It almost sounds like they don't really want to sell the things.
No, it sounds like the damn carrier (AT&T in this case), as usual, has way too much power and is holding back true innovation by restricting what the device maker (Apple) in this case can offer to their customers.
Motorola, Nokia, etc, etc all have the same complaints about American carriers. Crippled phones that consumers don't want, disabled bluetooth profiles, the complete carrier control over what goes on the phone, etc, etc, etc. None of this is new.
I've linked this document before, but I'll link it again. A call to apply wireless network neutrality and Carterfone rules to the cell industry. A must read for anybody that thinks need practices need to end. Forward it to your State and Federal elected officials. Sooner or later this has to stop.
Or it could be the RIAA/MPAA suggesting to AT&T that cracking down on piracy would be a good way to avoid dealing with hordes of high-priced entertainment industry lawyers for many years....
Cuz, AT&T doesn't have their own hordes of high-priced lawyers that could make it a very expensive proposition for RIAA/MPAA to go after them.
Seriously. I had some short-lived respect for Verizon (since pissed away by the way that their wireless company does business) when they told RIAA to go fuck themselves and refused to turn over the name of their client.
I doubt that RIAA/MPAA would pick a fight with somebody that had the resources to fight back. Their MO seems to be going after people that can't afford to defend themselves and avoiding actual battles in court against those that can because they don't want case law created that works against them in the future.
I don't mind so much the giving of the ticket. It's the pointless/loaded questions like "Why were you driving that fast?", and "Do you know how fast you were going?", and being lectured at as if I were their retarded 6 year old step-child.
The reason they do that isn't to lecture you. It's to get you to make some sort of admission of guilt that they can use against you later. In New York our State Troopers (who have absolutely no history of corruption at all), now have thermal printers in their cruisers. They will print the ticket and the supporting deposition directly off and then hand it to you. If you make a statement like "I was late to work", it will be included on the supporting deposition and will be used against you if you can't reach an agreement with the DA and want your day in court.
You are pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don't. You probably have less then a one in ten chance of talking your way out of a ticket -- kiss that chance goodbye if you lie to them or refuse to own up to the fact that you were speeding. But by owning up to that you provide an admission of guilt that they will be all to happy to use against you later. My reaction to a traffic stop depends on the police agency involved (some are nicer then others), the attitude of the cop and how badly I was speeding. If I sense that it's an asshole cop and I'm getting the ticket anyway then I'm not going to tell them anything. There's no law that says you have to engage in a conversation with them.
Aside from my two tickets, I've been pulled over a few other times, and in every case but one, the office has fit the typical power-drunk asshole stereotype.
The city cops here (Binghamton) are fairly chill -- unless you lie to them or otherwise piss them off. I blew through a red light once (saw the green arrow for the next lane and thought it was mine) on my way home. I'd had two beers. Officer asked me if I had been drinking -- told him yes, I just had two with some friends. He let me go -- didn't even ticket me for the light. Had I denied it, with beer on my breath and having just left a bar at 12:30AM, I suspect that I would have been breath tested (I would have passed, but that's not the point) and ticketed for running the light.
The other story of course are the state troopers. The last time I got a ticket from them he was a complete power-tripping dickwad asshole, who completely stereotyped me based on my car (an old beater), asked to search it (I told him no, he didn't push it beyond that), and went so far as to write a selt-belt ticket because my lap belt was unbuckled (car had automatic belts for the shoulder straps). He refused to believe me when I told him that I unbuckled it to get my wallet out for my drivers license.
The phone lines in whatever building you're in are very likely older than you. Do you want Verizon to spend the money on upgrading and replacing those runs of copper with new runs of copper?
There are arguments to be made for copper -- like the fact that it's line powered and doesn't rely on a UPS/battery on site to provide service, or the fact that it may be more secure (FIOS uses unpowered hubs and sends your packets into every house on your block, yeah they are presumably encrypted, but with copper I have a dedicated pair of wires), or the fact that it's cheaper.
Yes, fiber is probably a better bet for the future, but don't pretend that copper doesn't have it's advantages either. Something tells me that even if you remove the power outages from the calculation that the FiOS network will not manage the four nines of reliability that well maintained copper networks have.
I'm also kind of surprised that I made it this far into the discussion and nobody noted how evil Verizon is being with the FiOS rollout. Get FiOS installed at your house and they remove the copper drop from the pole. Kiss any chance of using a CLEC for POTS or DSL service goodbye. They aren't required to let the CLECs onto the fiber network. This will slowly destroy whatever competition we had for dial-tone service.
States have a powerful function as "laboratories of democracy," as I believe someone said
That would be Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Sandra Day O'Connor had a similar thought process in her dissent in Gonzales v. Raich: "Federalism promotes innovation by allowing for the possibility that "a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."
MS is notorious for leaving too much information in the document without being visible to the plain eye.
Yes they are and it's more then fair to say that. It's not fair however to make a blanket statement of "MS products have no place in government. This is a glaring example of why."
