Preprinting is probably cheaper for medium to large runs, and reading thigns off a screen is not a good solution for many people (books seem to simply work so much better right now imho).
"I think you'll find similar words from Microsoft regarding all of their products, and most software from most vendors in general. There are no guarantees in life, period. Software companies just spell it out. This is as amazing a revelation as the "Caution: risk of electric shock, injury, and death" label on my toaster."
Except as someone said, Apache only has this written in regards to ONE version of their program right now. Amusingly enough it seems (didn't even realise it) that this version is not the regular windows one. In the past it seems that the windows version did have such a warning, however it is clear that this warning is not some generic "anti-lawsuit" label and that it is removed once the software is mature enough.
I doubt any of those human borne microbes will actually "live", rather they'll simply "pollute" the environment with their dead/hibernating selves.
Finding fossils of organism which evolved on Mars, or better yet living specimens, could provide some rather interesting biological insight. This is also what the original poster seems to be wanting in terms of human exploration. It's kind of hard to find byproducts of Martian life when you're dropping byproducts of Earth life wherever you go. As I said, if a main reason for exploring Mars is to find potential signs of ancient life then robots are potentially much better at finding it until we know more.
I like human space travel however humans are inferior to robots in one important area: cleanliness. You simply can't sterilize a human you send onto another planet like you can a robot, unless they never leave their habitat/lander (if nothing else then because dragging such sterilization equipment to mars isn't feasible).
The only "fossils" we're likely to find on Mars are microbes, and even those are probably rare which means w need every advantage in finding them. Humans simply increase the risk of contamination orders of magnitude which makes finding such microbe remains a much greater challenge.
And going to SA finds a webpage which is devoid of much more than a request for donations... real useful. Accounts get hijacked often enough, and so can webpages. As I said, donations through PayPal seem to many people (read some of the other replies) as counter institutive since it takes 3% to 7% and the Red Cross takes direct donations already.
Who the heck should they ask? I doubt most people in the US have heard of SA, so asking any of them would result in the belief that SA is a scam site.
Also, SA probably has enough enemies that someone actually reported the donation drive as a scam.
Of course no one seems to have thought about WHY paypal canceled the account. I mean, they're an "evil corporation" cause SA says so thus they must have done it for kicks.
If this was a real donation scam account and paypal left it open I'm sure half of the posters would be screaming at paypal for NOT closing down the account.
Maybe you should consider how many donation scams must have been setup by now. Also, you may wish to consider how unusual this method of donation is and that more likely than not it is used to scam people. Most websites simple have a giant link to Red Cross and tell people to donate, because it's easier and they don't lose 3% in fees. You know, the concept of all the money going to relief efforts and not corporate pockets. Of course it seems SA decided it needed credit or some such for the effort of its members. Also, Paypal really has no idea who SA is or how trustworthy they are so they can only look at the current actions which look mighty close to a scam site.
So this is basically a giant ad, so I'll try and mostly ignore the brands chosen.
Let's see what I think of his "suggestions":
Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 Gaming Notebook That's not a laptop, that's a small desktop. Not something I'd ever want to lug around, which given some of the other items seems to be the goal for this system. For those wondering, I know that I don't want to carry such a beast around from experience as last summer I got the joy of having to a drag a 10lb 300mhz beast to work every other day on the NYC subway (I said screw it at some point and just left it at work, this year I bought a 3.5 laptop and no longer mind carrying it around). I mean I'm not so addicted to games as to be unable to live without being able to play the latest ones for more than a few hours.
Self Retracting NIC & Modem Cables Now this is something I could use.
Kensington WiFi Finder Interesting, although not very useful for me from what a quick google search shows. Seems it detects all wireless networks (wep or not), last time I looked in NYC my laptop found around 5 different ones althrough I could connect to only one (others were encrypted, etc.). Also, it seems the thing is cheap and shitty from what I garner and will probably not find even an open wireless network. Maybe a fun toy but not worth the space to carry around. I'd find a cell phone with some internet access package much more useful for getting internet access.
Logitech V200 Cordless Notebook Mouse Useful although I don't find the touchpad that bad for short usage or in cramped spaces, on my "to buy" list.
Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 8-in-1 Card Reader Useful if you regularly need to access various solid state media.
Asus WL-530g Pocket Wireless Router nifty.
Linksys PAP2 VoIP Phone Adapter Potentially useful although you could just use your computer to pick up calls (do Bluetooth cellphone headsets work with computers?) which I assume is more versatile (no need to connect actual phones to said device).
Kensington Microsaver Security Cable Lock Is this the one which requires only a bic pen to crack?
Good point, however the only two things in a nuke which potentially decay from what I read are the tritium booster (half life of 12.7 years) and the chemical explosives (decay probably varies). It is possible to make a low-yield bomb which does not use a booster although it would of course be less effective. Not sure how small or failure-prone such a device would be.
However if the explosive charge lasts then such a device has a decently long life (decades?), of course failures are more likely with age. You won't take out a city however all you need is to drive your car close enough to that key building or park in the middle of a population center.
Even with a booster, you could get 5 to 10 years of life out of a device although again your failure rate would probably go up (which is why the US probably checked up on their nukes).
It is estimated that they have total 400 nukes, in general the ones you'd send into another country would need to be specially built to be small (Soviets supposedly made suitcase and mini-fridge sized ones). Either that or acquired, plans or nukes themselves, from some ex-soviets (they are supposedly missing/"unable to account for"/"claim they were destroyed but have no paperwork" quite a few mini-fridge nukes).
I agree with the previous reply, althrough I'd like to add:
-Why the heck would China attack Taiwan? Last I checked Taiwan wasn't declaring independence (it might but it stands much to lose), and was waiting/hoping that China will become a democratic state (so they can join together again).
-Why the heck would they nuke China? I mean, personally I'd prefer communist rule to potential annihilation. China is invading Taiwan, not bombing them out of existence.
-Why would China nuke Taiwan? They want to invade them and take them over, not make them a worthless wasteland. The nuking of their city would give them a massive boost in international support, potentially even making the US back off. I mean, Taiwan just detonated the first offensive nuke in 60 years, I'd sure as hell like them to be taken over and contained for everyone's sake.
-Why would the US nuke China? The nuclear exchange was between China and Taiwan, caused by Taiwan. The US stands much to lose if it uses nukes, both politically and economically.
-US nukes wouldn't be used against cities; you take out the military targets and bases to prevent a counterattack (nuclear or otherwise). This is both for political and military reasons, including a desire to not have the enemy do the same to you. Potentially, you may use limited nukes to take out a few key cities and try to force surrender through psychological attack (ie: Hiroshima and Nagasaki). There is no point, especially given the morals of America, to knock a country "back to the stone age" and such a change in views is not likely to happen. Even during the Cold War, the US would have preferred a nuclear war were cities were not prime targets.
-Why would China not take out the west coast and potentially more if their cities were taken out? Why launch a handful of nukes and not the dozens that they have, if not more? We lack any deterrent to stop a full Chinese assault; this is by design to prevent a new arms race. They either have or will soon have submarine based systems which lets them attack from closer and be immune to preemptive strike.
-In addition, as the other poster said, why would they not have nukes in the US if the political climate has deteriorated as far as an invasion of Taiwan? I mean from what I've hear the Soviets had quite a few small nukes in the US, probably most are still here if they did. I'm sure China could persuade some ex-kgb operative to sell them their nuke, already in the US, or simply buy it from Russia direct. If nothing else, they would construct their own and smuggle them in which is not that difficult.
-Nukes don't send countries back to the Stone Age, not unless you lob a lot of them (we don't have that many city killers around anymore). Even then it's neither politically nor militarily useful to do so, especially when you can do other actions with minimal cost. Also China is a relatively big country, and radiation goes with the wind. I'm sure Japan, India, the Philippines, Australia and so on will not be very happy nor will their allies.
"wrong" is an objective term, if they did no damage then why is it wrong? The password was provided and they were curious, human nature is to explore things. In addition, they were in essence kids and I'd expect them to do such things.
I'd hate to live in a world where everyone unquestionably follows authority and never investigates anything, as you seem to be a proponent off.
