And if you do digg searches on BM photos, you'll see they hardly ever exercise discretion.
There are many BM participants that plainly don't want the world to see them nude, or having what's a potentially lascivious time. That's their right and a good protection to have fun without the PTA burning you at the stake. Here, the EFF has crossed the line. Imagine all the people in the Human Carcass Wash being exposed for the world to see. That's not what BM is about: outing behavior that's otherwise 'just fine' at the event.
People have more freedom at BM than the 'default world' and should have the right to protection, and the event should be able to control it. Privacy trumps someone's right to masturbate or express other moral outrage to pictures of strange things at BM.
Mod parent back up. It's not flamebait, and relevant to the conversation.
Eric Schmidt tried to battle Microsoft when he was at Novell, so there's no wonder that he's reluctant now. It's going to take more than the half-assed Google Docs and warmed over Linux distro to beat Microsoft at their own game. Lots of hardware OEMs will simply refuse to work with Google because they're in fear of Microsoft retribution.
Netscape was indeed illegally thwarted by moves from Microsoft. The settlement evidence is a papertrail around the world.
All this stuff works, right? No intervention necessary. Nothing needs upgrading. Nothing new under the sun.
Fie.
Great stuff is happening all over the place as the world gets networked together. Consider the evolutionary, rather than revolutionary products-- and there is room for revolution. The iPhone proved that mobile/cell phones suck. Netbooks are causing a mad race in the evolution of notebooks. Bluetooth, Zigbee, and other short haul devices are just now blossoming (and being continually misapplied in insecure ways). Email works, right? DNS-- yummy. There's lots of room for improvement, but we've not seen the end of what the mind can do with networking coupled to need. Seibel is just fat and deliriously rich and happy. He has no incentive, and what he did wasn't especially dramatically important-- but it filled a need.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and we're still in need. Seibel and dozens of fat cats don't have the need, and therefore have a corrupted perspective.
Although this looks good on the surface, there are a lot of port mirrors that aren't very good, and don't deliver a true mirror with as much as half or more of traffic falling off the edge of the RJ-45 connector into the bit bucket.
In the desired 'is my dad p0wnd' question above, a cheapo mirror might catch the odd address that makes no sense. But in a lot of small org port mirrors, you'll miss A LOT of data. Not foolproof. Only an insertion device truly captures all if it can keep up-- and not become its own bottleneck. Even ring -1 vm virtual interfaces can be corrupted.
Y'all aren't getting the message: Apple purposefully screwed a competitor, and the users of the competitor's product. They dropped the anchor and said, don't touch our turf.
Is it a near-monopoly? No. In fact, it is a monopoly. Look it up. Look at Apple's competitor, Microsoft's conviction or settlement in 73 countries and numerous other jurisdiction for such boorish behavior.
This has nothing to do with entitlements. This has to do with controlling your marketplace to the obviation of competition in a monopolistic sense that violates the 1934 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, IMHO, IANAL-- just a former fan of Apple's zeal for quality and usability. They blew it, and big time.
F/OSS can be good, and it can be ugly. It has its benefits, and it has a huge barrage of really good coders and a lot of undeserved ego. May the best apps win.
I must also disagree with your sense of litigation and its results as regards monopolies. During the Bush years, it was mostly anything-goes. Some of that will change.... and more would change if we didn't have a bribed legislature.
We would disagree that Microsoft doesn't try to lockdown applications. There is much evidence to the contrary. In fact, their developer programs are designed to both distract (from other pursuits) and otherwise capture developers. Yes, apps drive the Windows platform. Compatibility, whether in simple, low-level things like SMB or even FAT32, is designed to thwart compatibility without licensing. Apple's control of their platform has now become as didactic as Microsoft's in my opinion.
I've seen various ports of various OSes to xbox, PS3, and so on as intellectual pursuits. WE OWN THE HARDWARE AND OUR DATA. Not license it, OWN IT. And we get to brick stuff any way we choose. Or not.
The Moonlight and Mono crowd have about seven years of trying to get it right, but the slowness of the links to these F/OSS platforms has entrenched Microsoft's lead thoroughly. Outlook is the app to beat these days-- it's a noose around people's necks.
Software patents are still another vaguery that prevents compatibility. Some of these patents are especially onerous and bereft of sense, IMHO. Consider the origins of FireWire, and even 802.11n connectivity.