The only thing that this is a "glaring example" of is of ID10T users that can't follow proper procedure for handling classified information. One would suspect that heads will probably roll over this -- even though it wasn't that serious of a leak.
Some users in Government take classified data home with them to work on it even though that is specifically against procedure. Is that also Microsoft's fault?
You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?
Well, yeah, they actually probably do, but only in no-bid contracts awarded to whatever company the Director of the Federal agency requesting the contract worked for previously.;)
I have always been saying that MS products have no place in government
Yes, because this is all Microsoft's fault. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the incompetence of the person/people who created this Powerpoint show and left classified data in the version that was released to the public.
If only the Feds were using an open-source solution. An open-source slide show program would have been smart enough to realize that they left classified data in the document and would have alerted them prior to the document being released to the public.
From TFA, it soundly like somebody forgot to strip the hidden data.
This right here is proof as far as I'm concerned that anybody who seriously thinks that the US Government staged 9/11, shot down TWA 800, killed JFK or faked the Apollo landings really needs to have their head examined.
Seriously. This seems like the third or forth story along these lines in as many weeks. Recall the Coalition Provisional Authority leaks because somebody couldn't disable the previous versions feature of word. And now this?
I'm sorry, but our Government is too incompetent to manage any of the things above. I kinda wish they were in a way... then maybe Iraq wouldn't be such a mess, Katrina would have been handled correctly and 9/11 wouldn't have happened.
Isn't that what price fixing laws and anti-trust laws are meant to protect us from?
You must be new here.....
Seriously though. This is hardly news. Ever actually read your cell phone contract? They promise you nothing. You aren't even promised service if you are standing directly below one of their towers absorbing enough RF to melt that candy bar in your pocket.
Don't like it? Don't have a cell phone. They all do this. Ditto for ISPs. The only solution is to classify internet access and cellular phones as a utility (they are the utilities of the 21st century) and regulate them. Good luck making that happen though when they own our elected officials.
Or made sure they didn't join the soviet union (which some wanted).
Really? Which countries are those again? Poland didn't want to be a part of the Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc. I kinda doubt any part of Germany did either, seeing as how the Red Army basically raped and pillaged it's way across Germany in the closing days of WW2.
There were communist movements in many European countries (Greece comes to mind) but what country willingly wanted to "join" the Soviet Union? In fact, Yugoslavia (a communist country) made a point to get out of the Eastern Bloc as soon as they were able to do so. The Hungarian Revolution would also seem to suggest that most people who fell under the thumb of the Eastern Bloc were less then happy about it.
You can really look at all that history and the actions of the Soviet Union under Stalin and tell me that you would rather the United States hadn't stuck around in Europe after WW2? Say what you will about the United States/NATO/the West/what have you but there weren't armed uprisings against any of the countries on this side of the iron curtain.
Yeah, like you started the war when the Japanese started shooting at you.
I was referring to the fact that Europeans started and fought WW2, not Germans specifically. It seems interesting to bemoan the fact that the United States (and Russia to an extent) is so heavily involved in European affairs without looking at history to find out why. If the Western Powers had treated a defeated Germany with respect then it's probable that Hitler never comes to power. If France and the UK had actually fought the opening stages of WW2 instead of sitting around waiting to be attacked it's probable that Germany would have been defeated in 1939/40 and that the United States and Russia never would have been part of the war. Or if they had stood up to him during the Sudetenland Crisis instead of abandoning Czechoslovakia.
This has been an interesting conversation but I honestly don't see you changing your viewpoints about the United States. It's interesting that people are rooting for our downfall -- I suspect that if the United States was replaced with another superpower that everybody would decide to starting rooting against them as well (unless that superpower is their own country of course) regardless of anything good or bad that they may do.
But when people feel threatened they vent how they can.
Yes, because the American tourist sitting at an open-air cafe in Florence eating lunch with his girlfriend is really threatening and deserves to be insulted and mocked even though he was minding his own business and trying to enjoy the day.
I didn't ask you for "help"
No, your leaders did.
The primitives need to slug it out - and unless you can keep the parties in opposing ringsides for several generations they are back at it when you turn yours
There wouldn't have been that whole mess if the Western Powers after WW1 hadn't got the bright idea of creating an artificial country. Come to think of it there might not have been a WW2 if the Western Powers had listened to Wilson (*gasp*, an American!) and treated the defeated Central Powers with some respect and humility instead of breaking the backbone of the German economy and setting the stage for Hitler's rise to power.
But perhaps it entitles you to think you are the center of the universe and that all who breathes envy you?
And statements like that are what pisses me off about people like you. You spout so much anti-American nonsense that you anger the moderate people like me that might actually listen to your viewpoint if you presented it with some tact and less rhetoric. I personally don't like Bush. I personally don't like some of the things my country has done lately. But when you start trashing us and spouting the same old anti-American nonsense that I expect from the likes of Hugo Chavez you encourage Americans to close ranks and unite against you.
