I was going to say that what I took from it was that no amount of permissive licensing and publisher story whoring would make me read Cory Doctorow's books.:)
What is also certain is that if Palestine keeps doing what they are doing, sending suicide bombers and rockets, it will end up worse than them than for Israel. The best option for them is to decide to live in peace. In fact it may be the only thing that can be done.
The problem is that the country of Israel can decide it's not going to be South Africa for the new millenium, but that even, say, Hamas can't decide that no one in the Gaza Strip is going to get sick of being treated like shit and do something violent.
Do you really believe that if Israel just left Palestine alone, the Palestinians would do the same?
Maybe, maybe not.
What's certain is that if Israel keeps doing what it's doing, it's going to keep getting what it's been getting in the form of suicide bombers and rockets and what not.
I don't know if a workable two-state peaceful solution is possible; I do know that it's really the only way Israel can survive as a democratic-ish Jewish state, which it seems to want to do. Their other options are: genocide/ethnic cleansing, ceasing to be a Jewish state (if they have all the land, such as all of Jerusalem, they're essentially wanting to claim as part of Israel, they no longer have a Jewish majority), or ceasing to be at least nominally a democracy (and becoming an explicitly Apartheid state.)
I don't think any of those other options is ultimately good for Israel, and I don't think at this point the ruling/majority forces in Israeli politics are able to see or admit to it, so I think it falls to ally nations like America to tell Israel it can't have what it wants, because what it wants right now is not good for it. Just as you don't give a heroin addict more heroin even though it's what they really want (if you're a good friend to them), America shouldn't support Israeli policy that's ultimately going to be self-destructive to it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the political will for that exists yet in America, either.
I'm saying Israel would be insane to give Palestine their freedom when so many Palestinians have the goal of destroying Israel.
And Palestinians would be insane to stop hating Israel as long as Israel is oppressing the shit out of them.
At some point, your choices either are genocide, or somebody has to be the bigger man -- and it has to be the somebody who has all the power.
I'll go further and say that if an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank ends up like the withdrawal from the Gaza strip, then the Palestinians are better off with Israel in charge than Hamas. The Palestinians on the Gaza strip don't know how to take care of themselves.
You might also ask why a Hamas is in power in Gaza in the first place. That doesn't happen in a vacuum either. Talking doesn't seem to be getting them anywhere with Israel, so people get frustrated and back violent solutions.
People in Gaza also might be able to take better care of themselves if they weren't severely blockaded.
It's strange to me that so frequently in history we see one country decide that some enemy group or country will crumble if hit hard enough or oppressed long enough, even though the first country believes it wouldn't give up under the same conditions. I mean, we have (in America) movies like Red Dawn that are fantasies about fighting an invading power at any cost, and yet we're somehow surprised when we invade an Afghanistan and the same thing happens to us? Similarly I bet if you polled Israelis about whether they'd give up if they were living under the shitty conditions in Gaza, nine out of ten of them would tell you it would only make them more stubborn about giving up -- and yet somehow they think what they're doing to Gaza will force a regime change rather than put ever more violent people into power? I don't get it.
Except you have, at the very least, a chicken and the egg problem here.
Look at it from the Palestinian side for a moment. Do you think that, for example, colonial Americans were right to have a revolutionary war and win freedom from England? There's absolutely no question that Israel is treating Palestine a lot worse than England ever treated colonial America. How much does a nation need to oppress you before you're willing to do something about it?
Israel's in a shitty position, no question of that -- but a shitty position does not justify all wrongs.
They are both doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons, but Israel is in the stronger position so they naturally look like the bad guy.
Well... yeah. If you and I hate each other but I'm stabbing you because I have a knife and you don't, that probably doesn't just make me look like the bad guy, it actually makes me the bad guy.
It's true that Israel is in a rough position and it's surrounded by a lot of people that mean it harm; it's also true that that rough position doesn't make right all manner of ills they inflict in a misguided attempt to be safe.
The truth is if the Israelis were less civil they would have driven the Palestinians out by force a long time ago. Instead they have been adamant but patient about getting what they want, occasionally fighting skirmishes with them instead of just blowing them all to hell and back, like they are completely capable of.
Another angle might be that committing relatively blatant genocide might not be worth the price in intellectual political capital. Especially when you're a country that was originally created by largely external powers in response to someone else trying to commit genocide against you.
I think you're crazy -- it seems pretty clear to me that at this point Israel's government has gone off in a direction that has no interest in coexisting in two separate states with Palestine than China has in the same arrangement with Tibet. They want to stall for time, build settlements, and ultimately end up with everything contested.
Frankly, if America was a good friend to Israel, at this point it'd stage an alcoholic-style intervention -- Israel's current actions just can't get it what it wants. With the course it's currently on, at some point it either needs to give up on the idea of being a Jewish state (which I think most pro-Israel people would call a loss) or it becomes a true apartheid state (which I don't think ultimately serves its interests, either.)
