I think I might watch it just to see Hayden Christianson fall into boiling lava. Unfortunately I had to wait two movies to see it. If somehow Jar-Jar and Natalie Portman's clothes fall in I will definately spend the $9.
I think you are confusing 'scientific' with 'globally applicable'. If they claimed that the results of a survey like this represented all sys-admins everywhere in the US they would be lying. If they say that it represents sys-admins who read slashdot and who decided to take the survey then it is fine.
This is why scientists always say things like, "The color red seems to cause anxiety", or "it appears that flys are attracted to white noise". They have to put that "appears" or "seems" in there because their sample cannot represent all people or all flys.
I think there are a few requirements for terrorism.
1. intentionally targeting civilians
2. doing harm to them or their property or posessions
3. harming them with the intent to scare
4. using this fear to further your views
For instance, just blowing up a building for fun isn't terrorism because there is no attempt in influence anything. You would simply be psychotic.
Also if we were at war and someone EMPed NY with the intent of wiping out our air defense as a precursor to an attack, that isn't terror either. The motive isn't to use fear as a weapon.
Driving around a neighborhood slashing tires, and writing vulgar words on the cars of people of a certain race, religion, etc. to try to scare them out of your neighborhood is terrorism. You are using people's fear which you create to influence people.
So to answer your question, it depends on the motive. You are clearly targeting civilians, and doing them harm. The question really is "why"? If you do it to scare people into lowering the drinking age or something, then yes. If you are doing it because you know that super advanced aliens are going to land on earth in a year, and they told you that the only way to save humanity was to EMP NY then no.
>The first Bush administration should have taken down Saddam in the first war
I think we can all agree on that. However, how that Bush Jr. wants to make up for his father's mistake all he gets is grief.
>Apparently you don't know what you are talking about. Hezbollah is a Shia group
Excuse me, Hamas. I mispoke. Point still stands.
>The fact is Palestinians in Israel have no hope and nothing to live for. Fix that if you want to get rid of suicide bombers.
We have been trying for ages. Every time peace comes close Hamas, or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad or some other group blows up Israeli citizens intentionally to stop the peace process. Then Isreal gets pissed and attacks a terrorist headquarters or assassinates a terrorist leader and the whole thing goes to shit. The point is that there will never ever be peace in the middle east while the terrorists are sponsored by countries. We just eliminated one of those countries. One down, 3-4 to go. Iran in particular will probably require no direct military confrontation due to the fact that it is dangerously close to a civil war right now. Once one or two falls the rest will eventually fall too.
> I guess your saying the U.S. should get the tanks warmed up and take down Iran now in our apparently never ending duty to exterminate all of Israel's enemies, which is most of the Arab and Muslim world?
Nope, the good people of the Arab world will revolt against their leaders if they know that the U.S. is an ally that they can rely on in a pinch. Right now(due in part the Bush senior, Clinton, etc) the good Arabs think we will put our tails between our legs and run as soon as the fighting gets tough.
Unfortunately this whole thing is basically a civil war in the Arabic world. Iran's, Syria's and S.A.'s leaders, know that if democracy spreads there, they will eventually loose their power. They are fighting tooth and nail to keep their power using highly suggestable young people all over the middle east as their cannon fodder.
>Many of the members of the coalition were also either bribed or coerced in to participation.
And many of the opponents of the war were bribed or coerced into not participating. So your point is what?
>Iraq is a huge distraction from the war on terrorism.
As stated numerous times, in fact over and over and over again. Saddam paid families of suicide bombers in Israel. Therefore Saddam is a supporter of terrorism. Even if you think Saddam was no threat to us he was clearly a threat to Isreal who is our ally.
>You simply can't make any case that it is patriotic for American's to invade a country with no provocation.
No one is trying too. See the 2000 plus times they fired at our aircraft who were enforcing U.N. no-fly zones. Attacking us is provocation, clearly against the agreement signed after Desert Storm. Also see the state sponsored terrorism mentioned before. Attacking our friend(Israel) using a proxy(Hezbollah, et. al.) is supposed to be treated as an attack on us. Unfortunately most of the decision makers in the U.N. were on the take and were delaying action for years.
Stop using the same tired CNN headlines from a year ago. They have been debunked time and again.
One difference would be the intentional attack of civilians. And to most people that makes all the difference in the world. The U.S. looses soldiers in order to minimize civilian casualties, while terrorists aim to maximize civilian casualties. What part of that is hard to understand?
