To be fair, I was specifically replying to a poster who justified this weapon by saying (paraphrased), that just because the US mainland has never been attacked by ballistic missles doesn't mean it never will.
You are right, that as a battlefield weapon, this is absolutely amazing, and definitely worth the investment.
Yes, until 9/11 there had never been a terrorist flying a plane into a new york skyscraper, so it could never have happened.
Before 9/11, we have never been attacked by ICBM or hijacked plane. Post 9/11, we have been attacked by hijacked plane. So the response is to invest in an Anti-ICBM system?
I understand your point - just because something hasn't happened, doesn't mean that it never will. But your analysis is WAY too simple. Should we invest billions in a system to prevent invasion by mutant frogs equipped with lasers, developed by radical french anti-globalization forces? Obviously not.
We need to look at every issue, and decide what the best way to protect ourselves is. ICBMs can only be developed by countries with decent technological infrastructure, and they would never be used against us because we have the military power to destroy the government of any country that attacked us.
Of course, the scientist/engineer in me loves research like this, and I am glad the we are developing defensive weapons, instead of offenive weapons.
Don't forget the war on lightning. Lightning killed 3 times as many americans as international terrorism last year.
Since God makes lightning, we have to declar war on God too. For all of you who say we should be cautious, and try diplomacy with God, I ask you this: do you want to wait for the smoking gun of an Apocolypse to hit New York before taking action? We can't afford to be cautious.
Don't you realize that we are in the midst of a war for our very survival? Right now, there are brave scooba-troops risking their lives to protect your freedom. When you question the rational for the War on Sharks, you are dishonoring them.
I have already stated that we will make no distinction between the sharks and the oceans that harbor them. We will also make no distinction between those who fight on the side of the sharks and those who speak unfortunate truths that make us look bad. If you think the sharks are so great, you can just swim to Cuba, instead of being flown there.
We don't need to become less free to be safe. We're already much safer from terrorism than we are from getting eaten by sharks, so "safe" is not an issue.
Which is exactly why I am declaring the War on Sharks. This world cannot tolerate one more senseless death to shark attack. We cannot sit back and wait for the sharks to attack us. We must go on the offensive and attack the sharks. Every shark that we kill in the Altantic Ocean is a shark that cannot attack us in New York City. Let me mako this very clear: Either you are with us, or you are with the sharks.
Okay, so I was just looking back, and your name had a yellow ball next to it. So I tried to figure out what that meant. Apparently, you have made me a foe. Fair enough - it is your right.
I am trying to figure out why though. You made a short and very incomplete post, and I mocked it. I looked at your list of foes, and you have quite a list. Do you just add anyone who diagrees with you to the list? Did you think my post was particularly stupid? Just trying to figure it out.
One other question for you: Do you use the list of foes to censor what you read?
This particular developer likes feeding himself and his fiancee, having a roof over his head, gas in his tank, etc.
Whether the programming job that provides all of that also provides freedom is a distant concern by comparison.
Hey, I think I remember you. You were the guy in Boston in 1772 who was saying that the King provided security and jobs. You said revolting for our freedom was too risky.
Or wait, maybe you were the guy in Wittenburg in 1517 who told Martin Luther that he should not oppose the catholic church because they were backed by divine law, and provided comfort and help, and would even take away all your sins, for a small fee.
Or maybe, just maybe, that was you last week in Ohio saying that you were going to vote for George Bush because at least you know what he stands for. Who knows what Kerry stands for.
There is no reason that a software economy built on freedom will take away your job, just like there was no reason that a free America meant a loss of strength, or a freedom from a corrupt church meant a loss of spirituality. (Not sure about the third one - we wont know what a freedom from GW will mean for a while.) Pretty soon free software will provide such a strong backbone upon which to build that it will be crazy to start from scratch with closed source. Just like previous transitions, some parts will be rough, but when we are through it, everyone will look back and wonder how anyone could have conceived of doing it any other way. At least you will understand.
