Besides, as others have pointed out, this still doesn't affect "homegrown" terrorism. Who should we have "attacked" after Oklahoma City?
That was more of a crime rather than an act of terrorism backed by a strong organization. And we arrested the people responsible. One of them got the electric chair. The other one will likely spend the duration of his natural life in a cell.
Who should the Brits "attack" for their rail bombings (all carried out by British citizens IIRC)?
Were those bombings carried out in a vacuum, or were terrorist organizations from certain countries responsible for funding, encouraging, and abetting the bombers?
In many cases, what we want from states which are in the uneasy-coexistence state (or better) is greater cooperation in pursuing and apprehending terrorists, and in suppressing radical Islamist elements. That greater cooperation has to come both from the authorities and population.
A certain past president with the initials of T.R. once said, in response to a question about Central American policy: "Speak softly but carry a big stick."
That's what I'm advocating. Speaking softly in the sense of not meddling in Middle Eastern affairs and letting the Middle East deal with its problems on its own. Carrying a big stick in the sense that a major ass-kicking will be the response to continued violence against the US.
As far as the Israeli question: discontinue support for Israel, but give any and all Israelis that wish to immigrate to the US unconditional permission to do so. This will uphold our bargain to protect the Israeli people but will remove a major reason why the America is hated and constantly endangered.
We're faced with a difficult choice. Let's make the right one so that our way of life, our wonderful cities, and our freedom can be preserved.
although we still couldn't be sure about whether any attack was a false flag attack.
This is why we need good foreign intelligence. Human intelligence, since with encryption and steganography, SIGINT can do very little against a determined enemy. Of course, this will never happen with the current administration, since they seem to be best at blowing the cover of the CIA agents that should be working hard to gather information on our enemies.
Geez!!! You're the guy all the neocons love --- you accept all their BS and then some. I bet you're just itching to have the draft brought back so more poor souls can die for Halliburton.
Hell, no. I dislike the oil industry and friends even more than I do the radical Islamists. It gives money to the wrong people and rapes the environment. Personally, I think part of the disengagement that I talked about before would be to stop buying Middle Eastern oil as much as possible and invest massively in alternative energy sources (i.e., yes, nuclear power) in the US. Make the purchase of electric cars and plug-in hybrids 100% tax deductable. Electrify our railroads. Give awards for the design of energy-efficient buildings - those that use passive means to heat and cool themselves. Encourage businesses, via tax breaks, to locate in towns rather than on highway strips. We can wean ourselves from the Middle Eastern tit, for reasons of national security as well as for environmental reasons.
Now we are shitcanning 40,000 airmen to pay for jets we cannot afford because leadership refuses to buy in quantities that allow economies of scale. Good luck if we actually have to fight someone that is both competent and has an air force...
Not that I'm bitter.:)
The other problem is that the equipment that we're buying (like Stealth Bombers) is too expensive, complicated, and fragile. True, it's very difficult to shoot a stealth bomber down, but more damage can be inflicted by a flight of 30 B-52s flying at 50,000 feet, even if we do lose one or two. In war, we have to accept some loss of life - part of being a soldier is the willingness to lose your life for your country.
Seriously, the only way to stop this stuff in the long term is cooperation and a sharing of cultures. The amount of energy at the disposal of each person on Earth is becoming more massive each year, and we're never going to catch everyone. We need to begin the process of stopping them from wanting to attack us. That means marginalizing the radical elements of both their culture and ours (people such as yourself), and eliminating those people's support among their peers (that's us, modding you down).
So, if a thug is aiming a gun at you and your family, and you have a bigger gun, do you hug him and "cooperate" with him, or do you shoot his face off?
I think you'd find that if the US did that, all of the attacks would stop.
I'd certainly hope so - the idea is to stop the attacks, not to waste innocent lives on either side. However, if there is another attack after the disengagement, the countries responsible for harboring and/or supporting Islamic fascist organizations deserve to be sternly and severely spanked.