So what else is wrong to you? Were the factory worked wrong for making unions which the government didn't approve off? Were slaves wrong for trying to escape an oppressive master?
No, releasing your code under GPL gives people certain permissions in terms of using it. You in essence grant them permission to, for example, make derivative works which are also GPL.
No, you can't fail since parents will bitch and potentially your school will get in trouble from the district/city/overseeing educational entity (ie: if so many kids are failing you must be doing something wrong).
Sadly I need to agree with you, modern US society prevents kids from being forced to learn. Teachers can't do anything to kids (including getting rid of the problematic ones), and have their hands tied in many ways it seems. Too many parents either don't care, think their kids are angels or otherwise don't supervise and force their kids to learn.
US society as a whole doesn't seem to value education or find it an essential component of becoming prosperous, at least not as much as in other nations.
This is like if a Janator asked "Should the office manager know about heavy duty plastic garbage bags? I mean, how many times must these thin bags tear open, and how often must I clean up the mess?". The anwser is shut your mouth and clean the shit up.
What a shitty manager, I'd fire him for wasting time and money instead of spending a trivial amount of time to change his future order to a different type of bag. I mean, why the heck do you even have a manager if he doesn't do anything to deal with problems (that can be easily solved)?
I also would venture to say that the manager understands, at least in basics, what the janitor does, what garbage bags are used for, that bags can break, that broken bags cause extra problems, that stronger bags may solve this problem, and be able to inquire as to how such bags can be purchased. Now this manager may not know in advance that these bags break however once learning of the problem he is able to rectify it with little explanation.
I believe the IT analogy is a manager who has no idea that they use bags, doesn't know what such a bag could be used for, has no knowledge of what a bag breaking leads to, and lacks understanding of the concept of "stronger bags." Furthermore, the Janitor to have the problem rectified would need to explain all these concepts to the manager.
You're avoiding the question. Was 9/11 morally justified? With your argument, it was. Whether I want to spend the time to make up good analogies or not is irrelevant. You clearly understood what I meant.
I simply claim that in the instance at question I find the bombings to be justifiable in the sense of causing less loss of life. I never claim any such bombing is justifiable, only that given the circumstances the bombings in question seem justifiable to me. If you cannot distinguish two events, even identical, happening under different circumstances as being two different events then I'm sorry however arguing with you is pointless as you lack grasp of reality.
I really didn't understand what you mean as your question seemed pointless and worthless to me, and utilized flawed logic.
There is no such thing as universal morality, trying to justify things as moral or immoral is very-society centric. In ww2, the overall goal was by almost everyone found to be morally justifiable, including the enemy after the war, so I considered the bombing within that context. I lack a sense of large scale morality so I try to work with what other people use for their claims. As such I used the metric of how many people died, civilians included, on both sides instead of some fuzzy "moral" compass.
Anyway, I don't find Al-Queda's reasoning for 9/11 particularly convincing nor have I seen it actually achieve much besides bolster Al-Queda's ranks (which I wouldn't consider a justification for such an act). I nonetheless I understand their actions on some level despite seeing them as flawed so I cannot simply wave a stick and say "bad Al-Queda, bad, blowing up buildings is not good." I for example don't find the attacks on Madrid or England so be as unjustifiable as by then Iraq could be used as a reason. Nonetheless I don't find the overall reasons for the attacks to hold much water so I can't say they were really justified imho. At this point it either becomes a society-centric thing or you can try to somehow find what the best social system is, and I don't have time for the later. As result I can't really agree with a group which says "Western society and democracy is bad and immoral, only a Muslim theocracy is good."
You're defending bombing civilians, which makes you a supporter of terrorism.
And you basically would have preferred the Allies to do nothing during ww2? I mean, millions of civilians were killed and many died from bombings, some in factories making materials for the war effort. If you claim that killing civilians is morally wrong in all circumstances then you claim that the Allies should have given up as they had no feasible method of fighting which did not involve killing civilians.
Killing civilians alone is not terrorism nor is terrorism killing civilians, one can commit terrorism by attacking military installations for example. Go look up the definition and stop reading whatever crap the media spouts out. A large part of any war is in essence terrorism, you intimidate the enemy by attacking his country, army, industry and civilians in an attempt to cause them to surrender.