I'm sure that happens once the americans are less pro american
Unlike most Europeans we aren't ashamed of what we are and we aren't falling all over ourselves trying to apologize for Western civilization.
and more than 40% believe in Evolution.
Again with the blanket statements that serve no purpose other then pissing educated Americans off. You realize that statements like that close the door to any meaningful debate with the educated and moderate Americans that are likely on your side to begin with? My first reaction upon reading that was to type "go fuck yourself" but I restrained myself.
That money was economic imperialism, spent in an attempt to buy control over Western Europe. Though interestingly enough nations who receive little "aid" (Germany, Austria, Italy) grew more in post war years than nations who received a lot (Sweden, Greece and Britian)
That's funny because Germany and Italy received a lot more aid then Sweden did. And that money was 'economic imperialism'? So the United States helps to rebuild your countries, after you destroyed them in a war that you started, and you look upon that as imperialism? Has the US never done a single positive thing in your World?
everbody in germany below the age of 70 does not have anything at all to do with what some people did many many years ago - to even suggest its ironic is stupid
To tell me that I should be ashamed because of my leader is equally stupid. To be rude to me when I'm a guest in your country because of my leader is equally stupid. What, you can dish it out but you can't take it?
You seem to think that the United States is holding you down. By all means go it alone without us. Can we have all of our money from the Marshall Plan and post WW2 aid please? How about our war debts (some of which date back to the first world war) that you never repaid? How about that little mess down in the Balkans that you couldn't even solve without our help (via NATO) not ten years ago? How about the Berlin airlift and defending the people of Germany against Russian vengeance for their crimes on the Eastern Front?
Now I'm not saying that all of that entitles us to walk all over you. But I do think that the blind and arrogant anti-Americanism shown by many Europeans really needs to end. Try a constructive dialog sometime. You'll find it more productive then spouting off the latest bit of propaganda spoon-fed to you by those that hate or envy the United States.
GM, Ford and Chrysler have to devote $3,000 per car just to servicing pension and healthcare entitlements to their RETIRED employees
They made those promises back in the day. They should have to live up to them. Do you have a better idea? Should the taxpayers assume those obligations because the big three can't live up to them? Should we have a taxpayer financed healthcare system so that companies don't have to make these promises to begin with?
This is money that the Japanese automakers are able to devote to design
You realize that not 10 years ago GM was rolling in record profits thanks to the SUV boom of the 90s right? The unions are to blame for them not investing some of that cash into R&D? The unions are to blame for them ignoring the demand for more fuel efficient vehicles? The unions are to blame for them never bothering to research hybrid technology and for not following up on what they learned with the EV1?
So yes, just about everything thats wrong with Detroit right now is because of the unions.
Yes, the buck stops at the unions, not the CEOs office. Management bears none of the responsibility at all for a series of bad decisions that started in the 60s.
Do with it? Just keep it where it is - of course not spending money on all kinds of other crap would help.
You wouldn't even be able to have that welfare state if you hadn't been leaning on the United States for your collective defense for the last 60 years. If Europe had to foot the cost of building a large enough military machine to resist the Soviet Union where would it be today?
Ah, you noticed a "more or less" attitude - the people who hate are the ones who lost family and friends because of military intervention - you haven't bombed europe lately (just snatched a few citizens illegaly)
Yes, a "more or less" attitude. Most of the people that I've met in Europe had nice things to say about the United States and nice things to say about Americans. Most of them didn't much care for Bush, but that's hardly an opinion limited to Europe (seen his approval ratings lately?).
do you have a problem with the German leader Andrea Merkel?
Well, I think she should have slapped Bush when he started giving her that massage, but that's just me;)
Or is it irony because you feel justified in blaming people living today for what a certain Austrian guy did more than 60 years ago?
Did I say I blamed them? I only said that it was ironic that they used the words "you should be ashamed of your leader". There's nothing in American history that comes close to what Germany did in WW2 and as the old saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The unions have disconnected that reality from the American part of the industry and thats a big part of the reason why GM, Ford and Chrysler are suffering.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the fact that GM, Ford and Chrysler continue to roll out gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks at a time when gas prices are $3/gal. It has nothing to do with the fact that they willingly ceded the small car/sedan market to the Japanese a long time ago to focus on SUVs and trucks. It has nothing to do with the fact that no American auto company has innovated anything in decades. It has nothing to do with the fact that during the oil crisis in the 70s they ignored consumer demand and continued to roll out giant boats of cars that guzzled gas. It has nothing to do with the fact that Japan and Korea can make an economy car and not a cheap car (huge difference there -- my $10,000 Kia doesn't feel as poorly made and as cheap as a $10,000 Ford or Dodge).
Yeah, Detroit's problems are all the fault of the unions. Management can't be blamed at all for their fall. Damn unions.
Not only that, but I'm sure that anyone smart enough to hide everything and cover their trail, wouldn't leave personal information for their spouse to find.
