it was the US that made the decision to split the country and the US that did the work. The USSR was happy to take a slice of Korea if it was given one, but the original "UN" intention, if you want to call it that (agreed by Chiang-Kai Shek, Winston Churchill and FDR), was to make Korea independent. The US went back on that,
Please show evidence of this. The division was only meant to be temporary, and the US wanted a united Korea as well, but the Soviets never allowed elections in the north, so the US and UN held elections in the south and setup up ROK. If you're suggesting the US is responsible for a divided Korea because they didn't hand over SK to the USSR to become one of its communist satellite countries, then well, I agree with the US's decision.
There were US troops in SK at the time. In fact, South Korea was being run by the US military in a similar fashion
Prove this. A google shows multiple sources saying the US military had completely pulled out by 1949, except for 500 advisors, and thats clearly not a meaninful force (not even organized as one unit). A google also shows the US military control ended in 1948 after the elections that established the Republic of Korea. At the time of the invasion, SK was an independent country, and there were no US military units in SK.
That's no problem for either SK or Japan. They have the technology already. Neither of them would ever preemptively use the weapons on NK or anyone else, so there's no threat to the peace there.
Where there is no trust (much less understanding) there can be no peace when a nuclear first strike can happen in just 2-3 minutes. This is why India-Pakistan may very well end up being the first nuclear war on the planet. What you or I believe SK and Japan will or won't do, doesn't matter, neither the US or the USSR seriously planned first strikes against each other, but that didn't help us in the Cold War because neither side trusted the other, and given the harshness and paranoia of NK, I do not see trust developing between them and SK/Japan.
You're also forgeting the other players over there. China does not want even the possibility of a nuclear war on their doorstep. Besides, do you really think China would be happy with a nuclear Japan? Go ahead and ask them...:) In fact, ask just about anybody over there about a nuclear armed Japan, that whole region has long memories....
Yea, it does sound flippant. You see, child labor is now *illegal* in the US under Federal Law. Your link is to a report showing compliance and enforcement efforts by the states. In the "Good Ole' Days" the OP is referring to, child labor was legal and occurring on a massive scale. Robber Barons got filthy rich on the blood, sweat, and tears of 10 year olds.
I do agree that in many places of the world things are still like the "Good Ole' Days" that the US had, and I also agree there are unethical American companies willing to exploit overseas child labor, but I consider that to be a symptom of the Psychopathic Corporation, not specific to any country.
Get an MSI K8T Neo motherboard with an Athlon64. It can automatically vary its CPU speed from 800Mhz to its full rated speed (2Ghz+). So if you have its throttling control turned on, you don't worry about the Athlon64's maximum power consumption because it rarely runs at max speed. Best of all, although you turn this on or off in the bios, its controlled on the motherboard, so it works in either Windows or Linux (no software drivers).
But it is remarkably prevalent in the households that are swarming to broadband. After all, what was the last commercial you saw advertising a website that was free, didn't require registration, and would let you look up interesting things? You don't.
Yea, but so what? That's always true in any "open system" where the commercial interests will concentrate on their profit concerns, but anyone who bothers to look around will find other uses for the system. Have the corporations killed off USENET? No, it may not be as popular as AOL forums (never been there, don't know), but plenty are still using it. I don't have the problem you have with sharing the net with the commercial interests, as long as they don't try to control or dictate how I can use the net, I'm fine with them being here.
Instead, these hundreds of people are signing on to their corporate billboards - being sold crap without the nasty inconvenience of the unwashed masses actually going out to stores (even if they themselves are the unwashed masses).
Huh? Its a "buyer beware" world out there, and has been long before the net showed up. If people want to be sheep, or just idiots, and buy what the corps want them to, thats the people's problem, not ours, its their money after all, and its not the Internet's fault if they choose to waste it. It sounds like you want to blame the car when people use one to go to a distant Walmart instead of a local mom-n-pop shop. Is that the car's fault? Look, as frustrating as it may be, people being stupid/naive/lazy/selfish hasn't been made illegal yet.
Is the internet a failure? Not quite, but it's looking bad for the home team.
Never mind defining who the "home team" is, we don't even agree on what definiton to use for "failure" here.:)
Should inventions be judged by their relative merit to humanity? Mmmm, probably. That's why I'm not sold on the space program.
See, we definitely don't agree on what is valuable to humantiy and what is a waste of money. Personaly, I believe the space program will save humanity from itself one day, assuming people like you don't manage to shut it down before then.
Would Linux and OS be possible without the net? Who knows?
I know. Anyone who knows anything about the development of Linux knows the Internet was the only vehicle then (and still now) that could bring all the disparate peoples from around the world together in one virtual place and allow them to collabarate on Linux's construction. It couldn't have happened any other way, a global, decentralized, digital network was simply a requirement.
Now, it's that same library, only with thieves and killers in the rows. And unprepared users are swarming into it every day.
