Would you be in favor of a constitutional amendment that forces any taxation changes to be enacted 10 years prior to taking effect, so that citizens can make rational long term financial planning decisions and so that politicians can't pay off special interests by adding another hundred pages to this years laws that may or not last beyond the next election?
From what I've read, it seems that there have been substantial ethnic and religious tensions in Iraq since it was cobbled together by the British after WWI from part of the (ex-)Ottoman Empire. Sunni Arabs were put into positions of power by the Brits and ended up dominating Iraq until recently, leaving Kurds and Shiite Arabs disenfranchised at best and frequently brutalized. Kurds and Shiites have lingering hatred of the Sunni domination that will not go away for a long time.
Forcing these 3 groups to remain in a single country is a recipe for ongoing chaos or civil war, leading either back to domination by one group or a breakup. The only thing holding Iraq together is the presence of US forces. What is the vested interest of the US in bleeding to hold Iraq together rather than splitting it up? If the US is worried about Iranian domination then splitting it up will lessen that domination, as a united (democratic (LOL!), majority Shiite) Iraq will buddy up with Iran, whereas in the partition case the Kurd and Sunni portions will not.
If elections are held in January, it is unlikely that they will be held in all the no-go areas like Fallujah. How can they enumerate the citizens in areas where the US Army won't go? How can candidates get nominated in these areas, or canvas the population for support and hold town hall meetings? If the elections disenfranchise areas like this, it will lead to a valid complaint by the Sunnis that the government is illegitimate and that's a rallying cry for a civil war (if the US leaves).
If elections are not held in January, the Shiites will get upset. They have been patient so far because they expect the whole democratic process will lead to them gaining power. Any disruption of that process will tick them off and they will get angry (or angrier).
Partition the country. If they want to get back together later, then they can. Forcing them together at the barrel of a US shotgun is probably only delaying the invetitable at huge cost in blood and money to the US.
I'd pay more, up to $29.99/month, for a game in which player death is NOT permanent, so if I'm like killed in a car crash or something then the game company resurrects me (presumably so they keep getting my subcription monies...)
The problem with MMORPG's, no matter how good the game play is, no matter how great it is for the casual player - there's always going to be groups of people that will play 10 hours a day and advance further along in the game then you ever could.
What rule says that advancement has to be directly related to how much time you spend ingame (typically more time ingame means more moles wacked means more advancement)? Maybe your character advances based upon tutoring from an ingame "mentor" character, and that happens at a rate that is more or less the same for all subscribers?
False. Air traffic controllers knew that the first plane had been hijacked half an hour before it hit the WTC. They tracked the plane on radar as it changed course to NYC, and saw the reports on CNN a few minutes after the radar blip disappeared and knew what had happened.
What would have been really helpful would have been some leadership to pull together what the air traffic controllers knew so that an effective response could have been launched. The 9/11 commission detailed just how broken the flow of information was on that day, and how ineffective the resulting response was (e.g. fighters scrambled to protect Washington flew out to sea because that was standard procedure, even though the hijacked airliners were approaching from inland). Great leadership in the heat of battle can overcome these kinds of problems.
A more likely scenario if he had acted rashly would be that dozens of innocent planes would have been shot down under the belief that they were going to hit other buildings.
Sounds like you don't have much confidence in the ability of the President to respond intelligently. I must admit that I share that concern. Even if he had decided to act (instead of piss away time reading to kids), I doubt that he is smart enough to ask the right questions to get the information needed to produce an effective response.
Tasks are delegated to a large number of people
My understanding is that only the President had the authority to issue the order to shoot down an airliner. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Bush paralyzed for 7 minutes after 2nd plane hit?
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Can we discuss one fact from the movie for a second?
Is it true that for 7 minutes after Bush was told that the second plane hit the WTC, he continued to read to elementary schoolkids?
This came one month after he had received a briefing entitled "Bin Ladin determined to attack in US" which described how Al Qaeda operatives were in the US planning to hijack planes, and 8 years after an earlier attack on the WTC.
It would seem that the President, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, would not want to waste 7 minutes before taking steps to organize defenses (such as issuing orders to defend against other airliner attacks, which were the sole responsibility of the president under rules in place at the time).
