kmiester62 wrote: "ANd, oh by the way WMD have been found. In chaches across Iraq. Its just the press aint covering it because its not a big huge stockpile in one place."
Fascinating. So why is the White House saying that we have yet to find WMD in Iraq? I watched Bush's recent prime time speech + Q&A, and not once did he mention finding them. In fact he specifically said "we may yet still find WMD in Iraq".
Maybe you should call Bush and Cheney. They could really use some help tracking down those pesky missing WMDs. There will probably be a medal in it for you.
"Let's see, the ones that said that they refused the search warrant for the PC?"
FBI HQ told them not to pursue it. At no time was a judge involved. A judge would have rubber-stamped that request if HQ had bothered.
PATRIOT would not have mattered.
"Or maybe we can got back to COMMISIONER Gorelick's memo that "went beyond the requirements of the law" in regards to implementing the "wall" required by FISA.
"
A policy reaffirmed by Ashcroft himself. Odd that he never seems to mention that. Again, not a PATRIOT issue. Goreland and Ashcroft both had misinterpreted the restriction.
How about memos with titles like "Terrorists Learn to Fly"? Knowing that active attempts at a hijacking were imminent, according to the "background chatter"? Was it not worthwhile locking down air security for a mere 100 or so "generic" airplane passengers?
We had multiple opportunities to act, all without PATRIOT. The failure was in lack of will, lack of priority, lack of cohesive "fusion" of what we knew. Lack of information was NOT the problem.
Or to quote those before the Commission, "We didn't know what we knew."
"Everyone is screaming, "Why didn't you prevent 9-11 and why didn't you connect the dots." The Patriot Act is one tool to allow the US Gov't to accomplish this. "
But an entirely unnecessary tool in the context of preventing 9/11. Completely unneeded. You'd know that if you'd been following the release of documents and other evidence from the 9/11 Commission and others.
With pre-PATRIOT law, we already knew everything we needed to know to prevent 9/11. Having PATRIOT on the books wouldn't have affected the outcome.
I was an analyst, trust me, I *KNOW* that whole fog of war/drown in data syndrome. But to have the agent in the FBI's Phoenix office produce a detailed report that terrorists were taking flight lessons? And not bothering to learn how to land?
If the NSA had more translators on staff, that chilling message warning of 9/11 itself, the actual event, would have been translated in time, not the day after the attacks.
Add in the other missed opportunities, and the complete lack of interest the Bush administration had in counterterrorism prior to 9/11 (Rumsfeld rejected an agency request for more funding/agents/analysts devoted to terrorism the DAY BEFORE 9/11).
PATRIOT is a red herring. It wasn't needed before, it isn't needed now. Unless edging closer to a police state is in your goals for this country.
And *THAT* is one issue any honest freedom-loving small-government Republican should be screaming in agreement over. If Clinton had tried to push PATRIOT through Congress, every right-wing militia would've gone apoplectic. And you know it.
What does it matter which party takes a torch to the Constitution? We should all, in a tragically rare moment of unity, fight to get government out of our lives when such a bold attack on our basic freedom *FROM* government has been launched.
"games like Tomb Raider held my attention much longer than some basic arcade style game."
And in addition to holding attention, how about games that could get you so creeped out and pull you in so far that you would literally jump in your chair?
Marathon was like that. Late night sessions in a dark room. The shadowy cramped hallways. Turn a corner as you stumble along and suddenly the Motion Detector would light up like a Vegas marquis....
And per the article topic, the story line unfolded beautifully as well. Better in my opinion than any other I've ever played.
Damn, Bungie did some great stuff before they sold out.
"Theoretically, a person could be injected with this computer, and it would detect and treat any diseased cells at the earliest stages of development..."
Oh great, so keeping up with the latest virus defs will finally be a literal pain in the ass too....
"Taking on Saddam Hussein is not an easy thing to do. In fact, attacking Saddam has already knocked one President out of office and it may very well knock another out. The Bush Administration was fully aware of this when they made the decision to invade."
Bullshit.
First of all, Bush Sr. was immensely popular after the Gulf War. It was his utter failure on domestic policies afterward that canned him. (I served in 'Shield/'Storm and felt honored to do so.)