That's a really weird analogy. Seriously, if you're referring to fraud and con-artists, they existed long before the Internet too. A conman will go anywhere "the mark" goes, and if the mark (the victim) goes online, the conman is going to follow. I still don't see that as the Internet's fault either, and it certainly doesn't prove the Internet is a failure, only that its popular.
Its my impression that you're saying the Internet's commercialization is proof of its failure, and that just doesn't make sense to me. I agree that the commercialization may not lead to the most profound and revolutionary consequences of the Internet, but it doesn't prevent those conseqences from happening either. The corps will play their old money games, but the rest of us will keep on doing our own thing as well.
Someone else already pointed out that NK has not signed the non proliferation treaty
Actually it did, around 1994, then announced its unilateral withdrawal in early 2003. Someone else will have to answer whether the treaty gives the UN authority to wage war against them for withdrawing from the treaty.
Yes, North Korea has attacked someone. Once, more than fifty years ago, it attacked what it considered to be a renegade government (which had just declared itself independent from the North) installed by an occupying power
No.
North and South Korea were created by the United Nations, not any "occupying power". Indeed, had there been American troops in South Korea at the time of the invasion, NK probably wouldn't have attacked at all. They did because they believed they could succeed before anyone could intervene and stop them, and they were gambling that the US wouldn't react because there weren't any US troops in SK at the time, and the US had no defense treaties with SK.
It is good that the North has nukes, since it means the stalemate will continue. Which means peace.
Hopelessly naive.
If NK starts building nukes, there is going to be enormous pressure on SK and Japan to follow suit. Neither the US or China wants a nuclear arms race to start there, which is precisely why China is trying to help us get NK to see reason.
Secondly, an NK with nuclear weapons will inevitable start making demands of SK, demands that can't be met. NK is crumbling from within, there are so many things they desperately need but can't pay for, with Kim Jong Il, nuclear blackmail to preserve his regime is a foregone conclusion.
One thing I'm sure of: Kim Jong Il in charge of a disentigrating and starving country with a nuclear arsenal is NOT going to lead to peace. Given what we know about NK's government and KJI and his father's paranoia, only a fool would believe that.
I've listened to rabid anti-American rhetoric for years about the US's position on Cuba (not saying you're being rabid, but others). There is a small point that some people seem to quickly gloss over, and that is Castro is as rabidly anti-American as you believe we are anti-Cuban.:)
Castro wanted to turn his country into a missle base with long range Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at the US. Everyone knew at the time this would mean all out war, probably nuclear war, with the US versus the USSR. So Castro was apparently willing to sacrifice his country by letting it become the battleground between nuclear superpowers. Because of Castro, the world came the closest it ever did (by far) to nuclear armagheddon. A lot of Americans, and not just Cuban-Americans, haven't forgotten that.
On the other hand, now that the USSR is gone, Castro can't threaten us in a military way anymore, so I don't agree with continuing the sanctions either. However, the sanctions started not because he was a Communist, they started because he was creating a Communist country just 90 miles from our border, and he proved to us he was a dangerous Communist who *wanted* to be a threat to America, and had he got his way, many of us might not exist today.
Without the US and Britain's invasion of Western Europe, the Germans would have only had to fight a one-front war against the Russians.
The double-front cost Hitler the war,
Please do a little googling on what was going on on the Eastern Front in '43 and '44 before you make this assumption. There are similar debates like this among historians and war gamers (many of whom are amateur historians) as to who is in debt to who, but I believe there's always been a consensus among objective historians that the German Army was beat on the ground in the USSR during '43. The Germans were stopped cold and given a very bloody nose in Operation Citadel in '43. After that failure, Germany went on the defensive and in some places were already retreating nearly a *year* before DDay (the USSR kicked them out of the Caucasus on the Southern flank in winter counterattacks during '42-'43), and by DDay, which coincided with the USSR's '44 Spring Offensive, they were by the summer in full retreat across the entire Eastern Front.
Now there are still arguments today about whether the USSR could have *survived* until '43 without Lend-Lease from the US and UK. My opinion is they would have, assuming the Germans made the same mistakes they historically did, but not everyone agrees with that, I understand, so its still a matter of conjecture.
But the West (and I'm American) has never really come to terms with the truth about the end of WWII in Europe. To give you an idea, many do not realise that the Germans chose to fight the Battle of the Bulge on the West Front, because they themselves knew (and explicitly said) that those precious assets they had collected for this operation would have simply been swallowed up and ground down to nothing on the East Front by the Red Army.
Many in the German professional military knew they had already lost the war by the end of '43, and said so after the war. It is a painful thing to tell people that they aren't fighting to stop a monster (Germany), but are fighting to claim an equal share of the corpse of that monster, in order to keep a potentially future monster (USSR) from becoming too powerful. The West had to come in and save western Europe not from Hitler but from the USSR, only since the public might have said "let the Russians do the dying", the West had to make it sound like without them getting involved, Germany might win. But by '44, a German victory simply wasn't possible. It might have taken an extra year or two, but the USSR would have defeated Hitler on its own (at least reaching and taking Berlin by that time).