What if SCSI were patented? This is fodder for a different discussion. In this case, we're talking about purposefully thwarting Palm from syncing with iTunes, just to fcuk Palm and its users. Smart marketing? No-- boorishness and childlike behavior. The stuff of ugliness and thugs. For a company that aspires to high quality ideals and zealous thoughtfulness, it's an affront to these ideals. Someone needs a spanking.
Do you let Microsoft approve of your Windows apps? Jailbreak is a similar but mandatory travesty. To not jailbreak an iPhone is to let Apple get away with this murder.
No self-respecting hacker would put up with such a thing. And Palm shouldn't need a deal. Apple should publish a spec, or they're as guilty as a certain.NET Framework maker. It's time for Mono4iPhones.
The damn thing is that I bought and use a Mac because it's based on non-proprietary platforms (e.g. Darwin BSD). And it's because they're behaving like market-paranoid Microsoft that I'm labeling them boorish, childish, and fraught with the need for the FTC to spank them..... or perhaps someone named Cuomo.
That Apple rejects apps for arbitrary reasons doesn't mean you can't use them, it's just that they're not a channel for them. That's a bit different than saying fcuk you to Palm for their compatibility claims with Apple's little cash cow. Their little cash cow goes away when people that expect interoperability can't get it. It's one more reason that 'it just works' isn't really good enough. Being legendary purveyors of quality goods means that you make them according to standards that don't thwart the earnest intentions of others to use your gear.
There's mindless attention to detail, and then there are proctological orifices of biblical proportion. Apple has started to lean towards the orifice.
The entire computer industry is based on interoperability. When I buy a Mac, or an iPod, and get iTunes--> I expect it to work. If I buy something else, I expect that Apple doesn't purposefully thwart the use of that device to control their sales.
That 'slap' you cite is in your face, and the face of many people that expect and demand interoperability without being thwarted. Apple doesn't write a spec called iTunes. If they were half an organization, they'd do just that and stop looking like small children.
It makes Apple look so very close to Microsoft in attitude that I'm apalled. Embrace-and-extend doesn't mean spank your customers.
No matter whether you like iTunes or iPhone, they ought to be able to work with other stuff, as you mention, as in interoperability. Purposeful disenfranchisement is the mark of a child. Take your toys and go home.
I'll take innovation. What's being offered here is nothing new, however. And if you read an implication that I like KDE or Gnome, you left with the wrong impression; I think both have their problems.
Applications rule, and operating systems should do their best, along with their now 'required' window managers to aid people in using the applications.
You believe that there is vision here. There is nothing more here than Google pimping its own substandard, buggy, occasionally unreliable applications based on its browser. Sound familiar?
Let Google burn as much $$ as it wants on this; I get the feeling it's just a first step anyway. Long ago, I used X, Motif, and a lot of stuff that while advanced for its era, was butt ugly to configure, use, and code to. Blah.
NeXtStep was a bit farther down the road, then MacOS started looking decent and consistent, and Microsoft tried and failed and tried again. Branch to KDE, GNome and lighter weight wms and UIs.
So, who am I to tell Google what to build? Fucking Google like many other cultclubs is getting pretty damn big for its britches. I'm that lowly schmuck called the coder, the end-user, the civilian. I know: customers don't count.
I thought Schmidt was mad when he tried to save Novell. Now he's still doing the Quixote Dance at Google. Schmidt isn't stupid. Follow the money, as at the end of the day, that's what Google has to make its shareholders happy about. So where is that money coming from? Free app/OS use? No--> it's about logging and tracking what we do, and enhancing the 'experience'. There is no other revenue stream.
So you can drool over a lightweight netbook OS (Microsoft is in the middle of a campaign to deny netbooks even exist) that uses an enhanced experience online bunch of half-dead 'office' apps, or you can stop watching this train wreck and get on with your life.
If it's just a browser drone, then why not use something still slimmer? It doesn't take much in a kernel to run a single application, in fact 64K ought to do it with room to spare-- save rendering jpgs and video.
Bah--- they're not going to support much at a zero cost anyway. It's a community-support ecosystem at best, and trying to teach mom at worst.
This is why it will fail: in reality, it's stupid as you describe it compared to Ubuntu, Xandros, and even wiggy Linux or even Android builds. There is no value as you describe it, unless it's the prospect of throw-away netbooks, and the world has a recycling problem as it is.
Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.