Basically your viewpoint is this: terrorism is bad when Americans are victims, terrorism is acceptable when Japanese or Muslims are victims.
Now you're putting words in my mouth, I asked why 9/11 is pertinent to the discussion at hand. I pointed out that there analogy does not hold and my opinions on 9/11 are irrelevant to the questions at hand.
I do have to say that I love being a moderate and coming to my own decisions on topics. Just a few weeks ago I was basically called a spineless anti-war liberal hippie; I think some anti-American jargon was thrown my way as well. Now I'm basically being called some kind of pro-war pro-us right wing psychopath, which is so darn cool.
240000 at Hiroshima? Most I can find is 140k including those who died of radiation afterwards. Dresden claims go up to something like 250k but those are probably not reliable.
In addition, in ww2 the US was in the "morally correct" camp to a rather large degree. The Japanese in their imperialistic campaign of conquest tortured and murdered untold thousands. Go look up the "Rape of Nanking" or as the Japanese history books call it "The Nanking Incident". The US was dragged into this war, although it was trying to get dragged in at that point so it's irrelevant. Its goal was to stop the Japanese from further conquest, restore conquered nations and prevent a similar act in the future.
I simply meant that saying some group is "unintelligent" or "not deserving of modern civilization" is stupid considering where our ancestors came from. The Germans in ww2 followed almost as blindly as the Japanese, and so did the Soviets after the war (seems they loved Stalin and couldn't believe he'd be sending them to siberia).
Can't really blame a people for their government or following their government, psychology studies show we have some ingrained desire to follow authority figures even if they make us commit horrid acts. Add in some good propaganda, maybe some fear, and it goes downhill even faster, look how much Americans hated communists after ww2.
From what I've read he was a blind fool who believed Stalin was a "good guy." Churchill didn't seem to have any such illusions. Russia was also able to by not declaring war on Japan to get three nice new US bombers to take apart, it was neutral (as far as the Japan-US war was concerned) so by international treaty it could not give them back to the US after they landed on Russian soil.
Point 3 made sense actually after the conference, Stalin got Berlin anyway so he may as well waste his own man in claiming it instead of the Allies wasting their own men only to give it to Stalin anyway.
No, these were simply the two options asfaik seen at the time as solutions which are likely to lead to the desired result. It is documented that an invasion was expected if the bombs were not dropped as Japan was not likely to surrender, as such I am working within the confines of history. If you have another one, which doesn't rely on some horrid amount of hindsight to work, then please post it. It would be even better if you had some historical references that the idea was thought up at the time, as otherwise it really wasn't a workable solution. Otherwise, goodbye Mr. Troll.
Japan was already starving, didn't do much to them. There is no such thing as "military complexes" as all industry was at the time basically a military installation. You'd have to bomb them back a few centuries, and even then they could secretly make weapons to send against your fleet. Suicide attacks to them weren't exactly against the rules.
From a US point of view a blockade would be expensive and probably unpopular, and Japan could last a while. Humanitarian agencies would object, complain and Japan would sooner or later get sent food anyway.
I'm rather sure that a lot more than a few hundred thousand would die of starvation before they managed to get farming up to a level where it could support the nation, probably millions would be dead as without industrialization farming could never support their population. So you advocate the starving of millions compared to the nuking of thousands, interesting position.
If you wish to see what a nation can degrade into given an insane enough government, look at North Korea. Doesn't mean the people are somehow unintelligent" or "uncivilized" simply that the government is too oppressive. Remember, for a long time most of Europe was composed of peasants (ie: mindless slaves).
*sigh* We had an unconditional surrender, although the emperor was kept as a non-divine figurehead. This was not required although the US probably decided it would lead to the best post-war atmosphere. In addition, I'm rather sure that the Japanese terms involved no occupation of Japan, letting the Japanese prosecute their own war criminals and at least some powers still left to the emperor.
Slashdot Mirror
Preprinting is probably cheaper for medium to large runs, and reading thigns off a screen is not a good solution for many people (books seem to simply work so much better right now imho).