Yeah, because invading Afghanistan worked so well for getting rid of Al Queda . . . .
No one said anything about invasion. We're talking about revenge - hundredfold payback if Islamofascists choose to murder innocent Americans. Methinks you're the one smoking the rock.
... is all wrong. There should be an ultimatum: if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed. All major land lines of communication - roads and railroads into said country will be disrupted. Shipping into the country will be subject to unrestricted destruction by submarines. Flights will be shot down. We have a strong, technologically advanced military. It's time that we used it to put the fear of God into our enemies.
In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease.
Disengagement combined with a harsh hand in case of further attacks is the only way that we can preserve our society and the sacred liberties upon which this country was founded.
What an irresponsible and ignorant thing to say. Patches are not only sexurity fixes, an OS still has BUGS you know. Do you also leave your games unpatched?
I'm aware of OS's having bugs. At the moment, the machine does its job just fine in its current state; no problems. So if there *are* bugs - who cares? - since they're not manifesting themselves and reducing the utility of the machine! Granted, I'd never treat a client's computer in such a cavalier fashion, but I'm not having problems with this one...
But I will be trying this again since I have several more machines sitting around -I guess I'd better write down the key# the next time they give me one over the phone again. Does anyone know if the activation #s they give over the phone are 1-time codes or if they will work multiple times?
Once you have a working machine - activated and all - go to C:\windows\system32 and copy the files wpa.dbl and wpa.bak to secure off-computer location(s) like a USB key or even a floppy. When you need to reinstall XP due to HDD death or whatever, reinstall as normal with the key you used on the previous install (if you don't know the key, download Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, run it, and write down the key). After you install, boot into Safe Mode (hold down F8 at boot and select from the menu). Copy the old wpa... files back into your C:\windows\system32 directory.
Stick it behind a firewall. Put good antivirus software on there (which can be free like Avast or AVG Free). Scan for other spyware periodically. Use Firefox to surf sites whenever possible, and don't surf obviously sketchy sites. And don't run executables that you don't know about.
I still have an unpatched Windows 2k SP3 box which has been running behind a firewall for the last 2 1/2 years. Still relatively fast and shows no evidence of malware infestation.
I can see updates being necessary on Server 2003, which is often quite buggy and needs patches for stuff to work, but an XP or 2k box doesn't desperately need the updates if it's used in a reasonably sane manner.
Anyone remember the first-gen TiBooks, where the antenna design sucked so much that getting beyond 50 feet of Airport range was a miracle?
Not only that, but the alloy used in the screen hinges was poor and brittle. I broke my hinges by dropping the computer onto a desk about 6 inches. When I removed the hinges and replaced them, I found that I could snap the remaining parts of the old hinges in my hand. Not bend first. Snap.
The TiBook wasn't the first Apple quality debacle. That was the Apple///, where the chips popped out of their sockets due to lack of cooling - Jobs didn't want to include a fan because it would be too loud. Next was the Apple IIgs with it's fragile desktop buss (predecessor to USB!) controller. It wouldn't run except at a certain (warm) temperature and would throw "Fatal System Error 0911" (bong, bouncing apple) periodically. Solution? Tape a small 12V light bulb to the chip to keep it at a constant warm temperature.
-b.
Re:I don't think it's too bad - it's the publicity
on
Apple's Growing Pains
·
· Score: 1
products is not too bad, especially not for "Gen. 1" products.
Talk to long-time Mac-Addicts and they will relay horror-stories about virtually any Apple-product in the last years.
Even before the Mac! Remember the Apple///? Good. Few people do, because they didn't sell make of them. Why? Because Jobs wanted it to be a quiet business machine and ordered that it not have a fan. Result: the chips popped out of their sockets due to overheating periodically. The apocryphal fix was to lift the machine a few inches above the table and drop it to reseat (hopefully) the ICs.
He claims there is no crime on the tape, fine, then show it and be done with it.
Assuming he still had the tape or data...