The current Bush administration believed their own blowback when they made the decision to invade. I *GUARANTEE* Dubya is sitting back with a blank stare at times, muttering about how Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and others had promised him Iraqi greeting of flowers and chocolates, guaranteed reelection, a spot in history as the Great Architect of Middle East Democracy. (*gag*)
Why else would his idiot handlers have paraded him around in front of their "Mission Accomplished" banner after his carrier landing? Even his own staff were convinced it was easy and over. And I can guarantee that photo op will be haunting him in the months ahead.
Too bad reality refused to comply with their comic book pipe dreams.
"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
- George W. Bush, September 2001
"As with most real conservatives, we disagree with the sitting president. What a horrible choice is left to us come November."
As an independent, I'll make a deal with you real conservatives (since I'm a fiscal conservative myself) - if you help us remove Bush/Cheney/Rove this November, I'll in turn vote for whatever *intelligent* *clear-thinking* *moderate* Republican candidate you field in 2008. Better yet, dump the fundamentalist extreme right (the American Taliban) from your party and I'll KEEP voting for you.
I'm dead serious. This admistration is a train wreck in every regard. Even current Republicans must realize the lasting damage that is being done to your own party, not to mention our standing in the world.
A GOP government that noses its way into your private lives, delivers Big Brother to our doorsteps? Gives us insanely huge spending bills and deficits? Stumbles into a needless war? Lies, lies and lies again, baldface lies on critical issues?
If you voted against Clinton, how can you NOT vote against Bush? Clinton got a blowjob. Under Bush WE'RE all taking it in the ass. (Now there's a clever entendre....)
Apologies for the offtopic reply to the offtopic post, folks.;-)
"Please...It's getting ridiculous that so many people still believe that this is a war for oil when the numbers didn't add up before the war and still don't add up after the war..."
You're looking at it wrong, using hindsight instead of what the Bush administration promised and predicted for how Iraq would "transform". Here's how it was supposed to go, according to the Neocons:
0) Invade Iraq and topple Saddam.
1) Be greeted by grateful Iraqis, who shower US with flowers and sweets.
2) Grab full control of Iraqi oil production and distribution.
3) Profit!!!
According to the Neocons, this was going to be a cheap and easy war. According to their plan, the US would have control of Iraqi oil for a pittance.
It's all painfully well documented, even by the Bush adminstration's own quotes and documents (and no-bid contracts). And as many of us knew beforehand, they were painfully, tragically far off the mark.
- How eco-friendly is the helium extraction process? Off the top of my head I believe it's fine, but are there any hidden eco-hostile effects in its production? Probably still far better than the method it replaces.
- Have they experimented with different sound sources for the 173dB? Playing Barry White could produce seriousness smoothness...
- Will they equip the Refrigerator Gnome that controls the internal light with OSHA-approved protective headphones, or will a generation of the little critters be doomed to deafness? (Don't laugh, I saw one of them in my 'fridge once after a Dead concert.)
"When I rolled out this year's install image, I had made a bit of a mistake (completely unintentionally). When someone double-clicks on a MS Office document, it opens in OpenOffice instead of MSOffice."
Sweet! We really need some kind of award for this sort of thing. Best Guerilla Open Source Conversion, 2004.
(Not to be confused with gorilla open source conversion, which might get slippery as MS attempts to ape the open source model...)
"OpenOffice in general jeopardizes many public comforts you've learned to have in the US, and it's a primary motivation to move the software support offshore"
Darl? Some fellow at BayStar called, they're asking about some money they loaned you.
-MooseByte, Happily using OpenOffice to further cull the world of MS dependency.
"Yeah, the freeware version probably would only let you get fat and ugly chicks. You gotta pay $$$ for the pro version for the decent chicks."
No no no. The demo has the real hottie who can't get enough of you and needs help spending their vast wealth.
The installed product is the ugly slob who screams at you and can't hold down a job. Their mother keeps assuring you that they're just in a slump and will be more stable and reliable Real Soon Now if you just hang in there and keep paying the rent.
"Travelling to this other trumpet through the narrow parts of both, would come at the price of having to look yourself in the ass for aeons, considering the length of the universe. Be warned, one needs to consider these things before boldly going.."
Or in other words, be sure to pick a traveling partner who was a REALLY nice ass.
Honestly. Xcode and Panther on my iBook run great. The only thing I can think of is RAM. How much is in your eMac? MacOS X is a RAM hog, 512MB seems to be the critical point for good performance. (640MB in my iBook.)