"I think you'll find similar words from Microsoft regarding all of their products, and most software from most vendors in general. There are no guarantees in life, period. Software companies just spell it out. This is as amazing a revelation as the "Caution: risk of electric shock, injury, and death" label on my toaster."
Except as someone said, Apache only has this written in regards to ONE version of their program right now. Amusingly enough it seems (didn't even realise it) that this version is not the regular windows one. In the past it seems that the windows version did have such a warning, however it is clear that this warning is not some generic "anti-lawsuit" label and that it is removed once the software is mature enough.
So it's Microsoft's fault that Apache isn't designed to work on their OS? wtf?
I doubt any of those human borne microbes will actually "live", rather they'll simply "pollute" the environment with their dead/hibernating selves.
Finding fossils of organism which evolved on Mars, or better yet living specimens, could provide some rather interesting biological insight. This is also what the original poster seems to be wanting in terms of human exploration. It's kind of hard to find byproducts of Martian life when you're dropping byproducts of Earth life wherever you go. As I said, if a main reason for exploring Mars is to find potential signs of ancient life then robots are potentially much better at finding it until we know more.
I like human space travel however humans are inferior to robots in one important area: cleanliness. You simply can't sterilize a human you send onto another planet like you can a robot, unless they never leave their habitat/lander (if nothing else then because dragging such sterilization equipment to mars isn't feasible).
The only "fossils" we're likely to find on Mars are microbes, and even those are probably rare which means w need every advantage in finding them. Humans simply increase the risk of contamination orders of magnitude which makes finding such microbe remains a much greater challenge.
And going to SA finds a webpage which is devoid of much more than a request for donations... real useful. Accounts get hijacked often enough, and so can webpages. As I said, donations through PayPal seem to many people (read some of the other replies) as counter institutive since it takes 3% to 7% and the Red Cross takes direct donations already.
Who the heck should they ask? I doubt most people in the US have heard of SA, so asking any of them would result in the belief that SA is a scam site.
Also, SA probably has enough enemies that someone actually reported the donation drive as a scam.
Of course no one seems to have thought about WHY paypal canceled the account. I mean, they're an "evil corporation" cause SA says so thus they must have done it for kicks.
If this was a real donation scam account and paypal left it open I'm sure half of the posters would be screaming at paypal for NOT closing down the account.
Maybe you should consider how many donation scams must have been setup by now. Also, you may wish to consider how unusual this method of donation is and that more likely than not it is used to scam people. Most websites simple have a giant link to Red Cross and tell people to donate, because it's easier and they don't lose 3% in fees. You know, the concept of all the money going to relief efforts and not corporate pockets. Of course it seems SA decided it needed credit or some such for the effort of its members. Also, Paypal really has no idea who SA is or how trustworthy they are so they can only look at the current actions which look mighty close to a scam site.
So this is basically a giant ad, so I'll try and mostly ignore the brands chosen.
Let's see what I think of his "suggestions":
Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 Gaming Notebook
That's not a laptop, that's a small desktop. Not something I'd ever want to lug around, which given some of the other items seems to be the goal for this system. For those wondering, I know that I don't want to carry such a beast around from experience as last summer I got the joy of having to a drag a 10lb 300mhz beast to work every other day on the NYC subway (I said screw it at some point and just left it at work, this year I bought a 3.5 laptop and no longer mind carrying it around). I mean I'm not so addicted to games as to be unable to live without being able to play the latest ones for more than a few hours.
Self Retracting NIC & Modem Cables
Now this is something I could use.
Kensington WiFi Finder
Interesting, although not very useful for me from what a quick google search shows. Seems it detects all wireless networks (wep or not), last time I looked in NYC my laptop found around 5 different ones althrough I could connect to only one (others were encrypted, etc.).
Also, it seems the thing is cheap and shitty from what I garner and will probably not find even an open wireless network. Maybe a fun toy but not worth the space to carry around.
I'd find a cell phone with some internet access package much more useful for getting internet access.
Logitech V200 Cordless Notebook Mouse
Useful although I don't find the touchpad that bad for short usage or in cramped spaces, on my "to buy" list.
Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 8-in-1 Card Reader
Useful if you regularly need to access various solid state media.
Asus WL-530g Pocket Wireless Router
nifty.