This is not to put down any effort to get rid of X11, rather, my guess that cross-operating system application porting will once again go to hell, cause conditional compiles, and much Zantac consumption.
They could have just invested in Canonical and Ubuntu, rather than try to reinvent the wheel. Another window manager just dilutes the current pool of people trying to do KDE and Gnome.
The whole Chrome announcement was handled by NPR this morning, and the net essence of it is that it pimps Google Apps to the detriment of Microsoft Office apps.... and potentially, each vendor's supposed 'cloud' offereings. Oh-- and it'll be out next year, maybe.
Yawn. Same fight, now with mutual propaganda and the same old tussling.
Bravo Google? Maybe-- if their apps were really nicely featured, didn't have to work as browser apps, and were actually competitive with Office-- which they are not, sadly. Eat Microsoft's marketshare and force Ballmer into a chair throwing session? I suppose that has some merit.
I wish that my ISP's filter would find Snopes candidates from my mother-in-law and relegate them to the bit bucket. But it never learns. Bayseian filter? No.... it learns only when a user spanks it.
Consider that tax bases aren't logical, and cause and effect aren't as obvious as it seems. There are degrees of friendliness, but I'm not trying to assuage your argument, rather encourage those that feel that their capacity to live both privately and with civility can be done, but it requires enduring effort, for even those that are free, are tribally poised to be not free. It is the nature of testosterone.
A certain event in the tip of Manhattan caused sufficient paranoia to allow the government in the US, then the UK, to lurch into action. Then there was one in Spain, Germany, and so on. Each event allowed their respective governments to feast on control. One of those controls was the ability to watch you.
You are, by your virtue of being on/., now a potential suspect. Your Canadian Yahoo address means the NSA and CIA and M5 can peer down your webtubies into your conversations.
You're on the radar screen now; we all are. Fight the fuckers, give them no quarter, make governments understand that we're the citizenry, and they are at our behest. Folly, you might think. What has eroded can be restored, unless the capable decide to split for a nirvana that doesn't exist.
There's always the alternative: stay and fight. Stand up, be heard, be diligent, don't take no for answers, get answers. Repeat. Privacy, as other rights (remember 1066?) take tenacity to achieve and hold on to. As a bonus, they'll know all about you.
There are allies, and meddlers. France had it in for Great Britain. So did some of the Germans and Poles. But that's not what we're talking about here at all, is it? Let the Iranians find the center themselves-- it's far cleaner that way.
Get rid of your bile and your testosterone. Leave them alone.
If our interests are the Iranians, let's watch them win this one. If it's US interests, then you're just one more corporate stooge looking for your next earnings statement.
Hedging your bet means getting your hands dirty. Let them win by exposing bias and distortions of the truth within their process. External pressure from the US and/or UK will have a negative reaction. Give them tools; let them do the work. Things are much more valued if you really have to earn them.
And the US tendency to meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations is plainly stupid and serves (often) only corporate interests, not those of the US people or those of the sovereign nation. Look at what history tells you. Look at the damage done.
We toppled a government in Iraq that had two distinct factions, Sunni and Shiite Muslims held at bay from each other. Other factions, like the Kurds, and non-Muslim populations kind of lived together when Saddam wasn't gassing one or another opponents, or the Iranians.
There are plenty of varieties of ethnic and religious subgroups in Afghanistan that have been plundered for several hundred years, most recently by the former Soviet Union before we got there.
If our problem after 9/11 was with "Al Qaeda' then we should have found its leaders, and brought them to justice. This hasn't happened yet, and until other blood is extracted from the reason, won't likely happen.
So, we screwed up not targeting a very distinct religious group (not the Taliban; they were just cooperative) called 'Al Qaeda' in Afghanistan. We went to war in Iraq based on trumped up lies, admitted to by the prior administration, based on provocation from Saddam Hussein, who was found and hung after a 'trial'. Yes, he probably deserved it.
But because we screwed up Afghanistan, and we had no real plan in invading Iraq, we're paying untold billions of dollars to bring 'peace' there. Correction: we're spending billions of dollars of future earnings there.
If either had had internal revolutions, we'd've been better off. Let the Iranians earn their own revolution. We needn't help. Let them own their success--it's better that way.
Slashdot Mirror
The people I met were mostly IT geeks. Really.
And if you do digg searches on BM photos, you'll see they hardly ever exercise discretion.