Note however that Xcode builds of my project aren't exactly blinding, but then a sub-1GHz G4 isn't exactly a DP G5 either.;-)
A loaner machine of any kind (MacOS, Win, Linux) is likely to be a legacy of problems, unless you really trust the previous owner. Ask and I doubt they'll say no to a fresh install of Panther.
What version of OS X are you running? Clean install of Panther plus the Dev Tools should hum along happily even on older hardware. Panther included tweaks to noticeably improve performance on older machines.
"The only thing I can't understand is why iTunes and QuickTime seem so inferior on Windows."
Not trolling, I'm geniunely curious - what makes iTunes on Windows inferior? A few weeks ago I installed iTunes on my XP box. Runs great. Copied 5GB of tunes from my iBook, made my playlists, etc. Does everything I do with it on my iBook, no crashes.
I've got a 2.4GHz P4 - is it a performance problem on older hardware?
"SCO were doing pretty badly until last week and then their stock price almost doubled."
In addition to a broader market rebound at the time, I wonder whether SCO Group's stock buy-back program was exercised in order to artificially boost the recent gains?
With some careful timing, a little buy back can go a long way in shifting a day's trading momentum.
"Yeah, I can still remember about the first readings of erotic material over the telegraph"
Actually one of my old friends who served in the Navy (comm ops) told me about how they used to keep the morse code students interested - every now and then they'd slip a section of a porn story into the interminable copying sessions.
You'd get keel-hauled for doing that these days, but I imagine it kept folks going.:-)
"From television to telemarketing and from self-deception to suicide cults, Levine takes a hard look at all the ways we attempt to persuade each other [...]."
Hmmmm. I wonder where Slashdot moderation fits in that spectrum....
"What about genetically modifying sweetwater seaweed to contain THC?"
And when the kelp harvesters grab that algin, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream will finally become the ultimate food and we'll evolve into a new race of walrus people.
Slashdot Mirror
kmiester62 wrote: "ANd, oh by the way WMD have been found. In chaches across Iraq. Its just the press aint covering it because its not a big huge stockpile in one place."
Fascinating. So why is the White House saying that we have yet to find WMD in Iraq? I watched Bush's recent prime time speech + Q&A, and not once did he mention finding them. In fact he specifically said "we may yet still find WMD in Iraq".
Maybe you should call Bush and Cheney. They could really use some help tracking down those pesky missing WMDs. There will probably be a medal in it for you.
"Let's see, the ones that said that they refused the search warrant for the PC?"
FBI HQ told them not to pursue it. At no time was a judge involved. A judge would have rubber-stamped that request if HQ had bothered. PATRIOT would not have mattered.
"Or maybe we can got back to COMMISIONER Gorelick's memo that "went beyond the requirements of the law" in regards to implementing the "wall" required by FISA. "A policy reaffirmed by Ashcroft himself. Odd that he never seems to mention that. Again, not a PATRIOT issue. Goreland and Ashcroft both had misinterpreted the restriction.
How about memos with titles like "Terrorists Learn to Fly"? Knowing that active attempts at a hijacking were imminent, according to the "background chatter"? Was it not worthwhile locking down air security for a mere 100 or so "generic" airplane passengers?
We had multiple opportunities to act, all without PATRIOT. The failure was in lack of will, lack of priority, lack of cohesive "fusion" of what we knew. Lack of information was NOT the problem.
Or to quote those before the Commission, "We didn't know what we knew."
PATRIOT would not have helped.
I wrote: "(Rumsfeld rejected an agency request for more funding/agents/analysts devoted to terrorism the DAY BEFORE 9/11)."
That was of course Ashcroft, not Rumsfeld, who rejected the request for additional counterterrorism funding on Sept 10.
Tough to keep all the Sith straight when you're late for a meeting. ;-)
"Everyone is screaming, "Why didn't you prevent 9-11 and why didn't you connect the dots." The Patriot Act is one tool to allow the US Gov't to accomplish this. "
But an entirely unnecessary tool in the context of preventing 9/11. Completely unneeded. You'd know that if you'd been following the release of documents and other evidence from the 9/11 Commission and others.
With pre-PATRIOT law, we already knew everything we needed to know to prevent 9/11. Having PATRIOT on the books wouldn't have affected the outcome.
I was an analyst, trust me, I *KNOW* that whole fog of war/drown in data syndrome. But to have the agent in the FBI's Phoenix office produce a detailed report that terrorists were taking flight lessons? And not bothering to learn how to land?
If the NSA had more translators on staff, that chilling message warning of 9/11 itself, the actual event, would have been translated in time, not the day after the attacks.