Linksys PAP2 VoIP Phone Adapter
Potentially useful although you could just use your computer to pick up calls (do Bluetooth cellphone headsets work with computers?) which I assume is more versatile (no need to connect actual phones to said device).
Kensington Microsaver Security Cable Lock
Is this the one which requires only a bic pen to crack?
Good point, however the only two things in a nuke which potentially decay from what I read are the tritium booster (half life of 12.7 years) and the chemical explosives (decay probably varies). It is possible to make a low-yield bomb which does not use a booster although it would of course be less effective. Not sure how small or failure-prone such a device would be.
However if the explosive charge lasts then such a device has a decently long life (decades?), of course failures are more likely with age. You won't take out a city however all you need is to drive your car close enough to that key building or park in the middle of a population center.
Even with a booster, you could get 5 to 10 years of life out of a device although again your failure rate would probably go up (which is why the US probably checked up on their nukes).
It is estimated that they have total 400 nukes, in general the ones you'd send into another country would need to be specially built to be small (Soviets supposedly made suitcase and mini-fridge sized ones). Either that or acquired, plans or nukes themselves, from some ex-soviets (they are supposedly missing/"unable to account for"/"claim they were destroyed but have no paperwork" quite a few mini-fridge nukes).
I agree with the previous reply, althrough I'd like to add:
-Why the heck would China attack Taiwan? Last I checked Taiwan wasn't declaring independence (it might but it stands much to lose), and was waiting/hoping that China will become a democratic state (so they can join together again).
-Why the heck would they nuke China? I mean, personally I'd prefer communist rule to potential annihilation. China is invading Taiwan, not bombing them out of existence.
-Why would China nuke Taiwan? They want to invade them and take them over, not make them a worthless wasteland. The nuking of their city would give them a massive boost in international support, potentially even making the US back off. I mean, Taiwan just detonated the first offensive nuke in 60 years, I'd sure as hell like them to be taken over and contained for everyone's sake.
-Why would the US nuke China? The nuclear exchange was between China and Taiwan, caused by Taiwan. The US stands much to lose if it uses nukes, both politically and economically.
-US nukes wouldn't be used against cities; you take out the military targets and bases to prevent a counterattack (nuclear or otherwise). This is both for political and military reasons, including a desire to not have the enemy do the same to you. Potentially, you may use limited nukes to take out a few key cities and try to force surrender through psychological attack (ie: Hiroshima and Nagasaki). There is no point, especially given the morals of America, to knock a country "back to the stone age" and such a change in views is not likely to happen. Even during the Cold War, the US would have preferred a nuclear war were cities were not prime targets.
-Why would China not take out the west coast and potentially more if their cities were taken out? Why launch a handful of nukes and not the dozens that they have, if not more? We lack any deterrent to stop a full Chinese assault; this is by design to prevent a new arms race. They either have or will soon have submarine based systems which lets them attack from closer and be immune to preemptive strike.
-In addition, as the other poster said, why would they not have nukes in the US if the political climate has deteriorated as far as an invasion of Taiwan? I mean from what I've hear the Soviets had quite a few small nukes in the US, probably most are still here if they did. I'm sure China could persuade some ex-kgb operative to sell them their nuke, already in the US, or simply buy it from Russia direct. If nothing else, they would construct their own and smuggle them in which is not that difficult.
-Nukes don't send countries back to the Stone Age, not unless you lob a lot of them (we don't have that many city killers around anymore). Even then it's neither politically nor militarily useful to do so, especially when you can do other actions with minimal cost. Also China is a relatively big country, and radiation goes with the wind. I'm sure Japan, India, the Philippines, Australia and so on will not be very happy nor will their allies.
"wrong" is an objective term, if they did no damage then why is it wrong? The password was provided and they were curious, human nature is to explore things. In addition, they were in essence kids and I'd expect them to do such things.
I'd hate to live in a world where everyone unquestionably follows authority and never investigates anything, as you seem to be a proponent off.
So what else is wrong to you? Were the factory worked wrong for making unions which the government didn't approve off? Were slaves wrong for trying to escape an oppressive master?
No, releasing your code under GPL gives people certain permissions in terms of using it. You in essence grant them permission to, for example, make derivative works which are also GPL.