WWI was very different, though. The Czar's Army then was hopelessly outclassed by the Imperial German army, and their attacks on Germany in '14 failed utterly. Once the Western offensives were over, and trench warfare set in in France, Germany went on the defensive there and shifted resources to the East, and from 1915 until 1917, Germany slowly chewed Russia up. By the end of WWI, everyone's morale (except the US) was in the tank, it just happened to be Russia, because of 2 years of defeat and retreat and pre-existing social unrest, that cracked first.
So Germany switched back to the West Front, and resumed their offensives against France. What was crucial to Britian and France when this began however, was the arrival of the US in the war (Russia went out before the US came in). True, the US didn't play a big role in terms of numbers (though US Marines played a small but significant role in defending France during those early German offensives in 1918), but their presence alone on the West Front was a massive boost to the morale of both Britian and especially France. Remember that the year before in '17, France's Army was wracked by serious mutinies and desertions, which could have been fatal had the troubles not been stopped by the French High Command through various means.
Darnit, I just looked, and there is no "-1 Bitter" mod.:)
I don't really know what your point is. Is every new invention judged by whether it turns out to be "a wonderful, great, uplifting experience for humanity"? And if it isn't its an abject failure? Kinda setting the bar a little high aren't you?
Now, it's just another corporate shill
The corps are here, but they don't have a monopoly on usage of the Internet (not yet at least). Personally I think the open, decentralised, collabaration, as well as the global communication characteristics of the Internet means it has enormous revolutionary potential, and you only need to look at Linux to see something that never would have been created if not for the Internet. Never mind that there wouldn't be a F/OS community either.
To lazy to find the link, but a week or so ago, we had an article showing broadband(*) was just now reaching 50/50 versus dialup. So, saying "everyone" has it already, thats well, uhhhmmmm, wrong.:)
*: Don't know what the definiton of broadband was in that survey though.
The cable company does need to keep the prices reasonable
Only for broadband, because as far as cable TV goes, they have a monopoly and can gouge their customers right up to the threshold where they start losing a lot of them due to sticker shock.
So their "reasonable" broadband prices are ON TOP OF *unreasonable* cable TV prices.
That depends on what you need, and how much money you're willing to spend for it. For cheapskates like me, who are still fine with land-line phones, and also not addicted to cable TV, the advantage goes to DSL.
I chose 512kbps/128kbps DSL from a phone company (Sprint), even though its not true broadband and not the fastest available. My thinking was, since I already "had to have" local and long distance service, getting the whole package together effectively makes the DSL service ~30$ a month. Now, my net connection is always-on, doesn't tie up my phone, and is roughly ~9x faster but only ~12$ more than dial-up.
Cable on the other hand doesn't offer me anything else I'm interested in. I dumped cable TV ~3 years ago, when they wanted 35$ for ~100 channels, of which ~80 I considered to be absolute junk, and almost half of what was left were broadcast channels I could get locally.
who needs a landline phone?
Well, since I'm not a big talker, and never considered instant convenient communication to be essential, I never bothered with cellphones since they are always more expensive than land line phone service.
This perhaps may depend on who your local phone company is, but it goes both ways too. Adelphia is the only local cable company I have, and because of financial difficulty (bankruptcy) and mismanagement (being financially gutted by their former owner), Adelphia is milking their customers for every dollar it can get (to help it recover), making the phone company's package deal (local/long distance/DSL) very favorable (to me at least).
Of course, I'd love to have 3mbps downstream, but 512kbps means apt-get update only takes about 80 seconds, and the following upgrade runs at 3MB/1min, instead of 1MB/3min. Now web pages are almost instantaneous, what took hours now take minutes, and since I'm not a heavy downloader (no movies or music), thats more than good enough for me. Most importantly, the net increase in my monthly costs is just $20. OC, YMMV.
I've had "high-speed" access (DSL, 512kbps/128kbps, always-on) for about 2 weeks now, and I still occasionally get the feeling that I need to do certain things now/quickly. I have been trained by 5-6 years of dail-up to go thru a "check-list" once I'm connected, and now I still can't get over the idea that I can walk away from my/. browsing for a couple hours and come back to it later, after a nice nap, with no consequences.:)
I'm not implying it. After three days of research, I'm saying it outright. These memos are forgeries, and inept ones at that.
Wonderful, your 3 days of research trumps everyone else, because you're never wrong, right? LOL.
You weren't listening to anyone before, you shithead.
Oh I *was* listening Mr Twirlip, but I was also taking into account who are the ones running their mouth off right now (besides you). What I see is a lot of net-based right-wing blogs and Bush attack dogs launching attacks on these specific documents but with most moderate sources simply reserving judgement.