You're noticing a contradiction in Christianity. The story given by the grandparent is one taught by the church. The church also teaches a different story, in which man became wicked over time, and Christ was sent to show them the way. In this story, there were plenty of people that went to heaven in the begenning, but as time went on, less and less people were gettting in. Eventually, nobody was getting into heaven, and hell was starting to fill up, so god sent us Christ. In this story, Adam and Eve is like a metaphorical supplement.
In fact, God had to fix the problem of wicked humans twice - the first time, he made the flood, and just saved Noah, killing all the other sinners, and the second time, he must have been feeling some white liberal guilt, because he sent Christ instead of just killing everyone.
I think that different demoninations stress the two stories differently. I am guessing that the Baptists like the first story. My presbeterian church (plenty of nice people and friendly sermons) stressed the second story.
I have never actually used that insult before - I was just repeating it to sound like the original poster. I think the general idea of the insult is that a tool is something that gets used by someone. Of course, as with all insults, it has taken on a more general meaning.
Don't post a comment to slashdot about idiots using home run web servers when the site is actually hosted on the University of Michigan Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department webserver. It makes you look like a tool.
Considering that about half the replies to this thread are from Univ of Michigan Electrical Engineering students, it appears that most Michigan students (at least the EECS) have nothing better to do then read slashdot on the biggest college party night of the year.
It sure is a good thing that I stayed in to read slashdot, so that I could bring the rest of you this insightful comment. Anyone in bursley up for a game of UT2003?
Oh, that's a good attitude. "I can't remember how to use apostrophes in the 10 most common situations, so I'm just going to use it however I feel like. I certainly don't want to learn to use it correctly. I will criticize those who object to my own incorrect and imprecise usage."
I didn't criticize anyone - I just stated how I felt about the spelling of the word its/it's.
ANY language is a set of rules for combining sounds and/or glyphs to communicate meaning. You don't want to follow the rules?
The rules of language are constantly evolving. For instance, the American English convention of putting sentence puncuation inside of quotations is slowly being switched back to the European style, where puncuation goes outside quotations. The European style is clearly superior logically - imagine a programming language designed like the American style:
printf("Hello World)"
It makes no sense.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no problem in understanding. Consider the following sentence:
I put the pen in it's case.
Nobody would read that as:
I put the pen in it is case.
If I am doing technical writing, I use proper grammar. On slashdot, I don't. The purpose in writing is to convey meaning, as you say. I use what I think is the best way to convey meaning. Sometimes, that requires me to violate the "rules" of grammar. I don't feel bad about it at all.
Expect people to misunderstand you and to point out, repeatedly, that you are wrong. It's not their fault, either.
How is it not their fault? Are they obligated to expend their energy to reinforce poorly evolved language constructs? We all make choices, and I choose to write a certain way (or sometimes I am just lazy). If you want to argue about the way I write, that is fine with me. But don't pretend that you have some contractual obligation to compare everything I write with obscure rules, and point out every time I violate them.
its/it's breaks a fundamental rule of grammar: always use an apostrophy to show posession.
Sometimes exceptions have meanings, but this one is to stupid for me to bother trying to remember. If you (grammar nazis) want me to follow your rules, at least makes the rules logical. Otherwise, I will just ignore them.
I agree that Rumsfeld and Company would be willing to kill civilians if it helped their goal, and Abu Ghraib is a good example of that.
However, I don't see why it would be beneficial to the US to kill Iraqi civilians. What the US despretely needs right now is the for the normal Iraqis to trust the troops enough that the true insurgents can be rooted out. Every time the US attacks insurgents and kills civilians, the Iraqi citizens trust us less.
I don't have much faith in the current leadership, but they must be smart enough to realize that tactically, killing civilians is the worst thing we could possibly do. And with the pressure on Bush to have a "peaceful" Iraq for the US election, I have to believe that they are being very careful.
Basically, every time an Iraqi child gets his head blown off, it is a point for the insurgents, and a loss for the US, no matter who is responsible for the blowing off of the head. The Iraqis blame the occupier, fair or not.