Willful destruction of property should not be tolerated in any state, free or not. If you cannot protest without destroying someone else's property you need to be locked up as your not a productive part of society let alone doing your cause any good.
If the cops were beating the shit out of my fellow protestors for no good reason (as *may* have happened), they deserve to have their property destroyed. Actually, they really deserve to be strung up from the nearest lamppost, but that's probably slightly more difficult to accomplish!
Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi. I remember calling about a software bug and I got told flat out that "may you be fishing 'fer craw-dads and got yer self a june buggie.
Actually, I've had experience with a few small software companies based in Texas who did their own support. Competent, polite, helpful, and knowledgable for the most part. And it's not so much a problem with understanding *them*, it's a problem with *them* understanding you, whereas even the language divide between Take-san and Noo-Yawhkian isn't that great.
Plus, ANY time I talk to their tech support, they actually from America.
That's because you have the good warranty plan. The poor schmucks who get the "home use" Dells like the Dimension with the regular warranty are the ones who get sent to Apu and Pradeep. (No offense intended to Indians, but people who don't speak English shouldn't be doing tech support for Americans!)
Actually I work at Dell doing technical support. In fact I'm typing this from work right now while I'm between calls. What happened that made your experience so bad?
US support for Dell (for those who bought the premium warranty) is decent if not wonderful. The Indian tech support for the rest of the peons is plagued by bad connections and difficulty understanding the reps' Engrish. If you're gonna hire someone to interface with customers, you'd best make sure that they run software perfectly for the protocol used by those customers:)
That's because SUV's don't cost any money. Seriously, who would pay for a huge, ugly vehicle with poor handling? Free however, and you'll never spend as much on gas as you would have on the car itself, no matter how inefficient it is.
So what? The purchase price of an SUV is tax-deductible. That doesn't mean that the vehicle is free, just that you don't have to pay Federal tax on the part of your income used to buy the thing. So you probably get 33% back on average (and pay more for gas during the truck's lifetime). For 2/3 of the price, you could get a pretty decent slightly-used smaller car that's more efficient, more fun to drive, and doesn't feel like a boat.
Hey, I was running W2k back then and I said I wouldn't switch. I still think that W2k is one of the best operating systems from Redmond, but fast user switching was reason enough to go to XP... especially in a family setting.
Fast user switching doesn't do much for you in a corp setting, though, since it's usually one-person-one-computer, or on shared computers, one account is often shared. The real reason to go over to XP is built-in Terminal Services aka Remote Desktop Connection and System Restore. Similarly, the real reason to go over to Vista will be the backup methodology (built-in drive imaging). Then again, it might be cheaper and easier just to throw a copy of Ghost onto an XP computer and image the drives when they are still in a "clean" state (right after everything needed has been installed). Data? It should be getting saved to a server that does backups regularly in any company with more than 10 people, if only because it simplifies looking for files! The other good thing about Vista - not running as root by default - isn't really an issue for most corps since they don't grant the average user root privs anyway.
What I'd want to see in an OS would be the capability for distributed RAID 1 over a network using something like rsync. Dedicate say 50% of the HDD space on 3 workstations as "file server" space and have it sync the latest version of data in almost-real-time. The synced partitions would appear as a single drive to all machines on the network.
The only flash sites I have seen that are not totally annoying and worthless are from car manufacturers, they have huge budgets to spend on design and development of their sites, even then they are substandard to HTML sites in usability.
... and speed. Flash sites seem to be invariably slow. Slow to load. Slow to render. And 95% of the stuff that is done in Flash can be done just as well in HTML with a quarter of the bandwidth usage. The other 4% on HTML + Java. The last 1% I can live with, I guess.
the cops'll probably think that the "water" pistols are filled with a mixture of cyanide and hydrofluoric acid and do the 'ol "shoot first, ask later" thing.
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That was more of a crime rather than an act of terrorism backed by a strong organization. And we arrested the people responsible. One of them got the electric chair. The other one will likely spend the duration of his natural life in a cell.