> A relationship between dog and man would be more symbolic of how that mangod relationship _should_ work, but the "show me the evidence" types (such as myself) would have issue with that.
Agree. As you say with the fish analogy there is the issue of demands. We have no demands on our fish while we do have demands of our dogs(to stay off the bed, not bite, etc.) And the dog analogy has the problem that a dog is aware of it's master where fish are not(well, not to any real extent). Ah, forget it. I'm swearing off analogies for a while. Someone else on./ poked fun at my analogy recently too. Oh well...
Ok, so your arguement is that since God makes demands of us he should explain why we have to behave like that? And if he didn't then you won't believe in him? Isn't going to heaven for eternity enough for you? Now you want to know why? Maybe our feeble brains can't understand? Maybe he is a space alien from the 100th dimension doing experiments on 4th dimensional beings, but if he tells us it's all a big experiment it will mess up the results? Who knows.
If you do believe in God you are probably going to be more worried about not spending the rest of eternity having boiling water poured on your crotch, than why it just doesn't make sense to you.
The "I don't believe because I have never seen any evidence of his existence," theory makes sense. But to me the "I don't believe because I can't figure out the motivations of a omniscient supreme being," makes no sense.
I think the analogy holds as long as you don't try to extend it to cover the entire God/man relationship. It was designed only to illustrate the difference in perspective & knowledge between the owner and the fish.
What is with the rash of AC posters lately? It seems like every person on here hides their identity and then writes nonsense posts like this one. If you are posting AC for a reason, such as you work for a company we are talking about or some such thing, fine. If you have something useful to say which then log in. Otherwise please go away.
Clearly, if I were using that definition, then yes, it is a religion. However the meaning of words change over time. The definition I was using was this: Philosophy.
Anyway, I guess this is kind of a silly arguement. Every word can mean so many things. Ask 100 different people what religion is and you will probably have 100 different answers. And if we can't decide on a definition, then we certainly can't decide if something is or is not that. I tend to think Buddhism(my brand) is not a religion, however some people think of it as such. Some people also practice Buddhism and animism/Taoism/Hinduism/Christianity/whatever together, but call themselves Buddhist. So it is very confusing.
They are clearly high speed, high altitude weather ballons. Now move along, there is nothing to see here. Look at all the pretty pictures of Iraq, and the Presidential race, and sport, American Idol, etc., etc.
I am a Buddhist. However, I am not your kind apparently. As you know there are many braches of Buddhism.
>This is not sufficient reason, given the presence of devotion, rituals, an ethical system, scriptures, a monastic system, and the presence of 'supernatural' elements.
Unfortunately that is much too broad of a definition for me. According to that definition believing in the tooth fairy when you are young would be a religion and I am not willing to buy that.
I know that we are entering semantics territory. However, as a Buddhist, I don't appreciate you or anyone else stating emphatically that what I believe IS a religion. Especially when this is a highly contested topic even among Buddhists. I have no gods, no saints, and the "teachings" are more of a friend holding your hand along the way as you learn, not a professor lecturing you and telling you that is how "the truth". Maybe your version of Buddhism is a religion, but to many others it is not.
>The same way Christians often claim to be in a higher understanding of the universe because of their faith that there is a God, atheists tend to claim to be in a higher understanding of the universe based on their faith that there is NO God. Is the difference really so huge
LOL, so true. Atheists are Theists with a bachelor's degree and a superiority complex.
Don't mean to nit-pick but I think many purists would say that Buddhism is not a religion for exactly the reasons you describe. It is more of a philosophy which takes a similar place to religion in people's lives.
Your arguement is decent although there is one flaw. You assume that you would be able to understand God's reason for our lives. Most Christians I know fully accept that they do not know God's plan.
Just as a silly example say you happen to be one of my goldfish(an unusually smart one). You say to yourself, "Well here I am in this tank. I will eat, sleep and poop for a number of years and then die. What am I doing here? Why does he keep me here? He knows pretty much exactly what I will do for the rest of my life.". The answer of course, in this case, is that I enjoy watching them, even though I know all they are going to do is swim around. I am not suggesting that God simply wants to watch us "swim around". However, we should not expect to be able to understand God's motivations with our extremely limited knowledge. There are billions of people in the world, of which I know about 1000 at most. There are millions of books in the world, of which I have read about 300-400. Compare that with what an omniscent being knows...
