The value of crude oil has gone up considerably in the last 10 years. All the oil that was not pumped out of the ground under the U.S. and burned in the last decade is now much more valuable, and if you can avoid pumping and burning it for another 10 years then it will be still more valuable.
Given that Americans are handing huge bills to future generations, including a $10 trillion debt and another $80 trillion in unfunded liabilities (Medicare, Social Security), it is nice that some valuable resources can be passed on too. It is unfortunate that many Americans seem to think "If we don't drill and burn this crude oil now, *I* won't benefit from it! Drill Drill Drill, Burn Burn Burn! It's MY crude oil and I want to BURN it NOW!"
The anonymous poster who wrote "she has herpes" sounds like a lawyer. He wrote something which is probably true, since a majority of Americans have oral herpes, but which will be interpreted by most readers as referring to genital herpes. He accomplishes his goal (defamation) while protecting himself legally. Shrewd.
One reason for not using torture to gather information is that the information gathered is typically unreliable. That is people will say anything to make the pain stop, regardless of whether it is true or false.
For password retrieval, where it is simple to verify the truthfulness of the response, that reason doesn't apply. So, I think your proposal has merit.
When you design your game around tedious grinds, you create the incentive for people to automate the play of the tedious parts to get to the alleged fun parts.
Fire the designers. Customers have more fun. Bots go away.
Keith's Special Comment on Obama regarding FISA was unusually apologetic. Normally Keith goes for the jugular in a special comment, and they are wildly entertaining as a result. This one was different in that instead of attacking Obama for abandoning his alleged principles he spends a great deal of time trying to explain how what Obama is doing is really smart and best for America.
The FISA vote didn't just cost Obama his reputation, it pulled down Keith with it.
Does the "Equal Protection" clause of the U.S. Constitution offer any protection against selective enforcement of the law?
That is, if you can show in court that millions of people are logging in to websites with fake names, but you're the only person to be prosecuted for that "crime", then can you get the case thrown out on the grounds that your constitutional rights are being violated?
Let's tally the facts before we jump to conclusions:
1. Canada purchased yellowcake from an Axis of Evil nation.
2. Canada failed to support the U.S. in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
3. Canada has attacked the U.S. in past wars (stretching a bit here since 1812-1814 is pre-confederation, but stretching the truth and just making stuff up is kinda what caused this whole mess, so let's run with it!)
4. Canada has OIL! That kinda makes it a no-brainer to invade, perfect for Prez Bush.
"It was not conforming to the inspection and verification processes as well as the destruction of the WMDs it possessed which lead some officials to believe they had WMDs in significant quantities into the year 2000 and later."
A 15 year old artillery shell containing mustard gas has much less destructive potential than a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. The Bush adminstration and its pals conjured up the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to put all these things in the same category so that they would be better able to scare the American public into supporting an invasion of Iraq to prevent "mushroom clouds over Manhattan".
Apparently you fell for that BS. Gratz.
Out of curiosity, did you rush out to enlist for the invasion or were you already in the armed forces and request a transfer to a unit that would be part of the invasion force?
"I supported the war because Iraq never honored their obligations of the armistice agreement that ended the first gulf war."
You sure aren't much into volunteering details... What obligations did Iraq not honor that warranted the invasion and occupation of their country with all the corresponding misery, suffering, and death?
"Lol.. Down to name calling because of your ignorance are we?"
I called a statement that you made "stupid". Note that I didn't call you stupid. I believe you just called me "ignorant"?
"First, I wouldn't limit the invasion of Iraq to NeoCons. I supported it for entirely different reasons then what was presented."
Please elaborate on the reasons you supported initiating a war against Iraq.
"Next, we did use overwhelming force. "
Blatantly, obviously wrong.
Fact: Hours after the U.S. Army passed through the first Iraqi town north of the border, they moved on and left the town unocuppied without any force to provide security for either the civilian population or anyone else.
Fact: There were no troops left behind to direct followup supply troops, leading to the infamous convoy which took the wrong turn into a bypassed Iraqi city.