Yeah, there's this really advanced technology, called hotmail, that can be used to obtain an e-mail address your spouse doesn't know about;)
Let me know how that goes for you. Just as soon as you figure out what to do with your welfare state, how the command structure for your forces will work and how you will bring the rest of the EU (some of whom actually like the United States) on board with your plan to unite against the US.
I've been to Italy, the UK, Ireland, Greece and Turkey, all in the last three years. And most of the people that I met had a more or less positive opinion of the US. They dislike some of our actions and most of them hate Bush (common ground because I hate him as well), but they don't view us as an enemy.
In fact the only people I've ever encountered hostility from where either French (big surprise) or Germans. I don't even have to do anything other then be present to piss them off. French tourists in Florence talking about my girlfriend and I -- not even bothering to lower their voices and just assuming that neither one of us spoke their language. But my all time favorite moment came at the Uffizi in Florence when a group of German tourists told me, in English that I should be "ashamed" to be an American because of my leader.
Germans telling somebody that they should be ashamed because of their leader (whom I didn't even vote for, FYI). That's irony.
Perhaps the US would become a country similar to present-day France
You mean with a cultural inferiority complex to go with our lack of economic and military clout? Somehow I don't see that happening. American culture has always been willing to embrace, extend and assimilate the best of other cultures. The French refuse to do this.
or Spain
Spain hasn't been a great power for hundreds of years. You might make a case for them being one on paper for part of that time -- at least until the Spanish-American war -- but even that is doubtful.
calling for a boycot on Californian wine
Go ahead. The only thing that sucks more then Californian wine is French wine;) (yes, I'm from one of the wine producing states of the US that gets no respect and is completely overshadowed by California)
France has about 350 nuclear weapons (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_F rance) each of them could destroy a city the size of Los Angeles. Do you mean that a few cities here and there in the US would not be totally destroyed, hence the "victory"?)
Well, for starters, the GP's arrogant statement was that the EU could "atomic-bitchslap" the United States and Russia. If an American postured like that he would have been jumped all over by the Europeans reading the thread. Instead my reply that pointed out that the EU would be completely destroyed if it attempted that has been jumped on by people insisting that the EU could destroy the US or Russia.
I maintain that is not the case. It would be impossible to disarm the United States or Russia with a first strike, both nations have warning systems, huge stockpiles of weapons and SSBN fleets that are basically invulnerable to attack. So your choice as the leader of the EU looking to "atomic-bitchslap" them is to murder tens or hundreds of millions of civilians.
One has to realize that a stockpile of 350 weapons doesn't mean you can destroy 350 cities. Modern nuclear weapons are smaller then years past and modern targeting strategy typically says that you blanket an area with several weapons to obtain maximum destruction. So let's say that they utterly destroy the 50 largest cities in both the United States and Russia. So you've destroyed 100 cities between the US and Russia. Both countries are completely devastated beyond comprehension. Hundreds of millions of people are dead. Both economies are set back decades. Infrastructure that took decades to build has been destroyed.
And what happens now? The United States and Russia launch a massive counter-strike. Russia has at least 7,200 active nuclear weapons. The United States has over 5,000. Europe is completely destroyed and ceases to exist. A new dark age probably begins. But the United States and Russia have the surviving population and means to rebuild. It will take decades, maybe even centuries. But it would happen. Europe no longer exists.
In any case this is all a moot point. No European leader is likely to attempt to "atomic-bitchslap" the United States or Russia. But anybody that thinks that Europe could "destroy" either country is drinking the kool-aid.
You are most probably using software from my country too. What's the point?
My point was to call the GP's post for the idiocy that it was. Normally I'm content to let the typical anti-American bitching go unanswered because it seems to be the "in" thing these days. But the GP's stupidity rose to a new level. He doesn't just hate the United States. He hates Russia. He seems to think that the EU could "bitchslap" both countries. I tend to doubt that.
You can say exactly the same thing reversed: France has a bit less than 100 ato mic bo nbs, each of them can destroy a city like NY. The result is that each of us can destroy the other.
Do you really want to play this tit-for-tat game? Even assuming that France was able to successfully deliver all 100 of their bombs (a huge assumption given that we could probably get some of them with a first strike), equally split between the United States and Russia, so what?
Take away the 50 largest cities in the United States and Russia. You set back both countries by decades and kill tens or hundreds of millions of people. And what happens in return? France ceases to exist as a nation-state. Every square kilometer of France is glassed. The French language and culture cease to exist as anything other then an academic discussion.
I'm sorry, but the EU can't "destroy" the United States or Russia. They can hurt them very badly -- enough that thinking about war between the EU and the US or Russia is pointless (MAD works here) -- but they can't destroy them.
Slashdot Mirror
It almost sounds like they don't really want to sell the things.
No, it sounds like the damn carrier (AT&T in this case), as usual, has way too much power and is holding back true innovation by restricting what the device maker (Apple) in this case can offer to their customers.