If God is all powerful and all good then why do we have wars where people suffer? Why do we have cancer, colds? Why is there any suffering? There are numerous examples of questions we could ask with no answer. Christians would simply say we cannot know God's reasons. And maybe they are right.
I was certainly making some assumptions. However you can make assumption in the other direction too. Are we really sure that the U.S. soldiers would fight/kill their own people?
Anyway, even if you could only get a measly one in a hundred to fight you still would have 2.5 million vs. 150 thousand. I doubt there are 2.5 million fighters in Iraq vs. about 120 thousand troops and look at the trouble they are causing. Plus the terrain in much of the U.S. is much more conducive to hit-and-run tactics than in Iraq. Endless forests like PA, MD, KY, AR, etc. are all perfect places for ambushes. Just ask the British.
>Do you really think that its going to be johnny come lately and his pea shooter thats going to bring down the government
One U.S. soldier vs. one armed american: soldier wins. 150 thousand soldiers vs 250 million armed americans: different situation. Each soldier would be responsible for pacifying over one thousand armed citizens. That isn't very likely.
>Compare the amount of Israelis killed to the number of Palestinians,
About 2 or 3 Palestinians vs. 1 Israeli. Not anywhere near the percentages needed in the U.S. govt. vs. people scenario.
>imagine trying to conduct an armed uprising in America, a built up country with a huge police force, army etc
Our military and police aren't that large. Sure we have fancy planes, etc. but the numbers are fairly small. North Korea for example has about 1/10th of our population and about 4 to 8 times our military. Plus all of our fancy planes, tanks, etc all run on gas, and the soldiers all eat. With such an overwhelming majority you could easily halt supply lines.
>Thank you, by the way, for using your name and not posting AC!
No problem, by the way, I am not the other person who you were discussing this with. I was just passing by and had an opinion on the subject.
I think it is safe to rule out Iran as far as the WMD goes due to their history, however Syria looks pretty suspicious. The almost 1B in cash caught crossing the Iraq/Syria border seems to indicate their was some kind of business deal there. Not necessarily with the government, possibly with another third party.
Honestly I hope you are right and that Saddam did destroy them. The last thing I want is to see a biological or chemical weapon attack on some huge civilian center. However I fear for the worst. Saddams defiance of the treaty following Desert Storm by routinely shooting at our planes indicates to me he was never to serious about "being a good boy". Just my not so humble opinion.
>the evidence for WMD was poor and contradicted by the inspectors (who turned out to be right)
Do you really believe that Saddam destroyed them? I will gladly concede that they had no nukes, and that Iraq's scientists were lying to Saddam. However all of their nerve agents and biological weapons have disappeared. Everyone seems to "know" that they didn't have any because a few teams of scientists couldn't find them. I don't buy it. The street value of all of those chemicals was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so I have a real hard time seeing Saddam burning them all to appease the U.N. and then never saying that he did.
Facts:
He had them
He was told to destroy them
He never claimed to have destroyed them
We can't find them
Rather than doing a "liar, liar, pants on fire" at Bush we need to figure out where those weapons are! Someone has them, but no one cares about that. They just want a D in the white house. I hate election years.
Yes, scientists in the U.S. use metric almost exclusively. The vast majority of Americans however, do not understand metric units with the possible exception of liters because our soda cans are measured in liters. People who drive a lot MAY know that 100km/h is approximately 60m/h, but I wouldn't count on it.
Having twice gotten the, "We're sorry but your position is being eliminated." I understand where you are coming from. It is no fun. On the other hand you can look at these things two ways. You can look at it as a terrible tragedy or as an opportunity to go out and find something new. New jobs are out there. They may not get their fat salaries like from SCO(or should I say from all the greedy investors in the sinking ship that is SCO), but they will find something.
I had to take over a 50% pay cut for a year and a half after one layoff, but I did get some great experience and knowledge in that time. It was tough but in retrospect I am glad for the experience. Eventually I ended up getting back to what I like to do, at a rate I am comfortable with.
In all likelyhood these people probably knew this was coming and stayed on intentionally to collect some fat paychecks. In fact they are probably one a fishing boat right now enjoying the great salmon season the Bay Area is enjoying.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I might watch it just to see Hayden Christianson fall into boiling lava. Unfortunately I had to wait two movies to see it. If somehow Jar-Jar and Natalie Portman's clothes fall in I will definately spend the $9.