Has GW ever gone on the record explaining what he was doing for those 7 minutes? Did the 9/11 commission ask him about it?
I had never heard about that fact before this film. My first impression was that it made GW look like a clueless moron who had no idea what to do. It's as if he can't think on his feet, he needs someone to tell him what to do.
If I understand you correctly, then you are proposing a way to clear the port 25 block using a Comcast web page and no Comcast human operator involvement. If so, then I hope that our Spambot Zombie Masters (who own your machine and can do whatever they want from it from sending spam to logging keystrokes) are unable to figure out how to click that "unlock" button without your say-so.
If Longhorn wan't an OS I would bang her 4 times a day.
I was about to go home with a chick named "Longhorn" once, 'til I did a crotch check and discovered the secret behind 'her' nickname.;)
"We will fight wars over oil in the future"
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The future is now.
If the Middle East (and Iraq) were not full of oil, then the U.S. would not be fighting a war in Iraq today. I am not saying that the U.S. sent troops into Iraq to steal their oil. The neocons sent troops into Iraq in the hope that they could stabilize the region and create a reliable source of future oil for the world.
A side benefit would be that the money spent on oil (e.g. to fillup your SUV) would be less likely to support terrorism (where do you think bin Ladin got his millions?). At this stage, however, it seems that the utopian vision of the neocons will not come to pass, and the future of the region looks more unstable than before the Iraq war.
Image matters. The U.S. military, like many organizations, is very conscious about managing its image. My understanding is that since 1991 they have prohibited photographs from being taken of arrivals at Dover AFB, to avoid the negative image that they believe results from pictures of coffins of U>S. soldiers coming home.
Images of prisoners in military jails have little upside, and major potential downside as we are now seeing. I would have expected that the only cameras to be allowed into military prisons would have been those for specific photo shoots showing how well the prisoners were being fed, clothed, and housed. Why did the military commanders all the way up the chain of command not have a policy banning the possession of cameras of any sort within military prisons?
I am not saying that it is good to hide prisoner abuse, out of sight - out of mind and all that. I am saying that if I were a neocon Rumsfeld interested in protecting my job then I would have issued an order banning cameras a year ago. At this point it has gone too far and any attempt to ban cameras will look really bad, like he is trying to cover up further abuse. A year ago he could have issued such an order under the guise of a "protecting the privacy of the prisoners" kind of order.
As it stands, the pictures that have been taken and released will result in thousands of new recruits to the terrorist cause, which will result in the destruction of thousands more human lives. Banning the cameras a year ago would not have stopped the abuse, but it would have stopped the extra carnage that will now result.
If the present trend that I've observed continues, however, we won't see 6Ghz in 2006.
However, CPU clock speed is only one factor as far as system performance goes, hence Intel's recent announcment about moving away from marketing Pentiums based on clock speed. So maybe we'll see a P5 "7500+" rated CPU...
In 1963 Bull started a series of test-firings using specialised discarding-sabot rounds and then finned projectiles known as Martletts. By June these had been replaced by a dart-like shell known as the Martlett-2, which was soon reaching altitudes in excess of 100 km.
cell phones [...] used to determine the ball's speed if buttons on the phones were pressed when the ball was released and then after one revolution
As a non-gambler, I know nothing about how roulette is played. From the article it seems to imply that you can wait for the ball to be released, observe the course of ball and wheel, do the math to predict the outcome, and then place your bet. Is that correct, or have I misunderstood? Common sense would seem to require that all bets be placed prior to the ball and wheel being put in (randomized) motion to prevent just that sort of thing.
Does a horse track still take bets as the steeds enter the final stretch?
USA craft are very susceptible to slight malfunctions. Russian craft will be fine as long as you have a roll of duct tape or a bit of wood glue.
I guess they should have given some duct tape to those 3 Russian cosmonauts who asphyxiated because their capsule depressurized too soon during reentry. The design of the Russian capsule was so brilliant that there was no room for the cosmonauts to wear spacesuits, but heck, who needs 'em, we're talking simple, reliable Russian technology here!