Motorola, Nokia, etc, etc all have the same complaints about American carriers. Crippled phones that consumers don't want, disabled bluetooth profiles, the complete carrier control over what goes on the phone, etc, etc, etc. None of this is new.
I've linked this document before, but I'll link it again. A call to apply wireless network neutrality and Carterfone rules to the cell industry. A must read for anybody that thinks need practices need to end. Forward it to your State and Federal elected officials. Sooner or later this has to stop.
Or it could be the RIAA/MPAA suggesting to AT&T that cracking down on piracy would be a good way to avoid dealing with hordes of high-priced entertainment industry lawyers for many years....
Cuz, AT&T doesn't have their own hordes of high-priced lawyers that could make it a very expensive proposition for RIAA/MPAA to go after them.
Seriously. I had some short-lived respect for Verizon (since pissed away by the way that their wireless company does business) when they told RIAA to go fuck themselves and refused to turn over the name of their client.
I doubt that RIAA/MPAA would pick a fight with somebody that had the resources to fight back. Their MO seems to be going after people that can't afford to defend themselves and avoiding actual battles in court against those that can because they don't want case law created that works against them in the future.
I don't mind so much the giving of the ticket. It's the pointless/loaded questions like "Why were you driving that fast?", and "Do you know how fast you were going?", and being lectured at as if I were their retarded 6 year old step-child.
The reason they do that isn't to lecture you. It's to get you to make some sort of admission of guilt that they can use against you later. In New York our State Troopers (who have absolutely no history of corruption at all), now have thermal printers in their cruisers. They will print the ticket and the supporting deposition directly off and then hand it to you. If you make a statement like "I was late to work", it will be included on the supporting deposition and will be used against you if you can't reach an agreement with the DA and want your day in court.
You are pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don't. You probably have less then a one in ten chance of talking your way out of a ticket -- kiss that chance goodbye if you lie to them or refuse to own up to the fact that you were speeding. But by owning up to that you provide an admission of guilt that they will be all to happy to use against you later. My reaction to a traffic stop depends on the police agency involved (some are nicer then others), the attitude of the cop and how badly I was speeding. If I sense that it's an asshole cop and I'm getting the ticket anyway then I'm not going to tell them anything. There's no law that says you have to engage in a conversation with them.
Aside from my two tickets, I've been pulled over a few other times, and in every case but one, the office has fit the typical power-drunk asshole stereotype.
The city cops here (Binghamton) are fairly chill -- unless you lie to them or otherwise piss them off. I blew through a red light once (saw the green arrow for the next lane and thought it was mine) on my way home. I'd had two beers. Officer asked me if I had been drinking -- told him yes, I just had two with some friends. He let me go -- didn't even ticket me for the light. Had I denied it, with beer on my breath and having just left a bar at 12:30AM, I suspect that I would have been breath tested (I would have passed, but that's not the point) and ticketed for running the light.
The other story of course are the state troopers. The last time I got a ticket from them he was a complete power-tripping dickwad asshole, who completely stereotyped me based on my car (an old beater), asked to search it (I told him no, he didn't push it beyond that), and went so far as to write a selt-belt ticket because my lap belt was unbuckled (car had automatic belts for the shoulder straps). He refused to believe me when I told him that I unbuckled it to get my wallet out for my drivers license.
The phone lines in whatever building you're in are very likely older than you. Do you want Verizon to spend the money on upgrading and replacing those runs of copper with new runs of copper?
There are arguments to be made for copper -- like the fact that it's line powered and doesn't rely on a UPS/battery on site to provide service, or the fact that it may be more secure (FIOS uses unpowered hubs and sends your packets into every house on your block, yeah they are presumably encrypted, but with copper I have a dedicated pair of wires), or the fact that it's cheaper.
Yes, fiber is probably a better bet for the future, but don't pretend that copper doesn't have it's advantages either. Something tells me that even if you remove the power outages from the calculation that the FiOS network will not manage the four nines of reliability that well maintained copper networks have.
I'm also kind of surprised that I made it this far into the discussion and nobody noted how evil Verizon is being with the FiOS rollout. Get FiOS installed at your house and they remove the copper drop from the pole. Kiss any chance of using a CLEC for POTS or DSL service goodbye. They aren't required to let the CLECs onto the fiber network. This will slowly destroy whatever competition we had for dial-tone service.
States have a powerful function as "laboratories of democracy," as I believe someone said
That would be Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Sandra Day O'Connor had a similar thought process in her dissent in Gonzales v. Raich: "Federalism promotes innovation by allowing for the possibility that "a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."
Where are those justices when you need them?
As a general rule, judges don't appreciate people playing games to obey the *letter* of the law while breaking the spirit of it.
Unless those people are large corporations, rich people or politicians, right? That's what you meant to say, right?
Sponsored by AT&T
You mean "the new at&t" don't you? It's lowercase now so it's less threatening!
MS is notorious for leaving too much information in the document without being visible to the plain eye.
