to German resentment and helped set the stage for the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Don't give Americans grief for being isolationists in the 30s without bothering to research why they became isolationists. A lot of it had to do with Allied actions after WW1 and a general American apathy towards colonial powers, which is what France and the United Kingdom were at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
(Although to kill a russian woman might well take the amount of force required to kill a Western man, da?)
That would have been so much more amusing if you had made it into a "In Soviet Russia..." joke. I can not in good conscious mod you up ;) That and I've already commented in this article ;)
(Legitimate resistance against combatants of an occupying force is something else, however).
Against combatants yes. Driving a truck bomb into a US Marines barracks is a legitimate activity of resistance. Strapping explosives to your chest and walking into a pizzeria with the objective of killing as many civilians as possible is not, IMHO anyway. Many countries (including my own) have managed to obtain their independence without blowing up women and children.
I hope people don't conclude from that Islamic faith is the problem but look into the root cause
I don't think that Islam is the problem. I just wish people would stop using it as justification for their own political agendas. Christianity has much the same problem -- people who murder abortion doctors come to mind -- but Christian extremists haven't been able to inflict as much suffering on the World as Islamic ones have (in our generation that is), so they don't get as much attention.
As a random thought I've never understood why the Palestinians don't borrow some lessons from Gandhi or Mandela. Americans would certainly look at their struggle in a whole new light if they stopped bombing civilians and undertook a campaign of civil disobedience. As it stands right now all we see are people blowing up women and children -- and you can imagine how people react to images like those.
Wow, you have zero optimism. I'm not yet that cynical.
No, it's not. But it could be a defense with the FCC/Congress or other regulatory agencies. Just wait until some Congresscritter can't VPN back into his office because of a policy like this -- that's when attention will start being paid to these issues.
Kind of like how nobody in power gave a shit about the Gestapo^WTSA until some Congressman/Senator had to take HIS shoes off or found HIMSELF on the no fly list.
(I know it's beside your point, but the evidence I cited was from Hadith, not the Quran, and I'd rather not have the two confused!)
I realized that sometime after I hit submit, but alas /. doesn't give you the ability to go back and edit mistakes, so all I can do is apologize for my error.
A little ironic but I think it's better for both sides that false information about Islam stops spreading.
I would agree with that. But I think my point is still valid. I don't really care if the guy who killed me did so because his faith told him to or because of socioeconomic conditions that left him hopeless and despondent. I'm just as dead either way.
Time just had a very interesting article about suicide bombers. It was focused specifically on female suicide bombers but it still gives a pretty interesting look at what motivates them. Faith is an undeniable part of it. It might be a twisted reading of that faith but it's still there nonetheless.
Well, if that's your attitude I'd be surprised if 1% of the customer base has ever used ssh altogether -- never mind sftp.
My point was in response to the GPs "which is not normal for an SSH connection" remark.
You can identify them because the local to remote packet size is typically large and continuous, which is not normal for an SSH connection
I take it you've never used scp or sftp before?
because many there believe (and rightly so IMHO) that the US enables Israel to commit human rights violations by supplying them with weapons and protecting them from critical UN resolutions
Many in the US believe that elements of the Muslim world would be all to happy to push Israel back into the ocean if they had the chance. How many wars of aggression have been launched against Israel?
Take the UN vote on the security barrier for example. The barrier was voted as illegal by 150 nations and only 6 nations
If you want Americans to take the UN seriously then stand up and speak out against those that use the General Assembly as a forum for their not-so-thinly veiled antisemitism. If you want us to take the UN seriously then let's start making the member nations actually live up to the ideals of the UN -- starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
If I was an Israeli I wouldn't give a shit about the rest of World thinking the security barrier was illegal. All I'd care about is whether or not it would reduce the number of suicide bombings in my country. I admire your ideals but I wonder how long they'd survive if you ran the risk of being blown up every time you went out for pizza or groceries.
The US is regularly the lone vetoer of UN resolutions critical of Israel and has used 8 of its last 10 vetoes to prevent criticism against Israel - in total 36 out of 77.
And China and Russia are regularly the sole countries that prevent the UN from taking meaningful action on any number of issues (starting with Iran's flagrant violations of the NPT and the ongoing genocide in Sudan) -- so what's your point? That nations look out after their own (perceived or actual) interests instead of living up the ideals of the UN charter?
If we just BUTT OUT of the world militarily and politically
Refresh my memory: What happened the last time we tried isolationism as a foreign policy?
Would you not be cheering if US executed some communist/whatever spies that spied against you and your country and trying to hurt you from within?
No, I wouldn't be cheering. And there's a bit of a difference between a Government doing it after all due process was accorded to the accused and a group of militants doing it in public with the intent of scaring the local population.
She commented on how friendly and welcoming the people were there, and that she did not feel threatened at any time.
The people aren't the problem. The people are rarely the problem. The Government is the problem. The people have actually tried to change it through the Democratic process -- and the Mullahs overrode them and forbade the opposition parties from being on the ballot.
Anyone whom thinks the Iranian people are the problem hasn't looked very deeply at the situation.