So this is why I insist that the US is attempting to minimize civilian casualties, and why it makes us morally better than terrorists. (Although I argued that we avoid civilians for tactical reasons, when it comes to lives, it is the ends, not the reasons, that count).
You provided some examples which contradict this. But considering what I believe (causuing civilian casualties hurts the US's goals), it seems more likely that those are honest mistakes and not intentional.
And there is a different between an honest mistake and an intentional terrorist bombing. (Which was basically my original point when this thread started). As you say, bad things happen in wars. Wars must be judged in total. So in the case of the US, the question is:
Are the civilian deaths morally justified by the end goal of a "free", or at least "free-er" Iraq?
I say it is a hesitant no, but depending on how Iraq turns out, the answer could change.
And for the insurgents, the question is:
Are the civilian deaths morally justified by the end goal of a theocratic state free of western influences
or
Are the civilian deaths morally justified by the holy law which dictates that non-muslims should be slain?
I think both of those are strong no's. The fact that the US's question is very close to being justified is why the US is morally superior to the insurgents.
Is this really true? If events like this really happen with any frequency in Iraq, then that is really sad.
The problem is - how to get factual information out of Iraq? I trust Al Jezeera as much as I trust Fox News, and the big networks don't seem to be running these sorts of stories.
he US carpet bombed North Vietnam, including Hanoi, for the best part of 2 years during the Vietnam war.
Yea, I am an idiot. In Vietnam, the US was no different than terrorists. I agree.
That said, the same is not true for Iraq, where the US has attempted to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
The most significant criticism against the "Shock and Awe" concept is the high tendency for civilians and civilian structures to become targets in the effort to break the enemy's will. So was that terrorism?
I don't think that Shock and Awe had anthing to do with targeting civilians and civilian structures. If it did, then you are right again. How about some links?
And don't forget, carpet bombing was *the* major component of the US campaign against the Taliban.
In this case, the carpet bombing was limited to caves and other remote location where it was thought that Al Qaeda were hiding. It was never intended to kill civilians.
So, if a terrorist targets a skyscraper, and takes out a few hundred CIA employees along with a few thousand "collateral damaged" civilians, then how is that different from carpet bombing urban areas?
I may be wrong, but I don't think the US has carpet bombed any urban areas since WWII.
That point aside, the difference is in the goals. If the goal is to kill civilians in order to scare them, that is terrorism. If the goal is to take out military targets, that is not terrorism. If you have examples of the US targeting civillians to create fear, then by all means, tell me about them. I am no fan of the current US policy, and I would like to be better informed.
That wasn't even true in Bosnia under Clinton, when just like in Iraq, the early stages of the conflict saw U.S. cluster antipersonnel bombs dropped from high, indiscriminate altitudes ("carpet bombing.")
Cluster bombs have never been used by the US against civilian populations - only against military targets. Since WWII, the US has never intentionally targetted civilians (with perhaps some disgusting exceptions). I agree that cluster bombs are terrible, mainly for their post-war concequences, but there is still a big moral difference between the collatoral damage of a weapon aimed at military targets and intentionally targeting civilians.
I am not arguing that what the US {does , is doing} is right - just that it is clearly not as wrong as what some terrorists do. It is important to understand how morality is not a yes/no question. Just like George Bush was wrong to declare "you are either with us or against us", it is wrong of the anti-war types to declare "you are either against all war, or you are evil". War, just like anything else in the world, can fall various places on the moral scale depending on circumstances and how it is conducted.
Oh, and a side note - just because Shock and Awe are synonyms for Terror doesn't make them morally equivalent. Stop can be a synonym for kill - does that mean that every time I stop at a stop sign, I am no better than a murderer?
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, you posted the same thing twice, and got +5 for both of them. Let me try ...
To be fair, I was specifically replying to a poster who justified this weapon by saying (paraphrased), that just because the US mainland has never been attacked by ballistic missles doesn't mean it never will.
You are right, that as a battlefield weapon, this is absolutely amazing, and definitely worth the investment.
Yes, until 9/11 there had never been a terrorist flying a plane into a new york skyscraper, so it could never have happened.