Add in the other missed opportunities, and the complete lack of interest the Bush administration had in counterterrorism prior to 9/11 (Rumsfeld rejected an agency request for more funding/agents/analysts devoted to terrorism the DAY BEFORE 9/11).
PATRIOT is a red herring. It wasn't needed before, it isn't needed now. Unless edging closer to a police state is in your goals for this country.
And *THAT* is one issue any honest freedom-loving small-government Republican should be screaming in agreement over. If Clinton had tried to push PATRIOT through Congress, every right-wing militia would've gone apoplectic. And you know it.
What does it matter which party takes a torch to the Constitution? We should all, in a tragically rare moment of unity, fight to get government out of our lives when such a bold attack on our basic freedom *FROM* government has been launched.
"games like Tomb Raider held my attention much longer than some basic arcade style game."
And in addition to holding attention, how about games that could get you so creeped out and pull you in so far that you would literally jump in your chair?
Marathon was like that. Late night sessions in a dark room. The shadowy cramped hallways. Turn a corner as you stumble along and suddenly the Motion Detector would light up like a Vegas marquis....
And per the article topic, the story line unfolded beautifully as well. Better in my opinion than any other I've ever played.
Damn, Bungie did some great stuff before they sold out.
"Theoretically, a person could be injected with this computer, and it would detect and treat any diseased cells at the earliest stages of development..."
Oh great, so keeping up with the latest virus defs will finally be a literal pain in the ass too....
"Taking on Saddam Hussein is not an easy thing to do. In fact, attacking Saddam has already knocked one President out of office and it may very well knock another out. The Bush Administration was fully aware of this when they made the decision to invade."
Bullshit.
First of all, Bush Sr. was immensely popular after the Gulf War. It was his utter failure on domestic policies afterward that canned him. (I served in 'Shield/'Storm and felt honored to do so.)
The current Bush administration believed their own blowback when they made the decision to invade. I *GUARANTEE* Dubya is sitting back with a blank stare at times, muttering about how Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and others had promised him Iraqi greeting of flowers and chocolates, guaranteed reelection, a spot in history as the Great Architect of Middle East Democracy. (*gag*)
Why else would his idiot handlers have paraded him around in front of their "Mission Accomplished" banner after his carrier landing? Even his own staff were convinced it was easy and over. And I can guarantee that photo op will be haunting him in the months ahead.
Too bad reality refused to comply with their comic book pipe dreams.
"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." - George W. Bush, September 2001"As with most real conservatives, we disagree with the sitting president. What a horrible choice is left to us come November."
As an independent, I'll make a deal with you real conservatives (since I'm a fiscal conservative myself) - if you help us remove Bush/Cheney/Rove this November, I'll in turn vote for whatever *intelligent* *clear-thinking* *moderate* Republican candidate you field in 2008. Better yet, dump the fundamentalist extreme right (the American Taliban) from your party and I'll KEEP voting for you.
I'm dead serious. This admistration is a train wreck in every regard. Even current Republicans must realize the lasting damage that is being done to your own party, not to mention our standing in the world.
A GOP government that noses its way into your private lives, delivers Big Brother to our doorsteps? Gives us insanely huge spending bills and deficits? Stumbles into a needless war? Lies, lies and lies again, baldface lies on critical issues?
If you voted against Clinton, how can you NOT vote against Bush? Clinton got a blowjob. Under Bush WE'RE all taking it in the ass. (Now there's a clever entendre....)
Dude, I want my country back.
Apologies for the offtopic reply to the offtopic post, folks. ;-)
"Please...It's getting ridiculous that so many people still believe that this is a war for oil when the numbers didn't add up before the war and still don't add up after the war..."
You're looking at it wrong, using hindsight instead of what the Bush administration promised and predicted for how Iraq would "transform". Here's how it was supposed to go, according to the Neocons:
According to the Neocons, this was going to be a cheap and easy war. According to their plan, the US would have control of Iraqi oil for a pittance.
It's all painfully well documented, even by the Bush adminstration's own quotes and documents (and no-bid contracts). And as many of us knew beforehand, they were painfully, tragically far off the mark.
- How eco-friendly is the helium extraction process? Off the top of my head I believe it's fine, but are there any hidden eco-hostile effects in its production? Probably still far better than the method it replaces.
- Have they experimented with different sound sources for the 173dB? Playing Barry White could produce seriousness smoothness...