And killing of women, children or elderly in war is directly forbidden
Who cares if the Koran says that killing women and children in war is forbidden? I only care about actions -- and you can't deny that the Islamic terrorist types are killing women and children. Granted, we are killing them too ("collateral damage") so I'm not trying to pretend that we are perfect -- but I'm wondering why you even bothered to use that quote when nobody we are fighting actually lives up to that ideal?
Either the shareholders will start wondering why so much of the company's profit is being spent on stupid shit, and begin firing all the top management
I take that you didn't read the way that GOOG sells it's shares. My understanding is that the regular shareholders will never have enough voting power to override Google's overlords. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Sony was screwed. And hey, they may still be screwed. They certainly lost the lucrative console market
And your giving all the credit for that to MSFT? Didn't this thing have something to do with it? Does MSFT have an answer for that yet?
Ballmer understands- Google is a one-trick pony. What do they make money on besides search?
And what happens if Google leverages it's internet operations into a application hosting platform that makes the PC into a fancy dumb terminal? What does MSFT look like if the Windows/Office monopoly goes away?
I don't know which one of them will win but I think you are being far too dismissive of Google and giving Ballmer way too much credit. If he thinks Google is a one trick pony and that search isn't all that why does he get wet every time he thinks about buying up Yahoo?
Slightly higher tax? In my state the total taxes on cigarettes approaches something like 350%.
I don't have a problem with the concept of taxes. I have a problem with the Government using tax policy to try and change behaviors of mine that it doesn't like for whatever reason. Freedom of choice and all that, remember?
No, actually there isn't a vice that would make me change my tune. I'm getting pretty tired of our war on vice. I might have a talk with my friend if his usage of crack cocaine started to interfere with his life/work/studies -- but I'd do the same if he was abusing alcohol or fast food -- and the limit of my 'intervention' would be a conversation.
The fact that there's a sin tax indicates that the electorate, on balance, wants to interfere with your right to smoke cheaply (either that, or democracy isn't working - let's leave that discussion for another day) for your own goodNo, the fact that there's a sin tax indicates that it's easier for politicians to raise money by increasing taxes on alcohol or cigarettes then it is for them to raise income taxes. I don't buy the bullshit argument that it's needed to recoup costs imposed by people who get sick over smoking/drinking. If that's the case then why the fuck did every local Government in Upstate New York spend their tobacco settlement money on pork barrel projects like a new justice building (in my area)? Gee, I thought that money was supposed to go into the Medicaid system and be used to treat lung cancer/other smoking related illnesses?
WhetherI'm sorry, as a citizen of a representative Democracy my opinions/concerns are as valid as yours and dismissing them as 'immaterial' reeks of arrogance.
Where I'm from friends don't impose their own views of what is and is not bad on you.
If I'm an adult and make an informed decision to smoke cigarettes I really don't see how that's any business of yours or the Governments.
How about actually enforcing littering laws instead of taxing those that don't litter? Why should I pay extra for chewing gym because some people don't dispose of it properly?
In principle I understand where you are coming from -- now try to understand where I am coming from. We've already given up too much of our freedom of choice. If the cost of universal health care is the loss of my freedom to control my own body then I don't think it's worthwhile.
Then how can I opt out of that system so that I can retain the freedom to do whatever I want with my own body?
Please explain to me how taxing the hell out of cigarettes prevents people from exposing you to second hand smoke?
I didn't say that I was opposed to laws outlawing smoking in public places, now did I?
We should get rid of cigarette taxes altogether, IMHO. It's a great idea in theory but why the hell should the Government be regulating what I do with my body?
AFAIK, drug testing has no impact on your medical insurance rates. If your piss comes back positive you may lose your job or suffer some form of disciplinary action depending on your employers policies but I don't think it has any direct relationship to your medical insurance. Ditto for drinking -- why they even bother to ask is beyond me -- I just lie and put down that I don't.
Well, there's having an opinion and then there's having an opinion that is completely unjustified if you study the history behind an event.
I hate to use a computer game to prove my point, but Hearts of Iron has a pretty good representation of the United States in the 30s. The game starts in 1936 -- and the ONLY branch of the American armed forces that is worth anything is the Navy. You spend most of the next five years catching up on research and building up your forces -- and you still aren't ready when 1941 rolls around.
There's a reason why in the real world it took until 1944 before the Allies had the capability to liberate Western Europe. It took that long to establish air superiority over Western Europe, train the forces involved and build the logistical apparatus to support them. And even with all that preparation the Allies still managed to outrun their supply lines and had to pause for several months at the German border before they could proceed further.
And why do you suppose that is?
Might it have been the bad taste left in the mouth of Americans after they intervened in the last European War? The bad taste caused by the failure of certain nations to repay their wartime loans to the United States. The bad tasted caused by France riding roughshod over Germany and imposing a harsh peace over Wilson's objections? The harsh peace that contributed to German resentment and helped set the stage for the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Don't give Americans grief for being isolationists in the 30s without bothering to research why they became isolationists. A lot of it had to do with Allied actions after WW1 and a general American apathy towards colonial powers, which is what France and the United Kingdom were at the time.
Did I say otherwise?
Call me a hopeless optimist, but I think that there will eventually be a technological solution to this problem.