Who should the Brits "attack" for their rail bombings (all carried out by British citizens IIRC)?
Were those bombings carried out in a vacuum, or were terrorist organizations from certain countries responsible for funding, encouraging, and abetting the bombers?
-b.
A certain past president with the initials of T.R. once said, in response to a question about Central American policy: "Speak softly but carry a big stick."
That's what I'm advocating. Speaking softly in the sense of not meddling in Middle Eastern affairs and letting the Middle East deal with its problems on its own. Carrying a big stick in the sense that a major ass-kicking will be the response to continued violence against the US.
As far as the Israeli question: discontinue support for Israel, but give any and all Israelis that wish to immigrate to the US unconditional permission to do so. This will uphold our bargain to protect the Israeli people but will remove a major reason why the America is hated and constantly endangered.
We're faced with a difficult choice. Let's make the right one so that our way of life, our wonderful cities, and our freedom can be preserved.
-b.
This is why we need good foreign intelligence. Human intelligence, since with encryption and steganography, SIGINT can do very little against a determined enemy. Of course, this will never happen with the current administration, since they seem to be best at blowing the cover of the CIA agents that should be working hard to gather information on our enemies.
-b.
Hell, no. I dislike the oil industry and friends even more than I do the radical Islamists. It gives money to the wrong people and rapes the environment. Personally, I think part of the disengagement that I talked about before would be to stop buying Middle Eastern oil as much as possible and invest massively in alternative energy sources (i.e., yes, nuclear power) in the US. Make the purchase of electric cars and plug-in hybrids 100% tax deductable. Electrify our railroads. Give awards for the design of energy-efficient buildings - those that use passive means to heat and cool themselves. Encourage businesses, via tax breaks, to locate in towns rather than on highway strips. We can wean ourselves from the Middle Eastern tit, for reasons of national security as well as for environmental reasons.
Cheers,
-b.
The other problem is that the equipment that we're buying (like Stealth Bombers) is too expensive, complicated, and fragile. True, it's very difficult to shoot a stealth bomber down, but more damage can be inflicted by a flight of 30 B-52s flying at 50,000 feet, even if we do lose one or two. In war, we have to accept some loss of life - part of being a soldier is the willingness to lose your life for your country.
-b.
So, if a thug is aiming a gun at you and your family, and you have a bigger gun, do you hug him and "cooperate" with him, or do you shoot his face off?
-b.
I'd certainly hope so - the idea is to stop the attacks, not to waste innocent lives on either side. However, if there is another attack after the disengagement, the countries responsible for harboring and/or supporting Islamic fascist organizations deserve to be sternly and severely spanked.
-b.
No one said anything about invasion. We're talking about revenge - hundredfold payback if Islamofascists choose to murder innocent Americans. Methinks you're the one smoking the rock.
-b.
In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease.
Disengagement combined with a harsh hand in case of further attacks is the only way that we can preserve our society and the sacred liberties upon which this country was founded.
-b.
I'm aware of OS's having bugs. At the moment, the machine does its job just fine in its current state; no problems. So if there *are* bugs - who cares? - since they're not manifesting themselves and reducing the utility of the machine! Granted, I'd never treat a client's computer in such a cavalier fashion, but I'm not having problems with this one...
-b.
Once you have a working machine - activated and all - go to C:\windows\system32 and copy the files wpa.dbl and wpa.bak to secure off-computer location(s) like a USB key or even a floppy. When you need to reinstall XP due to HDD death or whatever, reinstall as normal with the key you used on the previous install (if you don't know the key, download Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, run it, and write down the key). After you install, boot into Safe Mode (hold down F8 at boot and select from the menu). Copy the old wpa... files back into your C:\windows\system32 directory.
-b.
I still have an unpatched Windows 2k SP3 box which has been running behind a firewall for the last 2 1/2 years. Still relatively fast and shows no evidence of malware infestation.
I can see updates being necessary on Server 2003, which is often quite buggy and needs patches for stuff to work, but an XP or 2k box doesn't desperately need the updates if it's used in a reasonably sane manner.