There are many BM participants that plainly don't want the world to see them nude, or having what's a potentially lascivious time. That's their right and a good protection to have fun without the PTA burning you at the stake. Here, the EFF has crossed the line. Imagine all the people in the Human Carcass Wash being exposed for the world to see. That's not what BM is about: outing behavior that's otherwise 'just fine' at the event.
People have more freedom at BM than the 'default world' and should have the right to protection, and the event should be able to control it. Privacy trumps someone's right to masturbate or express other moral outrage to pictures of strange things at BM.
Mod parent back up. It's not flamebait, and relevant to the conversation.
Eric Schmidt tried to battle Microsoft when he was at Novell, so there's no wonder that he's reluctant now. It's going to take more than the half-assed Google Docs and warmed over Linux distro to beat Microsoft at their own game. Lots of hardware OEMs will simply refuse to work with Google because they're in fear of Microsoft retribution.
Netscape was indeed illegally thwarted by moves from Microsoft. The settlement evidence is a papertrail around the world.
Uh, no.
All this stuff works, right? No intervention necessary. Nothing needs upgrading. Nothing new under the sun.
Fie.
Great stuff is happening all over the place as the world gets networked together. Consider the evolutionary, rather than revolutionary products-- and there is room for revolution. The iPhone proved that mobile/cell phones suck. Netbooks are causing a mad race in the evolution of notebooks. Bluetooth, Zigbee, and other short haul devices are just now blossoming (and being continually misapplied in insecure ways). Email works, right? DNS-- yummy. There's lots of room for improvement, but we've not seen the end of what the mind can do with networking coupled to need. Seibel is just fat and deliriously rich and happy. He has no incentive, and what he did wasn't especially dramatically important-- but it filled a need.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and we're still in need. Seibel and dozens of fat cats don't have the need, and therefore have a corrupted perspective.
Although this looks good on the surface, there are a lot of port mirrors that aren't very good, and don't deliver a true mirror with as much as half or more of traffic falling off the edge of the RJ-45 connector into the bit bucket.
In the desired 'is my dad p0wnd' question above, a cheapo mirror might catch the odd address that makes no sense. But in a lot of small org port mirrors, you'll miss A LOT of data. Not foolproof. Only an insertion device truly captures all if it can keep up-- and not become its own bottleneck. Even ring -1 vm virtual interfaces can be corrupted.
Y'all aren't getting the message: Apple purposefully screwed a competitor, and the users of the competitor's product. They dropped the anchor and said, don't touch our turf.
Is it a near-monopoly? No. In fact, it is a monopoly. Look it up. Look at Apple's competitor, Microsoft's conviction or settlement in 73 countries and numerous other jurisdiction for such boorish behavior.
This has nothing to do with entitlements. This has to do with controlling your marketplace to the obviation of competition in a monopolistic sense that violates the 1934 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, IMHO, IANAL-- just a former fan of Apple's zeal for quality and usability. They blew it, and big time.
F/OSS can be good, and it can be ugly. It has its benefits, and it has a huge barrage of really good coders and a lot of undeserved ego. May the best apps win.
I must also disagree with your sense of litigation and its results as regards monopolies. During the Bush years, it was mostly anything-goes. Some of that will change.... and more would change if we didn't have a bribed legislature.
We would disagree that Microsoft doesn't try to lockdown applications. There is much evidence to the contrary. In fact, their developer programs are designed to both distract (from other pursuits) and otherwise capture developers. Yes, apps drive the Windows platform. Compatibility, whether in simple, low-level things like SMB or even FAT32, is designed to thwart compatibility without licensing. Apple's control of their platform has now become as didactic as Microsoft's in my opinion.
I've seen various ports of various OSes to xbox, PS3, and so on as intellectual pursuits. WE OWN THE HARDWARE AND OUR DATA. Not license it, OWN IT. And we get to brick stuff any way we choose. Or not.
The Moonlight and Mono crowd have about seven years of trying to get it right, but the slowness of the links to these F/OSS platforms has entrenched Microsoft's lead thoroughly. Outlook is the app to beat these days-- it's a noose around people's necks.
Software patents are still another vaguery that prevents compatibility. Some of these patents are especially onerous and bereft of sense, IMHO. Consider the origins of FireWire, and even 802.11n connectivity.