Meanwhile CBS still stands by their conclusion, in part because those documents under attack weren't the only source of their story, and some people who initially thought there might be some questions in the document have changed their mind, and interestingly enough, this guy *is* a recognized 30 year expert on typewritten documents. Meanwhile, Mr Twirlip, where is your document forensics resume, hmmm?
All I want is evidence and some kind of consensus from *real* experts, rather than a bunch of foul-mouthed right wing Internet nuts, and for that I'm called a "shithead". Doesn't surprise me a bit, you guys have been working on the Big Lie strategy for so long, and unfortunately, successfully, why quit now?
I'll give you that Paypal dominates Ebay, however Ebay isn't just relying on Paypal, Ebay also has Billpoint. So by that definition alone (Ebay owning a potential competitor) Paypal doesn't have monopoly power over Ebay, they just happen to be the dominant form of epayment on Ebay for now.
tiny sellers of services/products on the Web without a credit card merchant account
The key word here being "tiny", as in a pitifully small amount of money involved. This a monopoly doesn't make. Even if they had a greater than 95% control of this micro-payment market (which they don't) we're still talking about chump-change. Comparing them to real banks on this score becomes embarrassing. More importantly, the main reason while Paypal is doing well in micro-payments, is because the big boys haven't entered the market yet, perhaps because they're at a disadvantage as long as Paypal isn't regulated as a bank. If Paypal succeeds in the bigger markets, bank-regulation is almost a certainty (the second link below indicates the FCC is *already* looking at Paypal), at which point even the micro-payment market becomes wide open because its now a level playing field. The real point here though is that Paypal doesn't have a monopoly like "lock" on this market, its more of a matter of the market being so *small*, that there isn't a lot of companies interested in competing in it.
And everyone sending money to their friend across the Net without needing to process credit cards.
According to this, 90% of Paypal's revenue comes from commercial transactions, not individual to individual payments.
as there are other marginal players
Except they aren't "marginal". Even in the Ebay market, where Paypal dominates, they are only used for 68% of transactions, and this isn't yet even at the expense of the competitors, since Billpoint usage went up in the same period (see previous link). Outside of Ebay, Paypal is nowhere near the "800 pound gorilla" status. There is a difference between dominating a market and actually monopolizing the market.
That's a huge market, and growing much more quickly than online credit card billing.
Well, of course, since the whole bloody market is controlled right now by credit card payments. According to this, credit card usage accounts for 93% of epayment transactions. Now 93% is what I'd call a monopoly. So sure, since credit cards started out with 100% of the market, Paypal and friends are gaining ground quickly (since they're starting at 0%) and are gaining at the expense of credit cards (since they owned the whole market at the beginning), this still isn't anywhere close to a monopoly in the common-sense meaning of the word.
Given the major problems Paypal will face to actually reach monopoly status (at some point the FCC is going to decide Paypal is acting like a bank, and must therefore follow the rules of banking, which will instantly take away Paypal's advantages over its major bank-related competitors like Citibank's C2IT) I don't see them ever reaching 95% market share in any market, and because Ebay has put its eggs in more than one basket (also owning Billpoint) I'm not even sure Paypal can reach Microsoft-like monopoly control of Ebay auctions. We haven't even seen the well-monied players (the major multinational banks) get into this game yet.
Get back to me when its Paypal that owns Ebay (not their market, but the company) and controls a majority of all epayment commerce. Until then, there just ain't a monopoly here.
But PayPal is also dominant for sending money in email, which is the most widespread ecommerce we have.
Who sends money in email, and when did that become more popular than going to a merchant's website and buying something with a credit card (number)? It seems this Revolution happened without me.... and I swear I'm not Rip Van Winkle.:)
Do these documents appear to be forgeries? Yes, definitely. Is there anything about them that suggests they're not forgeries? Nope. Ergo...
Amazing. Twirlip of the Mists has strongly implied the documents are forgeries, despite the CBS experts who say they aren't, despite the contradictory statements here and elsewhere, despite living persons saying the alleged author of these documents had said these concerns to others, but because its Twirlip of the Mists saying so, who everyone knows is a world renowned expert on 1970's era typewriters and typesetters, well of course I'm not even going to listen to anyone else.
This is ridiculous. Think about it: you're implying that they knew there would be questions about the authenticity, that they had to introduce artifacts to show a typewriter origin, so they made all those copies to introduce artifacts(*), but if they knew authenticity would be important why didn't they just actually print this up on a real typewriter in the first place and avoid the whole problem? Since you believe all the media (except for Fox) is liberal, you seem to assume they are stupid too, and therefore this is easily explainable, but I don't think liberals or conservatives are automatically stupid, and I don't believe CBS would make such a blatant mistake, because any competent journalist would look hard at the authenticity issue knowing thats the first thing the critics will bring up.