I think you are confusing 'scientific' with 'globally applicable'. If they claimed that the results of a survey like this represented all sys-admins everywhere in the US they would be lying. If they say that it represents sys-admins who read slashdot and who decided to take the survey then it is fine.
This is why scientists always say things like, "The color red seems to cause anxiety", or "it appears that flys are attracted to white noise". They have to put that "appears" or "seems" in there because their sample cannot represent all people or all flys.
I think there are a few requirements for terrorism.
1. intentionally targeting civilians
2. doing harm to them or their property or posessions
3. harming them with the intent to scare
4. using this fear to further your views
For instance, just blowing up a building for fun isn't terrorism because there is no attempt in influence anything. You would simply be psychotic.
Also if we were at war and someone EMPed NY with the intent of wiping out our air defense as a precursor to an attack, that isn't terror either. The motive isn't to use fear as a weapon.
Driving around a neighborhood slashing tires, and writing vulgar words on the cars of people of a certain race, religion, etc. to try to scare them out of your neighborhood is terrorism. You are using people's fear which you create to influence people.
So to answer your question, it depends on the motive. You are clearly targeting civilians, and doing them harm. The question really is "why"? If you do it to scare people into lowering the drinking age or something, then yes. If you are doing it because you know that super advanced aliens are going to land on earth in a year, and they told you that the only way to save humanity was to EMP NY then no.
>The first Bush administration should have taken down Saddam in the first war
I think we can all agree on that. However, how that Bush Jr. wants to make up for his father's mistake all he gets is grief.
>Apparently you don't know what you are talking about. Hezbollah is a Shia group
Excuse me, Hamas. I mispoke. Point still stands.
>The fact is Palestinians in Israel have no hope and nothing to live for. Fix that if you want to get rid of suicide bombers.
We have been trying for ages. Every time peace comes close Hamas, or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad or some other group blows up Israeli citizens intentionally to stop the peace process. Then Isreal gets pissed and attacks a terrorist headquarters or assassinates a terrorist leader and the whole thing goes to shit. The point is that there will never ever be peace in the middle east while the terrorists are sponsored by countries. We just eliminated one of those countries. One down, 3-4 to go. Iran in particular will probably require no direct military confrontation due to the fact that it is dangerously close to a civil war right now. Once one or two falls the rest will eventually fall too.
> I guess your saying the U.S. should get the tanks warmed up and take down Iran now in our apparently never ending duty to exterminate all of Israel's enemies, which is most of the Arab and Muslim world?
Nope, the good people of the Arab world will revolt against their leaders if they know that the U.S. is an ally that they can rely on in a pinch. Right now(due in part the Bush senior, Clinton, etc) the good Arabs think we will put our tails between our legs and run as soon as the fighting gets tough.
Unfortunately this whole thing is basically a civil war in the Arabic world. Iran's, Syria's and S.A.'s leaders, know that if democracy spreads there, they will eventually loose their power. They are fighting tooth and nail to keep their power using highly suggestable young people all over the middle east as their cannon fodder.
>Many of the members of the coalition were also either bribed or coerced in to participation.
And many of the opponents of the war were bribed or coerced into not participating. So your point is what?
>Iraq is a huge distraction from the war on terrorism.
As stated numerous times, in fact over and over and over again. Saddam paid families of suicide bombers in Israel. Therefore Saddam is a supporter of terrorism. Even if you think Saddam was no threat to us he was clearly a threat to Isreal who is our ally.
>You simply can't make any case that it is patriotic for American's to invade a country with no provocation.
No one is trying too. See the 2000 plus times they fired at our aircraft who were enforcing U.N. no-fly zones. Attacking us is provocation, clearly against the agreement signed after Desert Storm. Also see the state sponsored terrorism mentioned before. Attacking our friend(Israel) using a proxy(Hezbollah, et. al.) is supposed to be treated as an attack on us. Unfortunately most of the decision makers in the U.N. were on the take and were delaying action for years.
Stop using the same tired CNN headlines from a year ago. They have been debunked time and again.
One difference would be the intentional attack of civilians. And to most people that makes all the difference in the world. The U.S. looses soldiers in order to minimize civilian casualties, while terrorists aim to maximize civilian casualties. What part of that is hard to understand?
>Not everyone believes in your deity, or your deity's children.
No everyone assumes when they see the word "our" that they are included either.
> A relationship between dog and man would be more symbolic of how that mangod relationship _should_ work, but the "show me the evidence" types (such as myself) would have issue with that.