Snippet from the Boston Globe:
The most serious reentry accident before the Columbia disaster occurred on June 29, 1971, when the Soviet Soyuz 11 depressurized during reentry. Air rushed out of the capsule, killing cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, who apparently made a desparate attempt to close the pressure-equalizing valve. The cramped conditions in the capsule prevented the crew from wearing spacesuits, which would have saved their lives.
The fact that the Soviet Union did quite a good job at suppressing accident information no doubt has helped to foster an aura of safety and reliability. I'm not trying to say that the shuttle isn't overcomplicated and overdesigned, but Russians have made mistakes too.
You don't need to keep the "dangerous people" off passenger planes any more. When someone stands up and rushes the cockpit and starts banging on the door, they get jumped by dozens of other passengers. 9/11 changed the whole hijacker/hijackee contract. Before that, it was understood that your best chance of survival as a passenger or crewmember was to cooperate. Not any more. The "trust" is gone.
The only way that the hijackers could hope to get control would be if they had a ratio of hijackers to passengers of something approaching 1:1, or if they had smuggled weapons on board that allowed them to incapacitate the passengers and crew. Security screening can stop the weapons, hopefully. I don't know how to stop a sleeper cell of 50-100 terrorists from all boarding the same flight, but I consider that to be a fairly improbable scenario.
If the terrorists just want to blow a planeload of people up, and not hijack it into a building, then there are much softer targets out there than an airplane. Trains would be the recent, obvious example. If they want to drive a plane into a building then a cargo plane with a crew of 2 or 3 would be an easier target, I would think. A year ago some guy smuggled himself onto a cargo plane by FedExing himself from New York to Texas!
Generals always seem to be planning today to win the last war. These $$$ spent on passenger screening systems may be helpful for that, I suppose. But perhaps the money would be better spent hardening some of the softer targets that are more likely candidates for the next battle...
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Midget porn! :)
Would you be in favor of a constitutional amendment that forces any taxation changes to be enacted 10 years prior to taking effect, so that citizens can make rational long term financial planning decisions and so that politicians can't pay off special interests by adding another hundred pages to this years laws that may or not last beyond the next election?
Forcing these 3 groups to remain in a single country is a recipe for ongoing chaos or civil war, leading either back to domination by one group or a breakup. The only thing holding Iraq together is the presence of US forces. What is the vested interest of the US in bleeding to hold Iraq together rather than splitting it up? If the US is worried about Iranian domination then splitting it up will lessen that domination, as a united (democratic (LOL!), majority Shiite) Iraq will buddy up with Iran, whereas in the partition case the Kurd and Sunni portions will not.
If elections are held in January, it is unlikely that they will be held in all the no-go areas like Fallujah. How can they enumerate the citizens in areas where the US Army won't go? How can candidates get nominated in these areas, or canvas the population for support and hold town hall meetings? If the elections disenfranchise areas like this, it will lead to a valid complaint by the Sunnis that the government is illegitimate and that's a rallying cry for a civil war (if the US leaves).
If elections are not held in January, the Shiites will get upset. They have been patient so far because they expect the whole democratic process will lead to them gaining power. Any disruption of that process will tick them off and they will get angry (or angrier).
Partition the country. If they want to get back together later, then they can. Forcing them together at the barrel of a US shotgun is probably only delaying the invetitable at huge cost in blood and money to the US.
True, for all sets of EVERYONE who is male, 20+, and still living in their parent's basement.
Is considering both, and potentially considering both, kinda like having tea and no tea?
Are they hiring any editors?
...in the character creation screen, I recommend against the "red shirt" option, as it will gimp your character.
I'd pay more, up to $29.99/month, for a game in which player death is NOT permanent, so if I'm like killed in a car crash or something then the game company resurrects me (presumably so they keep getting my subcription monies...)
Talk about customer service!
What rule says that advancement has to be directly related to how much time you spend ingame (typically more time ingame means more moles wacked means more advancement)? Maybe your character advances based upon tutoring from an ingame "mentor" character, and that happens at a rate that is more or less the same for all subscribers?