*: I don't actually agree with that either. Making copies repeatedly will introduce *random* artifacts, but not the specific characteristics being talked about here (whether "th" is superscripted or not, what kind of font was used, what characteristics certain specific letters - ALL of those letters - have, etc, etc)
Kerry has based his entire campaign on his 4 months in Vietnam.
No he hasn't. The Dem *Convention* focused on his war record to counter the FUD about the Dems always being weaker than the Reps at protecting the country, yadda, yadda. Its bullshit, but a lot of people believe it, so he has to counter that. After the Convention, Kerry has done everything he can to steer the talk to things he believes Bush is weak on. Its Bush's attack dogs that want Vietnam to stay on the table, because as long as thats what we're talking about, we aren't talking about Bush's own screwups and stupidity.
The only people who claim he's talked only about Vietnam, just so happen to say that so they can criticise him. The height of hypocrisy: The conservatives say he only talks about Vietnam, when in reality its the conservatives who keep Vietnam on the front burner by constantly making this criticism. So excuse me if I don't buy this crap anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Please show evidence of this. The division was only meant to be temporary, and the US wanted a united Korea as well, but the Soviets never allowed elections in the north, so the US and UN held elections in the south and setup up ROK. If you're suggesting the US is responsible for a divided Korea because they didn't hand over SK to the USSR to become one of its communist satellite countries, then well, I agree with the US's decision.
Prove this. A google shows multiple sources saying the US military had completely pulled out by 1949, except for 500 advisors, and thats clearly not a meaninful force (not even organized as one unit). A google also shows the US military control ended in 1948 after the elections that established the Republic of Korea. At the time of the invasion, SK was an independent country, and there were no US military units in SK.
Where there is no trust (much less understanding) there can be no peace when a nuclear first strike can happen in just 2-3 minutes. This is why India-Pakistan may very well end up being the first nuclear war on the planet. What you or I believe SK and Japan will or won't do, doesn't matter, neither the US or the USSR seriously planned first strikes against each other, but that didn't help us in the Cold War because neither side trusted the other, and given the harshness and paranoia of NK, I do not see trust developing between them and SK/Japan.
You're also forgeting the other players over there. China does not want even the possibility of a nuclear war on their doorstep. Besides, do you really think China would be happy with a nuclear Japan? Go ahead and ask them...
I suspected as much, but I just can't help piling onto the scrum even after the whistle has been blown and the play is over...
The list goes on....
Yea, it does sound flippant. You see, child labor is now *illegal* in the US under Federal Law. Your link is to a report showing compliance and enforcement efforts by the states. In the "Good Ole' Days" the OP is referring to, child labor was legal and occurring on a massive scale. Robber Barons got filthy rich on the blood, sweat, and tears of 10 year olds.
I do agree that in many places of the world things are still like the "Good Ole' Days" that the US had, and I also agree there are unethical American companies willing to exploit overseas child labor, but I consider that to be a symptom of the Psychopathic Corporation, not specific to any country.
What about power consumption?
Get an MSI K8T Neo motherboard with an Athlon64. It can automatically vary its CPU speed from 800Mhz to its full rated speed (2Ghz+). So if you have its throttling control turned on, you don't worry about the Athlon64's maximum power consumption because it rarely runs at max speed. Best of all, although you turn this on or off in the bios, its controlled on the motherboard, so it works in either Windows or Linux (no software drivers).
Yea, but so what? That's always true in any "open system" where the commercial interests will concentrate on their profit concerns, but anyone who bothers to look around will find other uses for the system. Have the corporations killed off USENET? No, it may not be as popular as AOL forums (never been there, don't know), but plenty are still using it. I don't have the problem you have with sharing the net with the commercial interests, as long as they don't try to control or dictate how I can use the net, I'm fine with them being here.
Huh? Its a "buyer beware" world out there, and has been long before the net showed up. If people want to be sheep, or just idiots, and buy what the corps want them to, thats the people's problem, not ours, its their money after all, and its not the Internet's fault if they choose to waste it. It sounds like you want to blame the car when people use one to go to a distant Walmart instead of a local mom-n-pop shop. Is that the car's fault? Look, as frustrating as it may be, people being stupid/naive/lazy/selfish hasn't been made illegal yet.
Never mind defining who the "home team" is, we don't even agree on what definiton to use for "failure" here.
See, we definitely don't agree on what is valuable to humantiy and what is a waste of money. Personaly, I believe the space program will save humanity from itself one day, assuming people like you don't manage to shut it down before then.
I know. Anyone who knows anything about the development of Linux knows the Internet was the only vehicle then (and still now) that could bring all the disparate peoples from around the world together in one virtual place and allow them to collabarate on Linux's construction. It couldn't have happened any other way, a global, decentralized, digital network was simply a requirement.
That's a really weird analogy. Seriously, if you're referring to fraud and con-artists, they existed long before the Internet too. A conman will go anywhere "the mark" goes, and if the mark (the victim) goes online, the conman is going to follow. I still don't see that as the Internet's fault either, and it certainly doesn't prove the Internet is a failure, only that its popular.