Before 9/11, we have never been attacked by ICBM or hijacked plane. Post 9/11, we have been attacked by hijacked plane. So the response is to invest in an Anti-ICBM system?
I understand your point - just because something hasn't happened, doesn't mean that it never will. But your analysis is WAY too simple. Should we invest billions in a system to prevent invasion by mutant frogs equipped with lasers, developed by radical french anti-globalization forces? Obviously not.
We need to look at every issue, and decide what the best way to protect ourselves is. ICBMs can only be developed by countries with decent technological infrastructure, and they would never be used against us because we have the military power to destroy the government of any country that attacked us.
Of course, the scientist/engineer in me loves research like this, and I am glad the we are developing defensive weapons, instead of offenive weapons.
Don't forget the war on lightning. Lightning killed 3 times as many americans as international terrorism last year.
Since God makes lightning, we have to declar war on God too. For all of you who say we should be cautious, and try diplomacy with God, I ask you this: do you want to wait for the smoking gun of an Apocolypse to hit New York before taking action? We can't afford to be cautious.
Don't you realize that we are in the midst of a war for our very survival? Right now, there are brave scooba-troops risking their lives to protect your freedom. When you question the rational for the War on Sharks, you are dishonoring them.
I have already stated that we will make no distinction between the sharks and the oceans that harbor them. We will also make no distinction between those who fight on the side of the sharks and those who speak unfortunate truths that make us look bad. If you think the sharks are so great, you can just swim to Cuba, instead of being flown there.
We don't need to become less free to be safe. We're already much safer from terrorism than we are from getting eaten by sharks, so "safe" is not an issue.
Which is exactly why I am declaring the War on Sharks. This world cannot tolerate one more senseless death to shark attack. We cannot sit back and wait for the sharks to attack us. We must go on the offensive and attack the sharks. Every shark that we kill in the Altantic Ocean is a shark that cannot attack us in New York City. Let me mako this very clear: Either you are with us, or you are with the sharks.
Okay, so I was just looking back, and your name had a yellow ball next to it. So I tried to figure out what that meant. Apparently, you have made me a foe. Fair enough - it is your right.
I am trying to figure out why though. You made a short and very incomplete post, and I mocked it. I looked at your list of foes, and you have quite a list. Do you just add anyone who diagrees with you to the list? Did you think my post was particularly stupid? Just trying to figure it out.
One other question for you: Do you use the list of foes to censor what you read?
We have been for a long time now. http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/econ-emissions.html
Oooo, a chart. Problem solved.
the treaty is just horribly flawed.
Oh, you think it is flawed? I guess we can just ignore it then.
Eh. Two out of three ain't bad.
This particular developer likes feeding himself and his fiancee, having a roof over his head, gas in his tank, etc.
Whether the programming job that provides all of that also provides freedom is a distant concern by comparison.
Hey, I think I remember you. You were the guy in Boston in 1772 who was saying that the King provided security and jobs. You said revolting for our freedom was too risky.
Or wait, maybe you were the guy in Wittenburg in 1517 who told Martin Luther that he should not oppose the catholic church because they were backed by divine law, and provided comfort and help, and would even take away all your sins, for a small fee.
Or maybe, just maybe, that was you last week in Ohio saying that you were going to vote for George Bush because at least you know what he stands for. Who knows what Kerry stands for.
There is no reason that a software economy built on freedom will take away your job, just like there was no reason that a free America meant a loss of strength, or a freedom from a corrupt church meant a loss of spirituality. (Not sure about the third one - we wont know what a freedom from GW will mean for a while.) Pretty soon free software will provide such a strong backbone upon which to build that it will be crazy to start from scratch with closed source. Just like previous transitions, some parts will be rough, but when we are through it, everyone will look back and wonder how anyone could have conceived of doing it any other way. At least you will understand.
You're noticing a contradiction in Christianity. The story given by the grandparent is one taught by the church. The church also teaches a different story, in which man became wicked over time, and Christ was sent to show them the way. In this story, there were plenty of people that went to heaven in the begenning, but as time went on, less and less people were gettting in. Eventually, nobody was getting into heaven, and hell was starting to fill up, so god sent us Christ. In this story, Adam and Eve is like a metaphorical supplement.