False. Air traffic controllers knew that the first plane had been hijacked half an hour before it hit the WTC. They tracked the plane on radar as it changed course to NYC, and saw the reports on CNN a few minutes after the radar blip disappeared and knew what had happened.
What would have been really helpful would have been some leadership to pull together what the air traffic controllers knew so that an effective response could have been launched. The 9/11 commission detailed just how broken the flow of information was on that day, and how ineffective the resulting response was (e.g. fighters scrambled to protect Washington flew out to sea because that was standard procedure, even though the hijacked airliners were approaching from inland). Great leadership in the heat of battle can overcome these kinds of problems.
A more likely scenario if he had acted rashly would be that dozens of innocent planes would have been shot down under the belief that they were going to hit other buildings.
Sounds like you don't have much confidence in the ability of the President to respond intelligently. I must admit that I share that concern. Even if he had decided to act (instead of piss away time reading to kids), I doubt that he is smart enough to ask the right questions to get the information needed to produce an effective response.
Tasks are delegated to a large number of people
My understanding is that only the President had the authority to issue the order to shoot down an airliner. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Can we discuss one fact from the movie for a second?
Is it true that for 7 minutes after Bush was told that the second plane hit the WTC, he continued to read to elementary schoolkids?
This came one month after he had received a briefing entitled "Bin Ladin determined to attack in US" which described how Al Qaeda operatives were in the US planning to hijack planes, and 8 years after an earlier attack on the WTC.
It would seem that the President, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, would not want to waste 7 minutes before taking steps to organize defenses (such as issuing orders to defend against other airliner attacks, which were the sole responsibility of the president under rules in place at the time).
Has GW ever gone on the record explaining what he was doing for those 7 minutes? Did the 9/11 commission ask him about it?
I had never heard about that fact before this film. My first impression was that it made GW look like a clueless moron who had no idea what to do. It's as if he can't think on his feet, he needs someone to tell him what to do.
If I understand you correctly, then you are proposing a way to clear the port 25 block using a Comcast web page and no Comcast human operator involvement. If so, then I hope that our Spambot Zombie Masters (who own your machine and can do whatever they want from it from sending spam to logging keystrokes) are unable to figure out how to click that "unlock" button without your say-so.
I was about to go home with a chick named "Longhorn" once, 'til I did a crotch check and discovered the secret behind 'her' nickname. ;)
The future is now.
If the Middle East (and Iraq) were not full of oil, then the U.S. would not be fighting a war in Iraq today. I am not saying that the U.S. sent troops into Iraq to steal their oil. The neocons sent troops into Iraq in the hope that they could stabilize the region and create a reliable source of future oil for the world.
A side benefit would be that the money spent on oil (e.g. to fillup your SUV) would be less likely to support terrorism (where do you think bin Ladin got his millions?). At this stage, however, it seems that the utopian vision of the neocons will not come to pass, and the future of the region looks more unstable than before the Iraq war.
Image matters. The U.S. military, like many organizations, is very conscious about managing its image. My understanding is that since 1991 they have prohibited photographs from being taken of arrivals at Dover AFB, to avoid the negative image that they believe results from pictures of coffins of U>S. soldiers coming home.
Images of prisoners in military jails have little upside, and major potential downside as we are now seeing. I would have expected that the only cameras to be allowed into military prisons would have been those for specific photo shoots showing how well the prisoners were being fed, clothed, and housed. Why did the military commanders all the way up the chain of command not have a policy banning the possession of cameras of any sort within military prisons?
I am not saying that it is good to hide prisoner abuse, out of sight - out of mind and all that. I am saying that if I were a neocon Rumsfeld interested in protecting my job then I would have issued an order banning cameras a year ago. At this point it has gone too far and any attempt to ban cameras will look really bad, like he is trying to cover up further abuse. A year ago he could have issued such an order under the guise of a "protecting the privacy of the prisoners" kind of order.
As it stands, the pictures that have been taken and released will result in thousands of new recruits to the terrorist cause, which will result in the destruction of thousands more human lives. Banning the cameras a year ago would not have stopped the abuse, but it would have stopped the extra carnage that will now result.