What if SCSI were patented? This is fodder for a different discussion. In this case, we're talking about purposefully thwarting Palm from syncing with iTunes, just to fcuk Palm and its users. Smart marketing? No-- boorishness and childlike behavior. The stuff of ugliness and thugs. For a company that aspires to high quality ideals and zealous thoughtfulness, it's an affront to these ideals. Someone needs a spanking.
Do you let Microsoft approve of your Windows apps? Jailbreak is a similar but mandatory travesty. To not jailbreak an iPhone is to let Apple get away with this murder.
No self-respecting hacker would put up with such a thing. And Palm shouldn't need a deal. Apple should publish a spec, or they're as guilty as a certain .NET Framework maker. It's time for Mono4iPhones.
The damn thing is that I bought and use a Mac because it's based on non-proprietary platforms (e.g. Darwin BSD). And it's because they're behaving like market-paranoid Microsoft that I'm labeling them boorish, childish, and fraught with the need for the FTC to spank them..... or perhaps someone named Cuomo.
That Apple rejects apps for arbitrary reasons doesn't mean you can't use them, it's just that they're not a channel for them. That's a bit different than saying fcuk you to Palm for their compatibility claims with Apple's little cash cow. Their little cash cow goes away when people that expect interoperability can't get it. It's one more reason that 'it just works' isn't really good enough. Being legendary purveyors of quality goods means that you make them according to standards that don't thwart the earnest intentions of others to use your gear.
There's mindless attention to detail, and then there are proctological orifices of biblical proportion. Apple has started to lean towards the orifice.
The entire computer industry is based on interoperability. When I buy a Mac, or an iPod, and get iTunes--> I expect it to work. If I buy something else, I expect that Apple doesn't purposefully thwart the use of that device to control their sales.
That 'slap' you cite is in your face, and the face of many people that expect and demand interoperability without being thwarted. Apple doesn't write a spec called iTunes. If they were half an organization, they'd do just that and stop looking like small children.
It's boorish.
It makes Apple look so very close to Microsoft in attitude that I'm apalled. Embrace-and-extend doesn't mean spank your customers.
No matter whether you like iTunes or iPhone, they ought to be able to work with other stuff, as you mention, as in interoperability. Purposeful disenfranchisement is the mark of a child. Take your toys and go home.
Mod me -1 as in ashamed of Apple.
I'll take innovation. What's being offered here is nothing new, however. And if you read an implication that I like KDE or Gnome, you left with the wrong impression; I think both have their problems.
Applications rule, and operating systems should do their best, along with their now 'required' window managers to aid people in using the applications.
You believe that there is vision here. There is nothing more here than Google pimping its own substandard, buggy, occasionally unreliable applications based on its browser. Sound familiar?
Let Google burn as much $$ as it wants on this; I get the feeling it's just a first step anyway. Long ago, I used X, Motif, and a lot of stuff that while advanced for its era, was butt ugly to configure, use, and code to. Blah.
NeXtStep was a bit farther down the road, then MacOS started looking decent and consistent, and Microsoft tried and failed and tried again. Branch to KDE, GNome and lighter weight wms and UIs.
So, who am I to tell Google what to build? Fucking Google like many other cultclubs is getting pretty damn big for its britches. I'm that lowly schmuck called the coder, the end-user, the civilian. I know: customers don't count.
I thought Schmidt was mad when he tried to save Novell. Now he's still doing the Quixote Dance at Google. Schmidt isn't stupid. Follow the money, as at the end of the day, that's what Google has to make its shareholders happy about. So where is that money coming from? Free app/OS use? No--> it's about logging and tracking what we do, and enhancing the 'experience'. There is no other revenue stream.
So you can drool over a lightweight netbook OS (Microsoft is in the middle of a campaign to deny netbooks even exist) that uses an enhanced experience online bunch of half-dead 'office' apps, or you can stop watching this train wreck and get on with your life.
If it's just a browser drone, then why not use something still slimmer? It doesn't take much in a kernel to run a single application, in fact 64K ought to do it with room to spare-- save rendering jpgs and video.
Bah--- they're not going to support much at a zero cost anyway. It's a community-support ecosystem at best, and trying to teach mom at worst.
This is why it will fail: in reality, it's stupid as you describe it compared to Ubuntu, Xandros, and even wiggy Linux or even Android builds. There is no value as you describe it, unless it's the prospect of throw-away netbooks, and the world has a recycling problem as it is.
Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.