Fact: Iraqi munitions depots were left unguarded to be looted by future insurgents, historical sites were left unguarded to be looted, hospitals were left unguarded to be looted of their equipment, etc. Of course Rumsfeld would just say "Freedom is messy" and go on to say that this redistribution of looted materials was probably just the way capitalism works to maximize productivity!
Overwhelming force? That's the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Defeating a demoralized Iraqi army is one thing, occupying and controlling a country is another matter. You're understanding of this seems comparable to that of all the chicken hawks in the administration.
I'm really interested in hearing your reasons for wanting to invade Iraq.
If Powell had resigned in protest over the planned invasion of Iraq then he would be considered by many more Americans to have great foresight, intellect, and integrity. Because he didn't resign, but instead became a shill to push the Neocon's agenda, his reputation plummeted.
Even if Iraq had had chemical weapons labs (which they didn't), and those labs had posed some immediate strategic danger to the U.S. (which they wouldn't have even if they had existed), then the "Powell Doctrine" called for the use of overwhelming force to utterly defeat the enemy (purportedly Iraq) in the shortest time with the fewest casualties. Yet Powell shilled for a war that was conducted on a shoestring on the insanely optimistic grounds that it would be a cakewalk and the U.S. Army would be greeted as "liberators" and have roses thrown at their soldiers as they marched through the streets of Baghdad.
The result? Thousands and thousands of dead people (Americans and Iraqis and many other nationalities) who didn't have to die. Powell was either too stupid to foresee this disaster or too spineless too oppose it. Take your pick.
In a literal sense the constitution is ink and paper. In the abstract it is a collection of ideas and rules for organizing a society. In either case it only gains force through the actions of humans alive today who choose to read and interpret it. The constitution could say "don't do X" but it's entirely possible that the government and citizenry could just ignore the constitution if they choose.
That is to say, the constitution is subject to all the foibles of the human condition. That applies posthumously to those humans that wrote it, and currently to those humans who interpret it and act (or fail to act) based upon their interpretations.
It's difficult to get 2/3 of the people to agree to do anything when 1/2 of the people are of below average intelligence. Only thing you can get agreement on is that future generations should pay for today's expenditures.
"Anyone having trouble understanding what the word "people" was understood to mean by the writers of the US Constitution?"
I clearly understand that they intended "PEOPLE" to mean: 1. A citizen of the U.S. 2. A resident of a state 3. Someone 18 years of age or older 4. Prior to 1920, women were not people, but after 1920 they were. 5. Felons are not people (usually)
So 4 of the greatest legal minds in the country think that the D.C. ban was not in conflict with the constitution, and 5 thought it was. That leads me to believe that there is a great deal of ambiguity here in what the constitution says, and the decision a judge makes is based more on his/her own "gut feel" rather than some obvious legal absolute. Randomly pick a different set of 9 justices from the top 100 legal minds in the country and you could get a decision which goes the other way.
From what I recall, in the year 2000 five supreme court justices decided to stop the recounting of ballots in Florida, then after a few days wrote in a decision "we agree that the ballot should have been recounted, but because we forced you to stop counting for a few days we find that there is no longer sufficient time to count the ballots, so GWB wins."
And thus these brightest legal minds in the country stopped the last chance to prevent the worst U.S. president in history from taking office. Brilliant! They fook up, have zero accountability for it, and get to continue with their reign of unquestionable infallibility.
"The individuals who are going around killing people with hand guns can't get a permit for a gun in the first place. These individuals buy their hand guns on underground black markets; markets that will exist whether hand gun possession is legal or not. "
False. Cho did not buy his gun on an underground black market, he bought it from a licenced and regulated dealer. He went on to kill 32 people and himself. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre.
What part of "The right of people to bear arms shall not be infringed" allows for the exclusion by the government of anyone on the basis of the government's allegations of "mental incapacity"? Does "not" actually mean "usually not" or "absolutely not"? Let's play word games with stuff written 200 years ago! What does "arms" mean? Nuclear, biological, chemical? More word games!