Its my impression that you're saying the Internet's commercialization is proof of its failure, and that just doesn't make sense to me. I agree that the commercialization may not lead to the most profound and revolutionary consequences of the Internet, but it doesn't prevent those conseqences from happening either. The corps will play their old money games, but the rest of us will keep on doing our own thing as well.
Actually it did, around 1994, then announced its unilateral withdrawal in early 2003. Someone else will have to answer whether the treaty gives the UN authority to wage war against them for withdrawing from the treaty.
Hi Yassir,
I'm surprised you've still got net access, given what the Isrealis did to your compound.
No.
North and South Korea were created by the United Nations, not any "occupying power". Indeed, had there been American troops in South Korea at the time of the invasion, NK probably wouldn't have attacked at all. They did because they believed they could succeed before anyone could intervene and stop them, and they were gambling that the US wouldn't react because there weren't any US troops in SK at the time, and the US had no defense treaties with SK.
Hopelessly naive.
If NK starts building nukes, there is going to be enormous pressure on SK and Japan to follow suit. Neither the US or China wants a nuclear arms race to start there, which is precisely why China is trying to help us get NK to see reason.
Secondly, an NK with nuclear weapons will inevitable start making demands of SK, demands that can't be met. NK is crumbling from within, there are so many things they desperately need but can't pay for, with Kim Jong Il, nuclear blackmail to preserve his regime is a foregone conclusion.
One thing I'm sure of: Kim Jong Il in charge of a disentigrating and starving country with a nuclear arsenal is NOT going to lead to peace. Given what we know about NK's government and KJI and his father's paranoia, only a fool would believe that.
I've listened to rabid anti-American rhetoric for years about the US's position on Cuba (not saying you're being rabid, but others). There is a small point that some people seem to quickly gloss over, and that is Castro is as rabidly anti-American as you believe we are anti-Cuban. :)
Castro wanted to turn his country into a missle base with long range Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at the US. Everyone knew at the time this would mean all out war, probably nuclear war, with the US versus the USSR. So Castro was apparently willing to sacrifice his country by letting it become the battleground between nuclear superpowers. Because of Castro, the world came the closest it ever did (by far) to nuclear armagheddon. A lot of Americans, and not just Cuban-Americans, haven't forgotten that.
On the other hand, now that the USSR is gone, Castro can't threaten us in a military way anymore, so I don't agree with continuing the sanctions either. However, the sanctions started not because he was a Communist, they started because he was creating a Communist country just 90 miles from our border, and he proved to us he was a dangerous Communist who *wanted* to be a threat to America, and had he got his way, many of us might not exist today.
Please do a little googling on what was going on on the Eastern Front in '43 and '44 before you make this assumption. There are similar debates like this among historians and war gamers (many of whom are amateur historians) as to who is in debt to who, but I believe there's always been a consensus among objective historians that the German Army was beat on the ground in the USSR during '43. The Germans were stopped cold and given a very bloody nose in Operation Citadel in '43. After that failure, Germany went on the defensive and in some places were already retreating nearly a *year* before DDay (the USSR kicked them out of the Caucasus on the Southern flank in winter counterattacks during '42-'43), and by DDay, which coincided with the USSR's '44 Spring Offensive, they were by the summer in full retreat across the entire Eastern Front.
Now there are still arguments today about whether the USSR could have *survived* until '43 without Lend-Lease from the US and UK. My opinion is they would have, assuming the Germans made the same mistakes they historically did, but not everyone agrees with that, I understand, so its still a matter of conjecture.
But the West (and I'm American) has never really come to terms with the truth about the end of WWII in Europe. To give you an idea, many do not realise that the Germans chose to fight the Battle of the Bulge on the West Front, because they themselves knew (and explicitly said) that those precious assets they had collected for this operation would have simply been swallowed up and ground down to nothing on the East Front by the Red Army.
Many in the German professional military knew they had already lost the war by the end of '43, and said so after the war. It is a painful thing to tell people that they aren't fighting to stop a monster (Germany), but are fighting to claim an equal share of the corpse of that monster, in order to keep a potentially future monster (USSR) from becoming too powerful. The West had to come in and save western Europe not from Hitler but from the USSR, only since the public might have said "let the Russians do the dying", the West had to make it sound like without them getting involved, Germany might win. But by '44, a German victory simply wasn't possible. It might have taken an extra year or two, but the USSR would have defeated Hitler on its own (at least reaching and taking Berlin by that time).
WWI was very different, though. The Czar's Army then was hopelessly outclassed by the Imperial German army, and their attacks on Germany in '14 failed utterly. Once the Western offensives were over, and trench warfare set in in France, Germany went on the defensive there and shifted resources to the East, and from 1915 until 1917, Germany slowly chewed Russia up. By the end of WWI, everyone's morale (except the US) was in the tank, it just happened to be Russia, because of 2 years of defeat and retreat and pre-existing social unrest, that cracked first.