In fact, God had to fix the problem of wicked humans twice - the first time, he made the flood, and just saved Noah, killing all the other sinners, and the second time, he must have been feeling some white liberal guilt, because he sent Christ instead of just killing everyone.
I think that different demoninations stress the two stories differently. I am guessing that the Baptists like the first story. My presbeterian church (plenty of nice people and friendly sermons) stressed the second story.
I have never actually used that insult before - I was just repeating it to sound like the original poster. I think the general idea of the insult is that a tool is something that gets used by someone. Of course, as with all insults, it has taken on a more general meaning.
Don't post a comment to slashdot about idiots using home run web servers when the site is actually hosted on the University of Michigan Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department webserver. It makes you look like a tool.
Considering that about half the replies to this thread are from Univ of Michigan Electrical Engineering students, it appears that most Michigan students (at least the EECS) have nothing better to do then read slashdot on the biggest college party night of the year.
It sure is a good thing that I stayed in to read slashdot, so that I could bring the rest of you this insightful comment. Anyone in bursley up for a game of UT2003?
Oh. Nevermind.
I am not sure where the official "rules" of English can be found - how about English for Dummies?
Using Apostrophies to Show Possession
Do you think that "his", "her", "my", and "your" need apostrophes to show posession, too?
These are possesive pronouns, which obey different rules. I don't like it, but that I can live with.
Possessive Pronoun
Oh, that's a good attitude. "I can't remember how to use apostrophes in the 10 most common situations, so I'm just going to use it however I feel like. I certainly don't want to learn to use it correctly. I will criticize those who object to my own incorrect and imprecise usage."
I didn't criticize anyone - I just stated how I felt about the spelling of the word its/it's.
ANY language is a set of rules for combining sounds and/or glyphs to communicate meaning. You don't want to follow the rules?
The rules of language are constantly evolving. For instance, the American English convention of putting sentence puncuation inside of quotations is slowly being switched back to the European style, where puncuation goes outside quotations. The European style is clearly superior logically - imagine a programming language designed like the American style:
printf("Hello World)"
It makes no sense.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no problem in understanding. Consider the following sentence:
I put the pen in it's case.
Nobody would read that as:
I put the pen in it is case.
If I am doing technical writing, I use proper grammar. On slashdot, I don't. The purpose in writing is to convey meaning, as you say. I use what I think is the best way to convey meaning. Sometimes, that requires me to violate the "rules" of grammar. I don't feel bad about it at all.
Expect people to misunderstand you and to point out, repeatedly, that you are wrong. It's not their fault, either.
How is it not their fault? Are they obligated to expend their energy to reinforce poorly evolved language constructs? We all make choices, and I choose to write a certain way (or sometimes I am just lazy). If you want to argue about the way I write, that is fine with me. But don't pretend that you have some contractual obligation to compare everything I write with obscure rules, and point out every time I violate them.
You meant "too stupid"
Wow, there is a beautiful sense of irony in making a mistake like that.
its/it's breaks a fundamental rule of grammar: always use an apostrophy to show posession.
Sometimes exceptions have meanings, but this one is to stupid for me to bother trying to remember. If you (grammar nazis) want me to follow your rules, at least makes the rules logical. Otherwise, I will just ignore them.
I agree that Rumsfeld and Company would be willing to kill civilians if it helped their goal, and Abu Ghraib is a good example of that.
However, I don't see why it would be beneficial to the US to kill Iraqi civilians. What the US despretely needs right now is the for the normal Iraqis to trust the troops enough that the true insurgents can be rooted out. Every time the US attacks insurgents and kills civilians, the Iraqi citizens trust us less.
I don't have much faith in the current leadership, but they must be smart enough to realize that tactically, killing civilians is the worst thing we could possibly do. And with the pressure on Bush to have a "peaceful" Iraq for the US election, I have to believe that they are being very careful.