./ poked fun at my analogy recently too. Oh well...
Agree. As you say with the fish analogy there is the issue of demands. We have no demands on our fish while we do have demands of our dogs(to stay off the bed, not bite, etc.) And the dog analogy has the problem that a dog is aware of it's master where fish are not(well, not to any real extent). Ah, forget it. I'm swearing off analogies for a while. Someone else on
Ok, so your arguement is that since God makes demands of us he should explain why we have to behave like that? And if he didn't then you won't believe in him? Isn't going to heaven for eternity enough for you? Now you want to know why? Maybe our feeble brains can't understand? Maybe he is a space alien from the 100th dimension doing experiments on 4th dimensional beings, but if he tells us it's all a big experiment it will mess up the results? Who knows.
If you do believe in God you are probably going to be more worried about not spending the rest of eternity having boiling water poured on your crotch, than why it just doesn't make sense to you.
The "I don't believe because I have never seen any evidence of his existence," theory makes sense. But to me the "I don't believe because I can't figure out the motivations of a omniscient supreme being," makes no sense.
I think the analogy holds as long as you don't try to extend it to cover the entire God/man relationship. It was designed only to illustrate the difference in perspective & knowledge between the owner and the fish.
What is with the rash of AC posters lately? It seems like every person on here hides their identity and then writes nonsense posts like this one. If you are posting AC for a reason, such as you work for a company we are talking about or some such thing, fine. If you have something useful to say which then log in. Otherwise please go away.
*changes preferences to exclude score:0 posts*
Clearly, if I were using that definition, then yes, it is a religion. However the meaning of words change over time. The definition I was using was this: Philosophy.
Anyway, I guess this is kind of a silly arguement. Every word can mean so many things. Ask 100 different people what religion is and you will probably have 100 different answers. And if we can't decide on a definition, then we certainly can't decide if something is or is not that. I tend to think Buddhism(my brand) is not a religion, however some people think of it as such. Some people also practice Buddhism and animism/Taoism/Hinduism/Christianity/whatever together, but call themselves Buddhist. So it is very confusing.
They are clearly high speed, high altitude weather ballons. Now move along, there is nothing to see here. Look at all the pretty pictures of Iraq, and the Presidential race, and sport, American Idol, etc., etc.
LOL, sorry I was insensitive to the feelings of superiority-complexed, non-atheists with a bachelors. :-)
I am a Buddhist. However, I am not your kind apparently. As you know there are many braches of Buddhism.
>This is not sufficient reason, given the presence of devotion, rituals, an ethical system, scriptures, a monastic system, and the presence of 'supernatural' elements.
Unfortunately that is much too broad of a definition for me. According to that definition believing in the tooth fairy when you are young would be a religion and I am not willing to buy that.
I know that we are entering semantics territory. However, as a Buddhist, I don't appreciate you or anyone else stating emphatically that what I believe IS a religion. Especially when this is a highly contested topic even among Buddhists. I have no gods, no saints, and the "teachings" are more of a friend holding your hand along the way as you learn, not a professor lecturing you and telling you that is how "the truth". Maybe your version of Buddhism is a religion, but to many others it is not.
>I guess I was lied to by all the Buddhist writings I've read, my Lama and all the other teachers that I've had who say otherwise.
Yep, you were. Maybe you should look for another teacher if that is what you are being told.
>The same way Christians often claim to be in a higher understanding of the universe because of their faith that there is a God, atheists tend to claim to be in a higher understanding of the universe based on their faith that there is NO God. Is the difference really so huge
LOL, so true. Atheists are Theists with a bachelor's degree and a superiority complex.
Don't mean to nit-pick but I think many purists would say that Buddhism is not a religion for exactly the reasons you describe. It is more of a philosophy which takes a similar place to religion in people's lives.
Your arguement is decent although there is one flaw. You assume that you would be able to understand God's reason for our lives. Most Christians I know fully accept that they do not know God's plan.
Just as a silly example say you happen to be one of my goldfish(an unusually smart one). You say to yourself, "Well here I am in this tank. I will eat, sleep and poop for a number of years and then die. What am I doing here? Why does he keep me here? He knows pretty much exactly what I will do for the rest of my life.". The answer of course, in this case, is that I enjoy watching them, even though I know all they are going to do is swim around. I am not suggesting that God simply wants to watch us "swim around". However, we should not expect to be able to understand God's motivations with our extremely limited knowledge. There are billions of people in the world, of which I know about 1000 at most. There are millions of books in the world, of which I have read about 300-400. Compare that with what an omniscent being knows...