So Germany switched back to the West Front, and resumed their offensives against France. What was crucial to Britian and France when this began however, was the arrival of the US in the war (Russia went out before the US came in). True, the US didn't play a big role in terms of numbers (though US Marines played a small but significant role in defending France during those early German offensives in 1918), but their presence alone on the West Front was a massive boost to the morale of both Britian and especially France. Remember that the year before in '17, France's Army was wracked by serious mutinies and desertions, which could have been fatal had the troubles not been stopped by the French High Command through various means.
When the Allies held, and the Germ
Darnit, I just looked, and there is no "-1 Bitter" mod.
I don't really know what your point is. Is every new invention judged by whether it turns out to be "a wonderful, great, uplifting experience for humanity"? And if it isn't its an abject failure? Kinda setting the bar a little high aren't you?
The corps are here, but they don't have a monopoly on usage of the Internet (not yet at least). Personally I think the open, decentralised, collabaration, as well as the global communication characteristics of the Internet means it has enormous revolutionary potential, and you only need to look at Linux to see something that never would have been created if not for the Internet. Never mind that there wouldn't be a F/OS community either.
Uhmmm, wrong.
To lazy to find the link, but a week or so ago, we had an article showing broadband(*) was just now reaching 50/50 versus dialup. So, saying "everyone" has it already, thats well, uhhhmmmm, wrong. :)
*: Don't know what the definiton of broadband was in that survey though.
Only for broadband, because as far as cable TV goes, they have a monopoly and can gouge their customers right up to the threshold where they start losing a lot of them due to sticker shock.
So their "reasonable" broadband prices are ON TOP OF *unreasonable* cable TV prices.
That depends on what you need, and how much money you're willing to spend for it. For cheapskates like me, who are still fine with land-line phones, and also not addicted to cable TV, the advantage goes to DSL.
I chose 512kbps/128kbps DSL from a phone company (Sprint), even though its not true broadband and not the fastest available. My thinking was, since I already "had to have" local and long distance service, getting the whole package together effectively makes the DSL service ~30$ a month. Now, my net connection is always-on, doesn't tie up my phone, and is roughly ~9x faster but only ~12$ more than dial-up.
Cable on the other hand doesn't offer me anything else I'm interested in. I dumped cable TV ~3 years ago, when they wanted 35$ for ~100 channels, of which ~80 I considered to be absolute junk, and almost half of what was left were broadcast channels I could get locally.
Well, since I'm not a big talker, and never considered instant convenient communication to be essential, I never bothered with cellphones since they are always more expensive than land line phone service.
This perhaps may depend on who your local phone company is, but it goes both ways too. Adelphia is the only local cable company I have, and because of financial difficulty (bankruptcy) and mismanagement (being financially gutted by their former owner), Adelphia is milking their customers for every dollar it can get (to help it recover), making the phone company's package deal (local/long distance/DSL) very favorable (to me at least).
Of course, I'd love to have 3mbps downstream, but 512kbps means apt-get update only takes about 80 seconds, and the following upgrade runs at 3MB/1min, instead of 1MB/3min. Now web pages are almost instantaneous, what took hours now take minutes, and since I'm not a heavy downloader (no movies or music), thats more than good enough for me. Most importantly, the net increase in my monthly costs is just $20. OC, YMMV.
I've had "high-speed" access (DSL, 512kbps/128kbps, always-on) for about 2 weeks now, and I still occasionally get the feeling that I need to do certain things now/quickly. I have been trained by 5-6 years of dail-up to go thru a "check-list" once I'm connected, and now I still can't get over the idea that I can walk away from my /. browsing for a couple hours and come back to it later, after a nice nap, with no consequences. :)
Wonderful, your 3 days of research trumps everyone else, because you're never wrong, right? LOL.
Oh I *was* listening Mr Twirlip, but I was also taking into account who are the ones running their mouth off right now (besides you). What I see is a lot of net-based right-wing blogs and Bush attack dogs launching attacks on these specific documents but with most moderate sources simply reserving judgement.
Meanwhile CBS still stands by their conclusion, in part because those documents under attack weren't the only source of their story, and some people who initially thought there might be some questions in the document have changed their mind, and interestingly enough, this guy *is* a recognized 30 year expert on typewritten documents. Meanwhile, Mr Twirlip, where is your document forensics resume, hmmm?
All I want is evidence and some kind of consensus from *real* experts, rather than a bunch of foul-mouthed right wing Internet nuts, and for that I'm called a "shithead". Doesn't surprise me a bit, you guys have been working on the Big Lie strategy for so long, and unfortunately, successfully, why quit now?