My recollection is that the constitution written more than 200 years ago allowed slavery and the disenfranchisment of women. Don't those sound like pretty colossal fookups on the part of the writers? And if they could fook up stuff like that, what makes you think that they could get this "right to bear arms" stuff perfect? If there intent was to allow the citizenry to overthrow a tyrannical regime, then doesn't the citizenry today need access to the same tanks, artillery, jet fighters and WMDs that the army has?
"running X which also pre-dates Windows by a longshot"
From wikipedia: "in May 1984, Scheifler replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1"
"Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs)"
X version 1 beats Windows version 1.0 by 1.5 years. I'm uncertain whether 1.5 years qualifies as "a longshot" or not. My suspicion is that neither version was widely adopted, so it's not really important.
"But... I think it is interesting to consider WHY certain posts are created."
Some posts are created to amuse, some to inform, some to troll, and some posts are created to designate a 'goal' area in a sporting competition. I hope that you think this post belongs in the first category.:)
More seriously, I expect that politicians will always create sufficient jobs (of which cabinet posts are just one type) to give their friends the money/power that they want, without much concern for efficiency or effectiveness. How do you think "Brownie" got his job as head of FEMA?
"In the past 10 years the US has initiated 2 military actions against foreign powers."
Off the top of my head, I can think of 4:
1998: US launches cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan 1999: US launches airstrikes against Yugoslavia to get it out of Kosovo 2001: US provides air support to forces in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban 2003: US invades Iraq
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up for awesome Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri reference!
The value of crude oil has gone up considerably in the last 10 years. All the oil that was not pumped out of the ground under the U.S. and burned in the last decade is now much more valuable, and if you can avoid pumping and burning it for another 10 years then it will be still more valuable.
Given that Americans are handing huge bills to future generations, including a $10 trillion debt and another $80 trillion in unfunded liabilities (Medicare, Social Security), it is nice that some valuable resources can be passed on too. It is unfortunate that many Americans seem to think "If we don't drill and burn this crude oil now, *I* won't benefit from it! Drill Drill Drill, Burn Burn Burn! It's MY crude oil and I want to BURN it NOW!"
The anonymous poster who wrote "she has herpes" sounds like a lawyer. He wrote something which is probably true, since a majority of Americans have oral herpes, but which will be interpreted by most readers as referring to genital herpes. He accomplishes his goal (defamation) while protecting himself legally. Shrewd.
One reason for not using torture to gather information is that the information gathered is typically unreliable. That is people will say anything to make the pain stop, regardless of whether it is true or false.
For password retrieval, where it is simple to verify the truthfulness of the response, that reason doesn't apply. So, I think your proposal has merit.
Remind me never to take a sysadmin job. :)
Plastic bullet hits woman in eye, she dies:
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/10/22/postgame_police_projectile_kills_an_emerson_student/
Set this variable speed bullet to "slow" and I bet it more than stings if it hits you in the eye.
When you design your game around tedious grinds, you create the incentive for people to automate the play of the tedious parts to get to the alleged fun parts.
Fire the designers.
Customers have more fun.
Bots go away.
Keith's Special Comment on Obama regarding FISA was unusually apologetic. Normally Keith goes for the jugular in a special comment, and they are wildly entertaining as a result. This one was different in that instead of attacking Obama for abandoning his alleged principles he spends a great deal of time trying to explain how what Obama is doing is really smart and best for America.
The FISA vote didn't just cost Obama his reputation, it pulled down Keith with it.
http://www.specialcomment.com/
Does the "Equal Protection" clause of the U.S. Constitution offer any protection against selective enforcement of the law?
That is, if you can show in court that millions of people are logging in to websites with fake names, but you're the only person to be prosecuted for that "crime", then can you get the case thrown out on the grounds that your constitutional rights are being violated?