- Will they equip the Refrigerator Gnome that controls the internal light with OSHA-approved protective headphones, or will a generation of the little critters be doomed to deafness? (Don't laugh, I saw one of them in my 'fridge once after a Dead concert.)
"When I rolled out this year's install image, I had made a bit of a mistake (completely unintentionally). When someone double-clicks on a MS Office document, it opens in OpenOffice instead of MSOffice."
Sweet! We really need some kind of award for this sort of thing. Best Guerilla Open Source Conversion, 2004.
(Not to be confused with gorilla open source conversion, which might get slippery as MS attempts to ape the open source model...)
"OpenOffice in general jeopardizes many public comforts you've learned to have in the US, and it's a primary motivation to move the software support offshore"
Darl? Some fellow at BayStar called, they're asking about some money they loaned you.
-MooseByte, Happily using OpenOffice to further cull the world of MS dependency.
Flamefest re: offshore outsourcing and chicken-feed wages to begin in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
"Yeah, the freeware version probably would only let you get fat and ugly chicks. You gotta pay $$$ for the pro version for the decent chicks."
No no no. The demo has the real hottie who can't get enough of you and needs help spending their vast wealth.
The installed product is the ugly slob who screams at you and can't hold down a job. Their mother keeps assuring you that they're just in a slump and will be more stable and reliable Real Soon Now if you just hang in there and keep paying the rent.
"Or in other words, be sure to pick a traveling partner who was a REALLY nice ass."
Damn lack of proofreading. Never post in the middle of a conference call. Hmmmm. Actually the typo makes sense too....
"Travelling to this other trumpet through the narrow parts of both, would come at the price of having to look yourself in the ass for aeons, considering the length of the universe. Be warned, one needs to consider these things before boldly going.."
Or in other words, be sure to pick a traveling partner who was a REALLY nice ass.
"Two more words. Brand new."
Three more words: Something's seriously wrong. ;-)
Honestly. Xcode and Panther on my iBook run great. The only thing I can think of is RAM. How much is in your eMac? MacOS X is a RAM hog, 512MB seems to be the critical point for good performance. (640MB in my iBook.)
Note however that Xcode builds of my project aren't exactly blinding, but then a sub-1GHz G4 isn't exactly a DP G5 either. ;-)
"I've just got a loan of my first Mac (an eMac)"
Two words: Clean Install.
A loaner machine of any kind (MacOS, Win, Linux) is likely to be a legacy of problems, unless you really trust the previous owner. Ask and I doubt they'll say no to a fresh install of Panther.
What version of OS X are you running? Clean install of Panther plus the Dev Tools should hum along happily even on older hardware. Panther included tweaks to noticeably improve performance on older machines.
"The only thing I can't understand is why iTunes and QuickTime seem so inferior on Windows."
Not trolling, I'm geniunely curious - what makes iTunes on Windows inferior? A few weeks ago I installed iTunes on my XP box. Runs great. Copied 5GB of tunes from my iBook, made my playlists, etc. Does everything I do with it on my iBook, no crashes.
I've got a 2.4GHz P4 - is it a performance problem on older hardware?
"SCO were doing pretty badly until last week and then their stock price almost doubled."
In addition to a broader market rebound at the time, I wonder whether SCO Group's stock buy-back program was exercised in order to artificially boost the recent gains?
With some careful timing, a little buy back can go a long way in shifting a day's trading momentum.
"Yeah, I can still remember about the first readings of erotic material over the telegraph"
Actually one of my old friends who served in the Navy (comm ops) told me about how they used to keep the morse code students interested - every now and then they'd slip a section of a porn story into the interminable copying sessions.
You'd get keel-hauled for doing that these days, but I imagine it kept folks going. :-)
"(Holds pr0n-displaying laptop high above head In dramatic Charlton Heston NRA fashion)"
Which then promptly slips and falls to the ground due to curious lack of frictiony grip.
(Holds pr0n-displaying laptop high above head In dramatic Charlton Heston NRA fashion)
"From television to telemarketing and from self-deception to suicide cults, Levine takes a hard look at all the ways we attempt to persuade each other [...]."
Hmmmm. I wonder where Slashdot moderation fits in that spectrum....
"What about genetically modifying sweetwater seaweed to contain THC?"
And when the kelp harvesters grab that algin, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream will finally become the ultimate food and we'll evolve into a new race of walrus people.
G'goo goo g'joob, baby.