I'll give you that Paypal dominates Ebay, however Ebay isn't just relying on Paypal, Ebay also has Billpoint. So by that definition alone (Ebay owning a potential competitor) Paypal doesn't have monopoly power over Ebay, they just happen to be the dominant form of epayment on Ebay for now.
The key word here being "tiny", as in a pitifully small amount of money involved. This a monopoly doesn't make. Even if they had a greater than 95% control of this micro-payment market (which they don't) we're still talking about chump-change. Comparing them to real banks on this score becomes embarrassing. More importantly, the main reason while Paypal is doing well in micro-payments, is because the big boys haven't entered the market yet, perhaps because they're at a disadvantage as long as Paypal isn't regulated as a bank. If Paypal succeeds in the bigger markets, bank-regulation is almost a certainty (the second link below indicates the FCC is *already* looking at Paypal), at which point even the micro-payment market becomes wide open because its now a level playing field. The real point here though is that Paypal doesn't have a monopoly like "lock" on this market, its more of a matter of the market being so *small*, that there isn't a lot of companies interested in competing in it.
According to this, 90% of Paypal's revenue comes from commercial transactions, not individual to individual payments.
Except they aren't "marginal". Even in the Ebay market, where Paypal dominates, they are only used for 68% of transactions, and this isn't yet even at the expense of the competitors, since Billpoint usage went up in the same period (see previous link). Outside of Ebay, Paypal is nowhere near the "800 pound gorilla" status. There is a difference between dominating a market and actually monopolizing the market.
Well, of course, since the whole bloody market is controlled right now by credit card payments. According to this, credit card usage accounts for 93% of epayment transactions. Now 93% is what I'd call a monopoly. So sure, since credit cards started out with 100% of the market, Paypal and friends are gaining ground quickly (since they're starting at 0%) and are gaining at the expense of credit cards (since they owned the whole market at the beginning), this still isn't anywhere close to a monopoly in the common-sense meaning of the word.
Given the major problems Paypal will face to actually reach monopoly status (at some point the FCC is going to decide Paypal is acting like a bank, and must therefore follow the rules of banking, which will instantly take away Paypal's advantages over its major bank-related competitors like Citibank's C2IT) I don't see them ever reaching 95% market share in any market, and because Ebay has put its eggs in more than one basket (also owning Billpoint) I'm not even sure Paypal can reach Microsoft-like monopoly control of Ebay auctions. We haven't even seen the well-monied players (the major multinational banks) get into this game yet.
Get back to me when its Paypal that owns Ebay (not their market, but the company) and controls a majority of all epayment commerce. Until then, there just ain't a monopoly here.
Porn is the kind of addictive drug where its "users" can *never* get "enough of it".
Who sends money in email, and when did that become more popular than going to a merchant's website and buying something with a credit card (number)? It seems this Revolution happened without me.... and I swear I'm not Rip Van Winkle.
Ahh, I'd forgotten that I'd turned those "allow" options off a long time ago. It does it to me too when I turn the "allow" options back on.
Amazing. Twirlip of the Mists has strongly implied the documents are forgeries, despite the CBS experts who say they aren't, despite the contradictory statements here and elsewhere, despite living persons saying the alleged author of these documents had said these concerns to others, but because its Twirlip of the Mists saying so, who everyone knows is a world renowned expert on 1970's era typewriters and typesetters, well of course I'm not even going to listen to anyone else.
This is ridiculous. Think about it: you're implying that they knew there would be questions about the authenticity, that they had to introduce artifacts to show a typewriter origin, so they made all those copies to introduce artifacts(*), but if they knew authenticity would be important why didn't they just actually print this up on a real typewriter in the first place and avoid the whole problem? Since you believe all the media (except for Fox) is liberal, you seem to assume they are stupid too, and therefore this is easily explainable, but I don't think liberals or conservatives are automatically stupid, and I don't believe CBS would make such a blatant mistake, because any competent journalist would look hard at the authenticity issue knowing thats the first thing the critics will bring up.
*: I don't actually agree with that either. Making copies repeatedly will introduce *random* artifacts, but not the specific characteristics being talked about here (whether "th" is superscripted or not, what kind of font was used, what characteristics certain specific letters - ALL of those letters - have, etc, etc)
No he hasn't. The Dem *Convention* focused on his war record to counter the FUD about the Dems always being weaker than the Reps at protecting the country, yadda, yadda. Its bullshit, but a lot of people believe it, so he has to counter that. After the Convention, Kerry has done everything he can to steer the talk to things he believes Bush is weak on. Its Bush's attack dogs that want Vietnam to stay on the table, because as long as thats what we're talking about, we aren't talking about Bush's own screwups and stupidity.
The only people who claim he's talked only about Vietnam, just so happen to say that so they can criticise him. The height of hypocrisy: The conservatives say he only talks about Vietnam, when in reality its the conservatives who keep Vietnam on the front burner by constantly making this criticism. So excuse me if I don't buy this crap anymore.
Before you fall out of your chair laughing...