Basically, every time an Iraqi child gets his head blown off, it is a point for the insurgents, and a loss for the US, no matter who is responsible for the blowing off of the head. The Iraqis blame the occupier, fair or not.
So this is why I insist that the US is attempting to minimize civilian casualties, and why it makes us morally better than terrorists. (Although I argued that we avoid civilians for tactical reasons, when it comes to lives, it is the ends, not the reasons, that count).
You provided some examples which contradict this. But considering what I believe (causuing civilian casualties hurts the US's goals), it seems more likely that those are honest mistakes and not intentional.
And there is a different between an honest mistake and an intentional terrorist bombing. (Which was basically my original point when this thread started). As you say, bad things happen in wars. Wars must be judged in total. So in the case of the US, the question is:
Are the civilian deaths morally justified by the end goal of a "free", or at least "free-er" Iraq?
I say it is a hesitant no, but depending on how Iraq turns out, the answer could change.
And for the insurgents, the question is:
Are the civilian deaths morally justified by the end goal of a theocratic state free of western influences
or
Are the civilian deaths morally justified by the holy law which dictates that non-muslims should be slain?
I think both of those are strong no's. The fact that the US's question is very close to being justified is why the US is morally superior to the insurgents.
Frankly a collection of neurons just isn't powerful enough to "learn" how to fly a plane.
I will mention that to the pilot next time I get on an airplane.
Is this really true? If events like this really happen with any frequency in Iraq, then that is really sad.
The problem is - how to get factual information out of Iraq? I trust Al Jezeera as much as I trust Fox News, and the big networks don't seem to be running these sorts of stories.
he US carpet bombed North Vietnam, including Hanoi, for the best part of 2 years during the Vietnam war.
Yea, I am an idiot. In Vietnam, the US was no different than terrorists. I agree.
That said, the same is not true for Iraq, where the US has attempted to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
The most significant criticism against the "Shock and Awe" concept is the high tendency for civilians and civilian structures to become targets in the effort to break the enemy's will. So was that terrorism?
I don't think that Shock and Awe had anthing to do with targeting civilians and civilian structures. If it did, then you are right again. How about some links?
And don't forget, carpet bombing was *the* major component of the US campaign against the Taliban.
In this case, the carpet bombing was limited to caves and other remote location where it was thought that Al Qaeda were hiding. It was never intended to kill civilians.
So, if a terrorist targets a skyscraper, and takes out a few hundred CIA employees along with a few thousand "collateral damaged" civilians, then how is that different from carpet bombing urban areas?
I may be wrong, but I don't think the US has carpet bombed any urban areas since WWII.
That point aside, the difference is in the goals. If the goal is to kill civilians in order to scare them, that is terrorism. If the goal is to take out military targets, that is not terrorism. If you have examples of the US targeting civillians to create fear, then by all means, tell me about them. I am no fan of the current US policy, and I would like to be better informed.
That wasn't even true in Bosnia under Clinton, when just like in Iraq, the early stages of the conflict saw U.S. cluster antipersonnel bombs dropped from high, indiscriminate altitudes ("carpet bombing.")
Cluster bombs have never been used by the US against civilian populations - only against military targets. Since WWII, the US has never intentionally targetted civilians (with perhaps some disgusting exceptions). I agree that cluster bombs are terrible, mainly for their post-war concequences, but there is still a big moral difference between the collatoral damage of a weapon aimed at military targets and intentionally targeting civilians.
I am not arguing that what the US {does , is doing} is right - just that it is clearly not as wrong as what some terrorists do. It is important to understand how morality is not a yes/no question. Just like George Bush was wrong to declare "you are either with us or against us", it is wrong of the anti-war types to declare "you are either against all war, or you are evil". War, just like anything else in the world, can fall various places on the moral scale depending on circumstances and how it is conducted.
Oh, and a side note - just because Shock and Awe are synonyms for Terror doesn't make them morally equivalent. Stop can be a synonym for kill - does that mean that every time I stop at a stop sign, I am no better than a murderer?