-b.
Not only that, but the alloy used in the screen hinges was poor and brittle. I broke my hinges by dropping the computer onto a desk about 6 inches. When I removed the hinges and replaced them, I found that I could snap the remaining parts of the old hinges in my hand. Not bend first. Snap.
The TiBook wasn't the first Apple quality debacle. That was the Apple ///, where the chips popped out of their sockets due to lack of cooling - Jobs didn't want to include a fan because it would be too loud. Next was the Apple IIgs with it's fragile desktop buss (predecessor to USB!) controller. It wouldn't run except at a certain (warm) temperature and would throw "Fatal System Error 0911" (bong, bouncing apple) periodically. Solution? Tape a small 12V light bulb to the chip to keep it at a constant warm temperature.
-b.
Even before the Mac! Remember the Apple ///? Good. Few people do, because they didn't sell make of them. Why? Because Jobs wanted it to be a quiet business machine and ordered that it not have a fan. Result: the chips popped out of their sockets due to overheating periodically. The apocryphal fix was to lift the machine a few inches above the table and drop it to reseat (hopefully) the ICs.
-b.
Assuming he still had the tape or data...
Willful destruction of property should not be tolerated in any state, free or not. If you cannot protest without destroying someone else's property you need to be locked up as your not a productive part of society let alone doing your cause any good.
If the cops were beating the shit out of my fellow protestors for no good reason (as *may* have happened), they deserve to have their property destroyed. Actually, they really deserve to be strung up from the nearest lamppost, but that's probably slightly more difficult to accomplish!
-b.
It's also much harder to code Java, so it isn't overused! Also, Java runs on almost everything these days - not so with Flash.
-b.
Actually, I've had experience with a few small software companies based in Texas who did their own support. Competent, polite, helpful, and knowledgable for the most part. And it's not so much a problem with understanding *them*, it's a problem with *them* understanding you, whereas even the language divide between Take-san and Noo-Yawhkian isn't that great.
-b.
That's because you have the good warranty plan. The poor schmucks who get the "home use" Dells like the Dimension with the regular warranty are the ones who get sent to Apu and Pradeep. (No offense intended to Indians, but people who don't speak English shouldn't be doing tech support for Americans!)
-b.
Javascript...
-b.
US support for Dell (for those who bought the premium warranty) is decent if not wonderful. The Indian tech support for the rest of the peons is plagued by bad connections and difficulty understanding the reps' Engrish. If you're gonna hire someone to interface with customers, you'd best make sure that they run software perfectly for the protocol used by those customers :)
-b.
So what? The purchase price of an SUV is tax-deductible. That doesn't mean that the vehicle is free, just that you don't have to pay Federal tax on the part of your income used to buy the thing. So you probably get 33% back on average (and pay more for gas during the truck's lifetime). For 2/3 of the price, you could get a pretty decent slightly-used smaller car that's more efficient, more fun to drive, and doesn't feel like a boat.
-b.
Fast user switching doesn't do much for you in a corp setting, though, since it's usually one-person-one-computer, or on shared computers, one account is often shared. The real reason to go over to XP is built-in Terminal Services aka Remote Desktop Connection and System Restore. Similarly, the real reason to go over to Vista will be the backup methodology (built-in drive imaging). Then again, it might be cheaper and easier just to throw a copy of Ghost onto an XP computer and image the drives when they are still in a "clean" state (right after everything needed has been installed). Data? It should be getting saved to a server that does backups regularly in any company with more than 10 people, if only because it simplifies looking for files! The other good thing about Vista - not running as root by default - isn't really an issue for most corps since they don't grant the average user root privs anyway.
What I'd want to see in an OS would be the capability for distributed RAID 1 over a network using something like rsync. Dedicate say 50% of the HDD space on 3 workstations as "file server" space and have it sync the latest version of data in almost-real-time. The synced partitions would appear as a single drive to all machines on the network.
-b.
-b.
-b.
-b.