Yes they are and it's more then fair to say that. It's not fair however to make a blanket statement of "MS products have no place in government. This is a glaring example of why."
The only thing that this is a "glaring example" of is of ID10T users that can't follow proper procedure for handling classified information. One would suspect that heads will probably roll over this -- even though it wasn't that serious of a leak.
Some users in Government take classified data home with them to work on it even though that is specifically against procedure. Is that also Microsoft's fault?
You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?
Well, yeah, they actually probably do, but only in no-bid contracts awarded to whatever company the Director of the Federal agency requesting the contract worked for previously. ;)
I have always been saying that MS products have no place in government
Yes, because this is all Microsoft's fault. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the incompetence of the person/people who created this Powerpoint show and left classified data in the version that was released to the public.
If only the Feds were using an open-source solution. An open-source slide show program would have been smart enough to realize that they left classified data in the document and would have alerted them prior to the document being released to the public.
From TFA, it soundly like somebody forgot to strip the hidden data.
This right here is proof as far as I'm concerned that anybody who seriously thinks that the US Government staged 9/11, shot down TWA 800, killed JFK or faked the Apollo landings really needs to have their head examined.
Seriously. This seems like the third or forth story along these lines in as many weeks. Recall the Coalition Provisional Authority leaks because somebody couldn't disable the previous versions feature of word. And now this?
I'm sorry, but our Government is too incompetent to manage any of the things above. I kinda wish they were in a way... then maybe Iraq wouldn't be such a mess, Katrina would have been handled correctly and 9/11 wouldn't have happened.
Isn't that what price fixing laws and anti-trust laws are meant to protect us from?
You must be new here.....
Seriously though. This is hardly news. Ever actually read your cell phone contract? They promise you nothing. You aren't even promised service if you are standing directly below one of their towers absorbing enough RF to melt that candy bar in your pocket.
Don't like it? Don't have a cell phone. They all do this. Ditto for ISPs. The only solution is to classify internet access and cellular phones as a utility (they are the utilities of the 21st century) and regulate them. Good luck making that happen though when they own our elected officials.
Or made sure they didn't join the soviet union (which some wanted).
Really? Which countries are those again? Poland didn't want to be a part of the Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc. I kinda doubt any part of Germany did either, seeing as how the Red Army basically raped and pillaged it's way across Germany in the closing days of WW2.
There were communist movements in many European countries (Greece comes to mind) but what country willingly wanted to "join" the Soviet Union? In fact, Yugoslavia (a communist country) made a point to get out of the Eastern Bloc as soon as they were able to do so. The Hungarian Revolution would also seem to suggest that most people who fell under the thumb of the Eastern Bloc were less then happy about it.
You can really look at all that history and the actions of the Soviet Union under Stalin and tell me that you would rather the United States hadn't stuck around in Europe after WW2? Say what you will about the United States/NATO/the West/what have you but there weren't armed uprisings against any of the countries on this side of the iron curtain.
Yeah, like you started the war when the Japanese started shooting at you.
I was referring to the fact that Europeans started and fought WW2, not Germans specifically. It seems interesting to bemoan the fact that the United States (and Russia to an extent) is so heavily involved in European affairs without looking at history to find out why. If the Western Powers had treated a defeated Germany with respect then it's probable that Hitler never comes to power. If France and the UK had actually fought the opening stages of WW2 instead of sitting around waiting to be attacked it's probable that Germany would have been defeated in 1939/40 and that the United States and Russia never would have been part of the war. Or if they had stood up to him during the Sudetenland Crisis instead of abandoning Czechoslovakia.
This has been an interesting conversation but I honestly don't see you changing your viewpoints about the United States. It's interesting that people are rooting for our downfall -- I suspect that if the United States was replaced with another superpower that everybody would decide to starting rooting against them as well (unless that superpower is their own country of course) regardless of anything good or bad that they may do.
Only time and history will tell I suppose.
But when people feel threatened they vent how they can.
Yes, because the American tourist sitting at an open-air cafe in Florence eating lunch with his girlfriend is really threatening and deserves to be insulted and mocked even though he was minding his own business and trying to enjoy the day.
I didn't ask you for "help"
No, your leaders did.
The primitives need to slug it out - and unless you can keep the parties in opposing ringsides for several generations they are back at it when you turn yours
There wouldn't have been that whole mess if the Western Powers after WW1 hadn't got the bright idea of creating an artificial country. Come to think of it there might not have been a WW2 if the Western Powers had listened to Wilson (*gasp*, an American!) and treated the defeated Central Powers with some respect and humility instead of breaking the backbone of the German economy and setting the stage for Hitler's rise to power.
But perhaps it entitles you to think you are the center of the universe and that all who breathes envy you?
And statements like that are what pisses me off about people like you. You spout so much anti-American nonsense that you anger the moderate people like me that might actually listen to your viewpoint if you presented it with some tact and less rhetoric. I personally don't like Bush. I personally don't like some of the things my country has done lately. But when you start trashing us and spouting the same old anti-American nonsense that I expect from the likes of Hugo Chavez you encourage Americans to close ranks and unite against you.