Both, at some point, were winners based on merit in the market before they ever had network effects on their side, even if you don't necessarily agree on the merits by which the market chose.
The difference is that you like one of the companies/products and don't like the other's, so you need to find a justification for why that one is better/okay.
I dare say that of any MMO out there now, or that will come out in the next 10 years, for any feature that they care to claim is new or groundbreaking, I could find a MUD that had something similar 10-20 years ago.
That kind of influence on an industry this size is pretty much the definition of "vitally relevant."
This really nails the essence of why this topic is relevant, even if 90% of this article's thread so far is lost in the usual arguments around Wikipedia. I would mod you up if I had points.
You don't automatically become evil and have to make penance, Roman Catholic-indulgence style, when you become rich.
No; although, if you're rocking the Christian set of ethics, Jesus had something to say about rich men getting into heaven, which essentially is: they're not going to.
Basically, the success of the iPod is what separates you, as a NeXT fan, from the AmigaOS and BeOS fan. Each dead OS did some clever things ahead of its time, and each was an utter market failure despite being beloved by hobbyists.
The guy who said you're making an OS/2->Windows argument has it right.
But if today's moderation is any guideline, somebody thinks NeXT is so beyond criticism that anyone who doesn't hail it as the second coming is clearly a troll.
I always felt that NeXT was overhyped for what it was, and remember it more for Steve Jobs repeatedly asserting how awesome and ahead of its time it was than any actual technical accomplishments. (Which isn't to say it didn't have some technical accomplishments.) Your mileage may vary.
I did. I just don't consider Christopher Chantrill credible. He's starting from a conclusion and then looking for numbers to support what he's already decided is true, rather than the other way around.
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I was going to say that what I took from it was that no amount of permissive licensing and publisher story whoring would make me read Cory Doctorow's books. :)
What is also certain is that if Palestine keeps doing what they are doing, sending suicide bombers and rockets, it will end up worse than them than for Israel. The best option for them is to decide to live in peace. In fact it may be the only thing that can be done.
The problem is that the country of Israel can decide it's not going to be South Africa for the new millenium, but that even, say, Hamas can't decide that no one in the Gaza Strip is going to get sick of being treated like shit and do something violent.
Do you really believe that if Israel just left Palestine alone, the Palestinians would do the same?
Maybe, maybe not.
What's certain is that if Israel keeps doing what it's doing, it's going to keep getting what it's been getting in the form of suicide bombers and rockets and what not.
I don't know if a workable two-state peaceful solution is possible; I do know that it's really the only way Israel can survive as a democratic-ish Jewish state, which it seems to want to do. Their other options are: genocide/ethnic cleansing, ceasing to be a Jewish state (if they have all the land, such as all of Jerusalem, they're essentially wanting to claim as part of Israel, they no longer have a Jewish majority), or ceasing to be at least nominally a democracy (and becoming an explicitly Apartheid state.)
I don't think any of those other options is ultimately good for Israel, and I don't think at this point the ruling/majority forces in Israeli politics are able to see or admit to it, so I think it falls to ally nations like America to tell Israel it can't have what it wants, because what it wants right now is not good for it. Just as you don't give a heroin addict more heroin even though it's what they really want (if you're a good friend to them), America shouldn't support Israeli policy that's ultimately going to be self-destructive to it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the political will for that exists yet in America, either.
I'm saying Israel would be insane to give Palestine their freedom when so many Palestinians have the goal of destroying Israel.
And Palestinians would be insane to stop hating Israel as long as Israel is oppressing the shit out of them.
At some point, your choices either are genocide, or somebody has to be the bigger man -- and it has to be the somebody who has all the power.
I'll go further and say that if an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank ends up like the withdrawal from the Gaza strip, then the Palestinians are better off with Israel in charge than Hamas. The Palestinians on the Gaza strip don't know how to take care of themselves.
You might also ask why a Hamas is in power in Gaza in the first place. That doesn't happen in a vacuum either. Talking doesn't seem to be getting them anywhere with Israel, so people get frustrated and back violent solutions.
People in Gaza also might be able to take better care of themselves if they weren't severely blockaded.
It's strange to me that so frequently in history we see one country decide that some enemy group or country will crumble if hit hard enough or oppressed long enough, even though the first country believes it wouldn't give up under the same conditions. I mean, we have (in America) movies like Red Dawn that are fantasies about fighting an invading power at any cost, and yet we're somehow surprised when we invade an Afghanistan and the same thing happens to us? Similarly I bet if you polled Israelis about whether they'd give up if they were living under the shitty conditions in Gaza, nine out of ten of them would tell you it would only make them more stubborn about giving up -- and yet somehow they think what they're doing to Gaza will force a regime change rather than put ever more violent people into power? I don't get it.
+1 on that.
#2 still holds up pretty well as an action movie. The whole problem is that the story seems like it's going somewhere cool and then... doesn't in #3.
Except you have, at the very least, a chicken and the egg problem here.