Let's tally the facts before we jump to conclusions:
1. Canada purchased yellowcake from an Axis of Evil nation.
2. Canada failed to support the U.S. in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
3. Canada has attacked the U.S. in past wars (stretching a bit here since 1812-1814 is pre-confederation, but stretching the truth and just making stuff up is kinda what caused this whole mess, so let's run with it!)
4. Canada has OIL! That kinda makes it a no-brainer to invade, perfect for Prez Bush.
"It was not conforming to the inspection and verification processes as well as the destruction of the WMDs it possessed which lead some officials to believe they had WMDs in significant quantities into the year 2000 and later."
A 15 year old artillery shell containing mustard gas has much less destructive potential than a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. The Bush adminstration and its pals conjured up the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to put all these things in the same category so that they would be better able to scare the American public into supporting an invasion of Iraq to prevent "mushroom clouds over Manhattan".
Apparently you fell for that BS. Gratz.
Out of curiosity, did you rush out to enlist for the invasion or were you already in the armed forces and request a transfer to a unit that would be part of the invasion force?
"I supported the war because Iraq never honored their obligations of the armistice agreement that ended the first gulf war."
You sure aren't much into volunteering details... What obligations did Iraq not honor that warranted the invasion and occupation of their country with all the corresponding misery, suffering, and death?
"Lol.. Down to name calling because of your ignorance are we?"
I called a statement that you made "stupid". Note that I didn't call you stupid. I believe you just called me "ignorant"?
"First, I wouldn't limit the invasion of Iraq to NeoCons. I supported it for entirely different reasons then what was presented."
Please elaborate on the reasons you supported initiating a war against Iraq.
"Next, we did use overwhelming force. "
Blatantly, obviously wrong.
Fact: Hours after the U.S. Army passed through the first Iraqi town north of the border, they moved on and left the town unocuppied without any force to provide security for either the civilian population or anyone else.
Fact: There were no troops left behind to direct followup supply troops, leading to the infamous convoy which took the wrong turn into a bypassed Iraqi city.
Fact: Iraqi munitions depots were left unguarded to be looted by future insurgents, historical sites were left unguarded to be looted, hospitals were left unguarded to be looted of their equipment, etc. Of course Rumsfeld would just say "Freedom is messy" and go on to say that this redistribution of looted materials was probably just the way capitalism works to maximize productivity!
Overwhelming force? That's the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Defeating a demoralized Iraqi army is one thing, occupying and controlling a country is another matter. You're understanding of this seems comparable to that of all the chicken hawks in the administration.
I'm really interested in hearing your reasons for wanting to invade Iraq.
If Powell had resigned in protest over the planned invasion of Iraq then he would be considered by many more Americans to have great foresight, intellect, and integrity. Because he didn't resign, but instead became a shill to push the Neocon's agenda, his reputation plummeted.
Even if Iraq had had chemical weapons labs (which they didn't), and those labs had posed some immediate strategic danger to the U.S. (which they wouldn't have even if they had existed), then the "Powell Doctrine" called for the use of overwhelming force to utterly defeat the enemy (purportedly Iraq) in the shortest time with the fewest casualties. Yet Powell shilled for a war that was conducted on a shoestring on the insanely optimistic grounds that it would be a cakewalk and the U.S. Army would be greeted as "liberators" and have roses thrown at their soldiers as they marched through the streets of Baghdad.
The result? Thousands and thousands of dead people (Americans and Iraqis and many other nationalities) who didn't have to die. Powell was either too stupid to foresee this disaster or too spineless too oppose it. Take your pick.
In a literal sense the constitution is ink and paper. In the abstract it is a collection of ideas and rules for organizing a society. In either case it only gains force through the actions of humans alive today who choose to read and interpret it. The constitution could say "don't do X" but it's entirely possible that the government and citizenry could just ignore the constitution if they choose.
That is to say, the constitution is subject to all the foibles of the human condition. That applies posthumously to those humans that wrote it, and currently to those humans who interpret it and act (or fail to act) based upon their interpretations.