If God is all powerful and all good then why do we have wars where people suffer? Why do we have cancer, colds? Why is there any suffering? There are numerous examples of questions we could ask with no answer. Christians would simply say we cannot know God's reasons. And maybe they are right.
I was certainly making some assumptions. However you can make assumption in the other direction too. Are we really sure that the U.S. soldiers would fight/kill their own people?
Anyway, even if you could only get a measly one in a hundred to fight you still would have 2.5 million vs. 150 thousand. I doubt there are 2.5 million fighters in Iraq vs. about 120 thousand troops and look at the trouble they are causing. Plus the terrain in much of the U.S. is much more conducive to hit-and-run tactics than in Iraq. Endless forests like PA, MD, KY, AR, etc. are all perfect places for ambushes. Just ask the British.
>but most Prius owners keep it at 40 psi for better mileage and traction
I can buy the better mileage part, but if you over inflate your tires you should get worse traction.
>Do you really think that its going to be johnny come lately and his pea shooter thats going to bring down the government
One U.S. soldier vs. one armed american: soldier wins. 150 thousand soldiers vs 250 million armed americans: different situation. Each soldier would be responsible for pacifying over one thousand armed citizens. That isn't very likely.
>Compare the amount of Israelis killed to the number of Palestinians,
About 2 or 3 Palestinians vs. 1 Israeli. Not anywhere near the percentages needed in the U.S. govt. vs. people scenario.
>imagine trying to conduct an armed uprising in America, a built up country with a huge police force, army etc
Our military and police aren't that large. Sure we have fancy planes, etc. but the numbers are fairly small. North Korea for example has about 1/10th of our population and about 4 to 8 times our military. Plus all of our fancy planes, tanks, etc all run on gas, and the soldiers all eat. With such an overwhelming majority you could easily halt supply lines.
>Thank you, by the way, for using your name and not posting AC!
No problem, by the way, I am not the other person who you were discussing this with. I was just passing by and had an opinion on the subject.
I think it is safe to rule out Iran as far as the WMD goes due to their history, however Syria looks pretty suspicious. The almost 1B in cash caught crossing the Iraq/Syria border seems to indicate their was some kind of business deal there. Not necessarily with the government, possibly with another third party.
Honestly I hope you are right and that Saddam did destroy them. The last thing I want is to see a biological or chemical weapon attack on some huge civilian center. However I fear for the worst. Saddams defiance of the treaty following Desert Storm by routinely shooting at our planes indicates to me he was never to serious about "being a good boy". Just my not so humble opinion.
>the evidence for WMD was poor and contradicted by the inspectors (who turned out to be right)
Do you really believe that Saddam destroyed them? I will gladly concede that they had no nukes, and that Iraq's scientists were lying to Saddam. However all of their nerve agents and biological weapons have disappeared. Everyone seems to "know" that they didn't have any because a few teams of scientists couldn't find them. I don't buy it. The street value of all of those chemicals was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so I have a real hard time seeing Saddam burning them all to appease the U.N. and then never saying that he did.
Facts:
He had them
He was told to destroy them
He never claimed to have destroyed them
We can't find them
Rather than doing a "liar, liar, pants on fire" at Bush we need to figure out where those weapons are! Someone has them, but no one cares about that. They just want a D in the white house. I hate election years.
Yes, scientists in the U.S. use metric almost exclusively. The vast majority of Americans however, do not understand metric units with the possible exception of liters because our soda cans are measured in liters. People who drive a lot MAY know that 100km/h is approximately 60m/h, but I wouldn't count on it.
Having twice gotten the, "We're sorry but your position is being eliminated." I understand where you are coming from. It is no fun. On the other hand you can look at these things two ways. You can look at it as a terrible tragedy or as an opportunity to go out and find something new. New jobs are out there. They may not get their fat salaries like from SCO(or should I say from all the greedy investors in the sinking ship that is SCO), but they will find something.
I had to take over a 50% pay cut for a year and a half after one layoff, but I did get some great experience and knowledge in that time. It was tough but in retrospect I am glad for the experience. Eventually I ended up getting back to what I like to do, at a rate I am comfortable with.
In all likelyhood these people probably knew this was coming and stayed on intentionally to collect some fat paychecks. In fact they are probably one a fishing boat right now enjoying the great salmon season the Bay Area is enjoying.