This is not to put down any effort to get rid of X11, rather, my guess that cross-operating system application porting will once again go to hell, cause conditional compiles, and much Zantac consumption.
They could have just invested in Canonical and Ubuntu, rather than try to reinvent the wheel. Another window manager just dilutes the current pool of people trying to do KDE and Gnome.
The whole Chrome announcement was handled by NPR this morning, and the net essence of it is that it pimps Google Apps to the detriment of Microsoft Office apps.... and potentially, each vendor's supposed 'cloud' offereings. Oh-- and it'll be out next year, maybe.
Yawn. Same fight, now with mutual propaganda and the same old tussling.
Bravo Google? Maybe-- if their apps were really nicely featured, didn't have to work as browser apps, and were actually competitive with Office-- which they are not, sadly. Eat Microsoft's marketshare and force Ballmer into a chair throwing session? I suppose that has some merit.
[smacks forehead, mumbles something]
I wish that my ISP's filter would find Snopes candidates from my mother-in-law and relegate them to the bit bucket. But it never learns. Bayseian filter? No.... it learns only when a user spanks it.
Consider that tax bases aren't logical, and cause and effect aren't as obvious as it seems. There are degrees of friendliness, but I'm not trying to assuage your argument, rather encourage those that feel that their capacity to live both privately and with civility can be done, but it requires enduring effort, for even those that are free, are tribally poised to be not free. It is the nature of testosterone.
I wondered how soon someone might catch that. There's hope.
Welcome to the 2000s.
A certain event in the tip of Manhattan caused sufficient paranoia to allow the government in the US, then the UK, to lurch into action. Then there was one in Spain, Germany, and so on. Each event allowed their respective governments to feast on control. One of those controls was the ability to watch you.
You are, by your virtue of being on /., now a potential suspect. Your Canadian Yahoo address means the NSA and CIA and M5 can peer down your webtubies into your conversations.
You're on the radar screen now; we all are. Fight the fuckers, give them no quarter, make governments understand that we're the citizenry, and they are at our behest. Folly, you might think. What has eroded can be restored, unless the capable decide to split for a nirvana that doesn't exist.
There's always the alternative: stay and fight. Stand up, be heard, be diligent, don't take no for answers, get answers. Repeat. Privacy, as other rights (remember 1066?) take tenacity to achieve and hold on to. As a bonus, they'll know all about you.
There are allies, and meddlers. France had it in for Great Britain. So did some of the Germans and Poles. But that's not what we're talking about here at all, is it? Let the Iranians find the center themselves-- it's far cleaner that way.
Sit down.
Get rid of your bile and your testosterone. Leave them alone.
If our interests are the Iranians, let's watch them win this one. If it's US interests, then you're just one more corporate stooge looking for your next earnings statement.
Hedging your bet means getting your hands dirty. Let them win by exposing bias and distortions of the truth within their process. External pressure from the US and/or UK will have a negative reaction. Give them tools; let them do the work. Things are much more valued if you really have to earn them.
And the US tendency to meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations is plainly stupid and serves (often) only corporate interests, not those of the US people or those of the sovereign nation. Look at what history tells you. Look at the damage done.
We toppled a government in Iraq that had two distinct factions, Sunni and Shiite Muslims held at bay from each other. Other factions, like the Kurds, and non-Muslim populations kind of lived together when Saddam wasn't gassing one or another opponents, or the Iranians.
There are plenty of varieties of ethnic and religious subgroups in Afghanistan that have been plundered for several hundred years, most recently by the former Soviet Union before we got there.
If our problem after 9/11 was with "Al Qaeda' then we should have found its leaders, and brought them to justice. This hasn't happened yet, and until other blood is extracted from the reason, won't likely happen.
So, we screwed up not targeting a very distinct religious group (not the Taliban; they were just cooperative) called 'Al Qaeda' in Afghanistan. We went to war in Iraq based on trumped up lies, admitted to by the prior administration, based on provocation from Saddam Hussein, who was found and hung after a 'trial'. Yes, he probably deserved it.
But because we screwed up Afghanistan, and we had no real plan in invading Iraq, we're paying untold billions of dollars to bring 'peace' there. Correction: we're spending billions of dollars of future earnings there.
If either had had internal revolutions, we'd've been better off. Let the Iranians earn their own revolution. We needn't help. Let them own their success--it's better that way.
And Texas is in the Midwest. Go fish.