No, you can't fail since parents will bitch and potentially your school will get in trouble from the district/city/overseeing educational entity (ie: if so many kids are failing you must be doing something wrong).
Sadly I need to agree with you, modern US society prevents kids from being forced to learn. Teachers can't do anything to kids (including getting rid of the problematic ones), and have their hands tied in many ways it seems. Too many parents either don't care, think their kids are angels or otherwise don't supervise and force their kids to learn.
US society as a whole doesn't seem to value education or find it an essential component of becoming prosperous, at least not as much as in other nations.
This is like if a Janator asked "Should the office manager know about heavy duty plastic garbage bags? I mean, how many times must these thin bags tear open, and how often must I clean up the mess?". The anwser is shut your mouth and clean the shit up.
What a shitty manager, I'd fire him for wasting time and money instead of spending a trivial amount of time to change his future order to a different type of bag. I mean, why the heck do you even have a manager if he doesn't do anything to deal with problems (that can be easily solved)?
I also would venture to say that the manager understands, at least in basics, what the janitor does, what garbage bags are used for, that bags can break, that broken bags cause extra problems, that stronger bags may solve this problem, and be able to inquire as to how such bags can be purchased. Now this manager may not know in advance that these bags break however once learning of the problem he is able to rectify it with little explanation.
I believe the IT analogy is a manager who has no idea that they use bags, doesn't know what such a bag could be used for, has no knowledge of what a bag breaking leads to, and lacks understanding of the concept of "stronger bags." Furthermore, the Janitor to have the problem rectified would need to explain all these concepts to the manager.
And you were right about Dresden not killing more people than the a-bombs, thanks for that. And they say Slashdot comments don't teach you anything.
You're avoiding the question. Was 9/11 morally justified? With your argument, it was. Whether I want to spend the time to make up good analogies or not is irrelevant. You clearly understood what I meant.
I simply claim that in the instance at question I find the bombings to be justifiable in the sense of causing less loss of life. I never claim any such bombing is justifiable, only that given the circumstances the bombings in question seem justifiable to me. If you cannot distinguish two events, even identical, happening under different circumstances as being two different events then I'm sorry however arguing with you is pointless as you lack grasp of reality.
I really didn't understand what you mean as your question seemed pointless and worthless to me, and utilized flawed logic.
There is no such thing as universal morality, trying to justify things as moral or immoral is very-society centric. In ww2, the overall goal was by almost everyone found to be morally justifiable, including the enemy after the war, so I considered the bombing within that context. I lack a sense of large scale morality so I try to work with what other people use for their claims. As such I used the metric of how many people died, civilians included, on both sides instead of some fuzzy "moral" compass.
Anyway, I don't find Al-Queda's reasoning for 9/11 particularly convincing nor have I seen it actually achieve much besides bolster Al-Queda's ranks (which I wouldn't consider a justification for such an act). I nonetheless I understand their actions on some level despite seeing them as flawed so I cannot simply wave a stick and say "bad Al-Queda, bad, blowing up buildings is not good." I for example don't find the attacks on Madrid or England so be as unjustifiable as by then Iraq could be used as a reason. Nonetheless I don't find the overall reasons for the attacks to hold much water so I can't say they were really justified imho. At this point it either becomes a society-centric thing or you can try to somehow find what the best social system is, and I don't have time for the later. As result I can't really agree with a group which says "Western society and democracy is bad and immoral, only a Muslim theocracy is good."
You're defending bombing civilians, which makes you a supporter of terrorism.
And you basically would have preferred the Allies to do nothing during ww2? I mean, millions of civilians were killed and many died from bombings, some in factories making materials for the war effort. If you claim that killing civilians is morally wrong in all circumstances then you claim that the Allies should have given up as they had no feasible method of fighting which did not involve killing civilians.
Killing civilians alone is not terrorism nor is terrorism killing civilians, one can commit terrorism by attacking military installations for example. Go look up the definition and stop reading whatever crap the media spouts out. A large part of any war is in essence terrorism, you intimidate the enemy by attacking his country, army, industry and civilians in an attempt to cause them to surrender.