I'm sure that happens once the americans are less pro american
Unlike most Europeans we aren't ashamed of what we are and we aren't falling all over ourselves trying to apologize for Western civilization.
and more than 40% believe in Evolution.
Again with the blanket statements that serve no purpose other then pissing educated Americans off. You realize that statements like that close the door to any meaningful debate with the educated and moderate Americans that are likely on your side to begin with? My first reaction upon reading that was to type "go fuck yourself" but I restrained myself.
That money was economic imperialism, spent in an attempt to buy control over Western Europe. Though interestingly enough nations who receive little "aid" (Germany, Austria, Italy) grew more in post war years than nations who received a lot (Sweden, Greece and Britian)
That's funny because Germany and Italy received a lot more aid then Sweden did. And that money was 'economic imperialism'? So the United States helps to rebuild your countries, after you destroyed them in a war that you started, and you look upon that as imperialism? Has the US never done a single positive thing in your World?
everbody in germany below the age of 70 does not have anything at all to do with what some people did many many years ago - to even suggest its ironic is stupid
To tell me that I should be ashamed because of my leader is equally stupid. To be rude to me when I'm a guest in your country because of my leader is equally stupid. What, you can dish it out but you can't take it?
You seem to think that the United States is holding you down. By all means go it alone without us. Can we have all of our money from the Marshall Plan and post WW2 aid please? How about our war debts (some of which date back to the first world war) that you never repaid? How about that little mess down in the Balkans that you couldn't even solve without our help (via NATO) not ten years ago? How about the Berlin airlift and defending the people of Germany against Russian vengeance for their crimes on the Eastern Front?
Now I'm not saying that all of that entitles us to walk all over you. But I do think that the blind and arrogant anti-Americanism shown by many Europeans really needs to end. Try a constructive dialog sometime. You'll find it more productive then spouting off the latest bit of propaganda spoon-fed to you by those that hate or envy the United States.
GM, Ford and Chrysler have to devote $3,000 per car just to servicing pension and healthcare entitlements to their RETIRED employees
They made those promises back in the day. They should have to live up to them. Do you have a better idea? Should the taxpayers assume those obligations because the big three can't live up to them? Should we have a taxpayer financed healthcare system so that companies don't have to make these promises to begin with?
This is money that the Japanese automakers are able to devote to design
You realize that not 10 years ago GM was rolling in record profits thanks to the SUV boom of the 90s right? The unions are to blame for them not investing some of that cash into R&D? The unions are to blame for them ignoring the demand for more fuel efficient vehicles? The unions are to blame for them never bothering to research hybrid technology and for not following up on what they learned with the EV1?
So yes, just about everything thats wrong with Detroit right now is because of the unions.
Yes, the buck stops at the unions, not the CEOs office. Management bears none of the responsibility at all for a series of bad decisions that started in the 60s.
Do with it? Just keep it where it is - of course not spending money on all kinds of other crap would help.
You wouldn't even be able to have that welfare state if you hadn't been leaning on the United States for your collective defense for the last 60 years. If Europe had to foot the cost of building a large enough military machine to resist the Soviet Union where would it be today?
Ah, you noticed a "more or less" attitude - the people who hate are the ones who lost family and friends because of military intervention - you haven't bombed europe lately (just snatched a few citizens illegaly)
Yes, a "more or less" attitude. Most of the people that I've met in Europe had nice things to say about the United States and nice things to say about Americans. Most of them didn't much care for Bush, but that's hardly an opinion limited to Europe (seen his approval ratings lately?).
do you have a problem with the German leader Andrea Merkel?
Well, I think she should have slapped Bush when he started giving her that massage, but that's just me ;)
Or is it irony because you feel justified in blaming people living today for what a certain Austrian guy did more than 60 years ago?
Did I say I blamed them? I only said that it was ironic that they used the words "you should be ashamed of your leader". There's nothing in American history that comes close to what Germany did in WW2 and as the old saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The unions have disconnected that reality from the American part of the industry and thats a big part of the reason why GM, Ford and Chrysler are suffering.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the fact that GM, Ford and Chrysler continue to roll out gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks at a time when gas prices are $3/gal. It has nothing to do with the fact that they willingly ceded the small car/sedan market to the Japanese a long time ago to focus on SUVs and trucks. It has nothing to do with the fact that no American auto company has innovated anything in decades. It has nothing to do with the fact that during the oil crisis in the 70s they ignored consumer demand and continued to roll out giant boats of cars that guzzled gas. It has nothing to do with the fact that Japan and Korea can make an economy car and not a cheap car (huge difference there -- my $10,000 Kia doesn't feel as poorly made and as cheap as a $10,000 Ford or Dodge).
Yeah, Detroit's problems are all the fault of the unions. Management can't be blamed at all for their fall. Damn unions.