Scene: Officer Lou and Chief Wiggum in police car, trying to be inconspicuous.
Wiggum tells Lou to pretend they're a pizza company. Wiggum puts a "Pizza" sign over the police lights on top of the car.
Lou: "But Chief, what if they like pizza?"
Wiggum : "Way ahead of you." Wiggum then sticks a Domino's Pizza sticker over the Springfield Police Department logo on the side of the car.
Oh, wait, the original article said immorTal, sorry, my bad. ;)
D'oh, yes, my bad on the math for adding the extra multiple to the >100% figures. 400/133 = 3 means 200% faster (as you note).
My history of PC clone purchases (I tend to buy a near top of the line machine every 2 years):
1995: 133 Mhz
1998: 400 Mhz (300% faster)
2000: 1500 Mhz (333% faster)
2002: 2800 Mhz (90% faster)
2004: 3400 Mhz (20% faster)
If the present trend that I've observed continues, however, we won't see 6Ghz in 2006.
However, CPU clock speed is only one factor as far as system performance goes, hence Intel's recent announcment about moving away from marketing Pentiums based on clock speed. So maybe we'll see a P5 "7500+" rated CPU...
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull:
In 1963 Bull started a series of test-firings using specialised discarding-sabot rounds and then finned projectiles known as Martletts. By June these had been replaced by a dart-like shell known as the Martlett-2, which was soon reaching altitudes in excess of 100 km.
..against AOL for "dumping" product on the market. ;)
You had me at "Krispy Kreme". ;)
Actually, canola is a contraction of "Canada Oil, Eh?"
As a non-gambler, I know nothing about how roulette is played. From the article it seems to imply that you can wait for the ball to be released, observe the course of ball and wheel, do the math to predict the outcome, and then place your bet. Is that correct, or have I misunderstood? Common sense would seem to require that all bets be placed prior to the ball and wheel being put in (randomized) motion to prevent just that sort of thing.
Does a horse track still take bets as the steeds enter the final stretch?
I guess they should have given some duct tape to those 3 Russian cosmonauts who asphyxiated because their capsule depressurized too soon during reentry. The design of the Russian capsule was so brilliant that there was no room for the cosmonauts to wear spacesuits, but heck, who needs 'em, we're talking simple, reliable Russian technology here!
Snippet from the Boston Globe: The most serious reentry accident before the Columbia disaster occurred on June 29, 1971, when the Soviet Soyuz 11 depressurized during reentry. Air rushed out of the capsule, killing cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, who apparently made a desparate attempt to close the pressure-equalizing valve. The cramped conditions in the capsule prevented the crew from wearing spacesuits, which would have saved their lives.
The fact that the Soviet Union did quite a good job at suppressing accident information no doubt has helped to foster an aura of safety and reliability. I'm not trying to say that the shuttle isn't overcomplicated and overdesigned, but Russians have made mistakes too.
You don't need to keep the "dangerous people" off passenger planes any more. When someone stands up and rushes the cockpit and starts banging on the door, they get jumped by dozens of other passengers. 9/11 changed the whole hijacker/hijackee contract. Before that, it was understood that your best chance of survival as a passenger or crewmember was to cooperate. Not any more. The "trust" is gone.
The only way that the hijackers could hope to get control would be if they had a ratio of hijackers to passengers of something approaching 1:1, or if they had smuggled weapons on board that allowed them to incapacitate the passengers and crew. Security screening can stop the weapons, hopefully. I don't know how to stop a sleeper cell of 50-100 terrorists from all boarding the same flight, but I consider that to be a fairly improbable scenario.
If the terrorists just want to blow a planeload of people up, and not hijack it into a building, then there are much softer targets out there than an airplane. Trains would be the recent, obvious example. If they want to drive a plane into a building then a cargo plane with a crew of 2 or 3 would be an easier target, I would think. A year ago some guy smuggled himself onto a cargo plane by FedExing himself from New York to Texas!
Generals always seem to be planning today to win the last war. These $$$ spent on passenger screening systems may be helpful for that, I suppose. But perhaps the money would be better spent hardening some of the softer targets that are more likely candidates for the next battle...