Basically your viewpoint is this: terrorism is bad when Americans are victims, terrorism is acceptable when Japanese or Muslims are victims.
Now you're putting words in my mouth, I asked why 9/11 is pertinent to the discussion at hand. I pointed out that there analogy does not hold and my opinions on 9/11 are irrelevant to the questions at hand.
I do have to say that I love being a moderate and coming to my own decisions on topics. Just a few weeks ago I was basically called a spineless anti-war liberal hippie; I think some anti-American jargon was thrown my way as well. Now I'm basically being called some kind of pro-war pro-us right wing psychopath, which is so darn cool.
240000 at Hiroshima? Most I can find is 140k including those who died of radiation afterwards. Dresden claims go up to something like 250k but those are probably not reliable.
...seeing as Al-Queda had no plans to invade, no.
In addition, in ww2 the US was in the "morally correct" camp to a rather large degree. The Japanese in their imperialistic campaign of conquest tortured and murdered untold thousands. Go look up the "Rape of Nanking" or as the Japanese history books call it "The Nanking Incident". The US was dragged into this war, although it was trying to get dragged in at that point so it's irrelevant. Its goal was to stop the Japanese from further conquest, restore conquered nations and prevent a similar act in the future.
Also, learn to make better analogies.
I simply meant that saying some group is "unintelligent" or "not deserving of modern civilization" is stupid considering where our ancestors came from. The Germans in ww2 followed almost as blindly as the Japanese, and so did the Soviets after the war (seems they loved Stalin and couldn't believe he'd be sending them to siberia).
Can't really blame a people for their government or following their government, psychology studies show we have some ingrained desire to follow authority figures even if they make us commit horrid acts. Add in some good propaganda, maybe some fear, and it goes downhill even faster, look how much Americans hated communists after ww2.
Of course it makes them easier to kill, in addition if you distance yourself from being human it is also easier to kill the other side.
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WW2 was a something very different from what you or I have ever lived through. I think this comment says it quite well: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159590&cid=13
From what I've read he was a blind fool who believed Stalin was a "good guy." Churchill didn't seem to have any such illusions. Russia was also able to by not declaring war on Japan to get three nice new US bombers to take apart, it was neutral (as far as the Japan-US war was concerned) so by international treaty it could not give them back to the US after they landed on Russian soil.
Point 3 made sense actually after the conference, Stalin got Berlin anyway so he may as well waste his own man in claiming it instead of the Allies wasting their own men only to give it to Stalin anyway.
No, these were simply the two options asfaik seen at the time as solutions which are likely to lead to the desired result. It is documented that an invasion was expected if the bombs were not dropped as Japan was not likely to surrender, as such I am working within the confines of history. If you have another one, which doesn't rely on some horrid amount of hindsight to work, then please post it. It would be even better if you had some historical references that the idea was thought up at the time, as otherwise it really wasn't a workable solution. Otherwise, goodbye Mr. Troll.
Japan was already starving, didn't do much to them. There is no such thing as "military complexes" as all industry was at the time basically a military installation. You'd have to bomb them back a few centuries, and even then they could secretly make weapons to send against your fleet. Suicide attacks to them weren't exactly against the rules.
From a US point of view a blockade would be expensive and probably unpopular, and Japan could last a while. Humanitarian agencies would object, complain and Japan would sooner or later get sent food anyway.
I'm rather sure that a lot more than a few hundred thousand would die of starvation before they managed to get farming up to a level where it could support the nation, probably millions would be dead as without industrialization farming could never support their population. So you advocate the starving of millions compared to the nuking of thousands, interesting position.
If you wish to see what a nation can degrade into given an insane enough government, look at North Korea. Doesn't mean the people are somehow unintelligent" or "uncivilized" simply that the government is too oppressive. Remember, for a long time most of Europe was composed of peasants (ie: mindless slaves).
*sigh*
We had an unconditional surrender, although the emperor was kept as a non-divine figurehead. This was not required although the US probably decided it would lead to the best post-war atmosphere. In addition, I'm rather sure that the Japanese terms involved no occupation of Japan, letting the Japanese prosecute their own war criminals and at least some powers still left to the emperor.