Look at it from the Palestinian side for a moment. Do you think that, for example, colonial Americans were right to have a revolutionary war and win freedom from England? There's absolutely no question that Israel is treating Palestine a lot worse than England ever treated colonial America. How much does a nation need to oppress you before you're willing to do something about it?
Israel's in a shitty position, no question of that -- but a shitty position does not justify all wrongs.
They are both doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons, but Israel is in the stronger position so they naturally look like the bad guy.
Well... yeah. If you and I hate each other but I'm stabbing you because I have a knife and you don't, that probably doesn't just make me look like the bad guy, it actually makes me the bad guy.
It's true that Israel is in a rough position and it's surrounded by a lot of people that mean it harm; it's also true that that rough position doesn't make right all manner of ills they inflict in a misguided attempt to be safe.
The truth is if the Israelis were less civil they would have driven the Palestinians out by force a long time ago. Instead they have been adamant but patient about getting what they want, occasionally fighting skirmishes with them instead of just blowing them all to hell and back, like they are completely capable of.
Another angle might be that committing relatively blatant genocide might not be worth the price in intellectual political capital. Especially when you're a country that was originally created by largely external powers in response to someone else trying to commit genocide against you.
I think you're crazy -- it seems pretty clear to me that at this point Israel's government has gone off in a direction that has no interest in coexisting in two separate states with Palestine than China has in the same arrangement with Tibet. They want to stall for time, build settlements, and ultimately end up with everything contested.
Frankly, if America was a good friend to Israel, at this point it'd stage an alcoholic-style intervention -- Israel's current actions just can't get it what it wants. With the course it's currently on, at some point it either needs to give up on the idea of being a Jewish state (which I think most pro-Israel people would call a loss) or it becomes a true apartheid state (which I don't think ultimately serves its interests, either.)
To the victors go the spoils. The Arabs started both those wars and the arabs can live with the consequences.
... is what we would say, if we were six years old and/or unfamiliar with the concept of a pyrrhic victory.
Both, at some point, were winners based on merit in the market before they ever had network effects on their side, even if you don't necessarily agree on the merits by which the market chose.
The difference is that you like one of the companies/products and don't like the other's, so you need to find a justification for why that one is better/okay.
Talk about Sophie's Choice.
I do hate Lotus Notes, but I think I hate iTunes more. Both have consumed too much of my life.
I suppose that Cmdrtaco and many slashdotters couldn't get over the fact that they were absolutely wrong in the iPod's case.
I hope you don't think it's something new or some kind of contradiction that slashdot can think something is trash that the market eats up.
Or do you also post to point out that slashdot was wrong about Windows not being the awesomest OS because it has like 90% market share?
iTunes is not their best work, but is far superior to Windows Media 1-99 (whatever version we are up to now).
I wish I had mod points today. That really does deserve a +5 Funny.
I dare say that of any MMO out there now, or that will come out in the next 10 years, for any feature that they care to claim is new or groundbreaking, I could find a MUD that had something similar 10-20 years ago.
That kind of influence on an industry this size is pretty much the definition of "vitally relevant."
This really nails the essence of why this topic is relevant, even if 90% of this article's thread so far is lost in the usual arguments around Wikipedia. I would mod you up if I had points.
If you care a lot about that, then This Is Not For You.
I mean, I don't like vanilla ice cream, but I'd have to be seriously pompous to rant about how wrong people who like it are.
Actually, he told the man he was screwed because he even set his heart on getting too much stuff.
So it's worse than either of your choices.
You don't automatically become evil and have to make penance, Roman Catholic-indulgence style, when you become rich.
No; although, if you're rocking the Christian set of ethics, Jesus had something to say about rich men getting into heaven, which essentially is: they're not going to.
Basically, the success of the iPod is what separates you, as a NeXT fan, from the AmigaOS and BeOS fan. Each dead OS did some clever things ahead of its time, and each was an utter market failure despite being beloved by hobbyists.
The guy who said you're making an OS/2->Windows argument has it right.
But if today's moderation is any guideline, somebody thinks NeXT is so beyond criticism that anyone who doesn't hail it as the second coming is clearly a troll.
I always felt that NeXT was overhyped for what it was, and remember it more for Steve Jobs repeatedly asserting how awesome and ahead of its time it was than any actual technical accomplishments. (Which isn't to say it didn't have some technical accomplishments.) Your mileage may vary.
Yes, but I suspect you and I have different opinions of why that was...
I did. I just don't consider Christopher Chantrill credible. He's starting from a conclusion and then looking for numbers to support what he's already decided is true, rather than the other way around.
YMMV.
Still waiting for a set of credible numbers.
Or do you believe everything you read on the internet?
Oh please. Any rational analysis of the history of computing will lead to the conclusion that Jobs is a visionary genius.
I'd be willing to concede marketing genius.
Eh. You don't really get to complain about ethics suits against you when you've even filed one against yourself.
For more than half of the history of this country, government spending was limited to around 2% of GDP, where today it is 40%.
That doesn't jive with any set of credible numbers I've seen, so I'd appreciate if you could cite a source on that.