It's difficult to get 2/3 of the people to agree to do anything when 1/2 of the people are of below average intelligence. Only thing you can get agreement on is that future generations should pay for today's expenditures.
"Anyone having trouble understanding what the word "people" was understood to mean by the writers of the US Constitution?"
I clearly understand that they intended "PEOPLE" to mean:
1. A citizen of the U.S.
2. A resident of a state
3. Someone 18 years of age or older
4. Prior to 1920, women were not people, but after 1920 they were.
5. Felons are not people (usually)
The framers meaning is unambiguous and obvious!
So 4 of the greatest legal minds in the country think that the D.C. ban was not in conflict with the constitution, and 5 thought it was. That leads me to believe that there is a great deal of ambiguity here in what the constitution says, and the decision a judge makes is based more on his/her own "gut feel" rather than some obvious legal absolute. Randomly pick a different set of 9 justices from the top 100 legal minds in the country and you could get a decision which goes the other way.
From what I recall, in the year 2000 five supreme court justices decided to stop the recounting of ballots in Florida, then after a few days wrote in a decision "we agree that the ballot should have been recounted, but because we forced you to stop counting for a few days we find that there is no longer sufficient time to count the ballots, so GWB wins."
And thus these brightest legal minds in the country stopped the last chance to prevent the worst U.S. president in history from taking office. Brilliant! They fook up, have zero accountability for it, and get to continue with their reign of unquestionable infallibility.
"The individuals who are going around killing people with hand guns can't get a permit for a gun in the first place. These individuals buy their hand guns on underground black markets; markets that will exist whether hand gun possession is legal or not.
"
False. Cho did not buy his gun on an underground black market, he bought it from a licenced and regulated dealer. He went on to kill 32 people and himself. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre.
What part of "The right of people to bear arms shall not be infringed" allows for the exclusion by the government of anyone on the basis of the government's allegations of "mental incapacity"? Does "not" actually mean "usually not" or "absolutely not"? Let's play word games with stuff written 200 years ago! What does "arms" mean? Nuclear, biological, chemical? More word games!
My recollection is that the constitution written more than 200 years ago allowed slavery and the disenfranchisment of women. Don't those sound like pretty colossal fookups on the part of the writers? And if they could fook up stuff like that, what makes you think that they could get this "right to bear arms" stuff perfect? If there intent was to allow the citizenry to overthrow a tyrannical regime, then doesn't the citizenry today need access to the same tanks, artillery, jet fighters and WMDs that the army has?
"running X which also pre-dates Windows by a longshot"
From wikipedia:
"in May 1984, Scheifler replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1"
"Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs)"
X version 1 beats Windows version 1.0 by 1.5 years. I'm uncertain whether 1.5 years qualifies as "a longshot" or not. My suspicion is that neither version was widely adopted, so it's not really important.
"In that case the US congress uses CSMA/CD."
Where that stands for "Carry Sufficent Money for Access / Complete Debacle".
"But... I think it is interesting to consider WHY certain posts are created."
:)
Some posts are created to amuse, some to inform, some to troll, and some posts are created to designate a 'goal' area in a sporting competition. I hope that you think this post belongs in the first category.
More seriously, I expect that politicians will always create sufficient jobs (of which cabinet posts are just one type) to give their friends the money/power that they want, without much concern for efficiency or effectiveness. How do you think "Brownie" got his job as head of FEMA?
Lowercase letters that we now take for granted.
Jeff Bridges (Starman) would disagree!
"I watched you very carefully. Red means stop, green means go, yellow means go-very-fast."
"In the past 10 years the US has initiated 2 military actions against foreign powers."
Off the top of my head, I can think of 4:
1998: US launches cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan
1999: US launches airstrikes against Yugoslavia to get it out of Kosovo
2001: US provides air support to forces in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban
2003: US invades Iraq
The Terms of Use allow them to cancel your account anytime they feel like it:
"BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE THE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME WITH ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE."
That's from http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html
If they wanted to, they could ban you for botting, or for *not* botting, or just because someone is having a bad day and needs to lash out.