Not only that, but I'm sure that anyone smart enough to hide everything and cover their trail, wouldn't leave personal information for their spouse to find.
Yeah, there's this really advanced technology, called hotmail, that can be used to obtain an e-mail address your spouse doesn't know about ;)
Hence the external enemy to unite the internal.
Let me know how that goes for you. Just as soon as you figure out what to do with your welfare state, how the command structure for your forces will work and how you will bring the rest of the EU (some of whom actually like the United States) on board with your plan to unite against the US.
I've been to Italy, the UK, Ireland, Greece and Turkey, all in the last three years. And most of the people that I met had a more or less positive opinion of the US. They dislike some of our actions and most of them hate Bush (common ground because I hate him as well), but they don't view us as an enemy.
In fact the only people I've ever encountered hostility from where either French (big surprise) or Germans. I don't even have to do anything other then be present to piss them off. French tourists in Florence talking about my girlfriend and I -- not even bothering to lower their voices and just assuming that neither one of us spoke their language. But my all time favorite moment came at the Uffizi in Florence when a group of German tourists told me, in English that I should be "ashamed" to be an American because of my leader.
Germans telling somebody that they should be ashamed because of their leader (whom I didn't even vote for, FYI). That's irony.
Perhaps the US would become a country similar to present-day France
You mean with a cultural inferiority complex to go with our lack of economic and military clout? Somehow I don't see that happening. American culture has always been willing to embrace, extend and assimilate the best of other cultures. The French refuse to do this.
or Spain
Spain hasn't been a great power for hundreds of years. You might make a case for them being one on paper for part of that time -- at least until the Spanish-American war -- but even that is doubtful.
calling for a boycot on Californian wine
Go ahead. The only thing that sucks more then Californian wine is French wine ;) (yes, I'm from one of the wine producing states of the US that gets no respect and is completely overshadowed by California)
I don't think US can destroy nuclear submarines
Yeah, because they have forcefields and are immune to attack.
France has about 350 nuclear weapons (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_F rance) each of them could destroy a city the size of Los Angeles. Do you mean that a few cities here and there in the US would not be totally destroyed, hence the "victory"?)
Well, for starters, the GP's arrogant statement was that the EU could "atomic-bitchslap" the United States and Russia. If an American postured like that he would have been jumped all over by the Europeans reading the thread. Instead my reply that pointed out that the EU would be completely destroyed if it attempted that has been jumped on by people insisting that the EU could destroy the US or Russia.
I maintain that is not the case. It would be impossible to disarm the United States or Russia with a first strike, both nations have warning systems, huge stockpiles of weapons and SSBN fleets that are basically invulnerable to attack. So your choice as the leader of the EU looking to "atomic-bitchslap" them is to murder tens or hundreds of millions of civilians.
One has to realize that a stockpile of 350 weapons doesn't mean you can destroy 350 cities. Modern nuclear weapons are smaller then years past and modern targeting strategy typically says that you blanket an area with several weapons to obtain maximum destruction. So let's say that they utterly destroy the 50 largest cities in both the United States and Russia. So you've destroyed 100 cities between the US and Russia. Both countries are completely devastated beyond comprehension. Hundreds of millions of people are dead. Both economies are set back decades. Infrastructure that took decades to build has been destroyed.
And what happens now? The United States and Russia launch a massive counter-strike. Russia has at least 7,200 active nuclear weapons. The United States has over 5,000. Europe is completely destroyed and ceases to exist. A new dark age probably begins. But the United States and Russia have the surviving population and means to rebuild. It will take decades, maybe even centuries. But it would happen. Europe no longer exists.
In any case this is all a moot point. No European leader is likely to attempt to "atomic-bitchslap" the United States or Russia. But anybody that thinks that Europe could "destroy" either country is drinking the kool-aid.
You are most probably using software from my country too. What's the point?
My point was to call the GP's post for the idiocy that it was. Normally I'm content to let the typical anti-American bitching go unanswered because it seems to be the "in" thing these days. But the GP's stupidity rose to a new level. He doesn't just hate the United States. He hates Russia. He seems to think that the EU could "bitchslap" both countries. I tend to doubt that.
You can say exactly the same thing reversed: France has a bit less than 100 ato mic bo nbs, each of them can destroy a city like NY. The result is that each of us can destroy the other.
Do you really want to play this tit-for-tat game? Even assuming that France was able to successfully deliver all 100 of their bombs (a huge assumption given that we could probably get some of them with a first strike), equally split between the United States and Russia, so what?
Take away the 50 largest cities in the United States and Russia. You set back both countries by decades and kill tens or hundreds of millions of people. And what happens in return? France ceases to exist as a nation-state. Every square kilometer of France is glassed. The French language and culture cease to exist as anything other then an academic discussion.
I'm sorry, but the EU can't "destroy" the United States or Russia. They can hurt them very badly -- enough that thinking about war between the EU and the US or Russia is pointless (MAD works here) -- but they can't destroy them.