Because Wine is broken? I mean, other than that, well sure.
Me, I run XP in a VM. Works fine. I don't let it on the Internet because, well, it's Windows, and Microsoft has trained me not to trust them... but other than that, does everything I want it to. Office, my legit copy of developer studio, image processing apps, testing the Windows version of the software I develop... Do the same thing with linux, for that matter, except it's well designed enough not to hose itself just because there is a network connection.
Virtual machines: For those of us who are tired of solutions that don't work very well.
The idea of Bitcoin, I think, is to give up on the idea of asking the state nicely not to control something, and make something that the state, whether it wants to or not, can't control.
That actually addresses the question in TFS: Will legitimacy spoil bitcoin?
First, you have to achieve legitimacy. In the USA, the power of currency, essentially, belongs to the federal government. If they perceive a threat (or simply a challenge) to that power, what do you think they will do? Hint: It's going to be directly related to the term "legitimate."
The thing about the assumption that the state "cannot" control something, is that it is almost always entirely wrong. This discovery is almost always accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth.
There is only one condition under which the state cannot control: When the state itself has been dismantled. And there is absolutely no sign of such a thing, even well out on the horizon.
Consequently, the answer to the question in TFS is: No. What's going to "spoil" bitcoin are actions of the state. Guaranteed. It won't be legitimacy, because that's permanently and irrevocably out of reach.
Congress makes unconstitutional law all the time. The supreme court generally upholds such laws, too, if they favor power or moneyed interests. Where have you been?
Also, we don't impose a sales tax, and the state generally works within its actual budget (I know, right? But they do.)
So I'd like to invite any business that would prefer not to get involved in taxing its sales to move here. Land, homes and COL are relatively inexpensive, we could definitely use the work.
it removes all of the overhead of paperwork, lawyers, etc.
...and that's why there will be no possibility of such a system being implemented. These laws are thought up by bureaucrats and lawyers. They're not going to let go of their slice of the pie.
Might often makes the winner. It doesn't make right (even when it enables rewriting the histories to look that way.) Because of that, even the mighty can, and often are, felled by those with a finer understanding of little things like morality and ethics. It can take a while, but eventually, someone steps up to the plate. This is because might, wielded without finesse and character, leads to ultimately distasteful leadership habits (Hitler, etc.) and people simply won't put up with it forever.
National borders are a valuable tool in keeping people from arbitrarily destroying each other. Upset that system, and you may reap the whirlwind. Power or no power. Again, history provides the examples. Those who refuse to learn by example are likely to be taught by other methods.
To wish for it, however... that is foolish. Period.
Whatever people said then or say now to justify the Iraq war, it comes down to being primarily an emotional response by the US to 9/11.
Public support, I think you probably mean. Agreed. However, I'm pretty sure our government's reactions were calculated quite carefully. They weren't stupid, or emotional. They were evil.
the US could have performed a limited police/intelligence operation in Afghanistan find Osama bin Laden if that was really what they were concerned about.
Of course. So clearly, that wasn't what they were concerned about. The other shoe may not even have dropped on that question yet.
In fact, they wanted to teach the Taliban a lesson for supporting OBL
Remember, it wasn't OBL that crafted this; it was Khalid Sheik Mohammed. OBL was surprised (and happy) when he heard about it. The whole OBL thing wasn't really related to anything other than excuse making. The long manhunt, everything... basically unrelated. OBL, being perfectly happy to receive such publicity, made the most of it and broadcast all manner of idiocy, which in turn was used to try and keep our "terror alert level" high, and mostly, that worked. Fox news and other pawns played right along, and most people, busy with their lives, accepted the narrative without giving it any real thought. The whole time, the radical Muslims in Saudi Arabia who were actually responsible in the most accurate sense of the word -- funding, motivation, inspiration, manpower -- pretty much sat there and laughed at us, and are still doing so.
So again, why? Afghanistan has quite a bit of commercially valuable natural resources, so that's an interesting thing to think about; industry in the US loves it when we make war, as the money flows like crazy, so there's an internal thing to look at; contractors like Haliburton make hay while the sun is blocked by the smoke of crew served weapons, so that's worthy of consideration; and legislators and their families and friends benefit every time they do what the lobbyists want. Maybe in 20 years we'll know WTF. Maybe not. But what we do know is that invading Afghanistan solved nothing related to 9/11.
You think there'd be much to collect after a few pounds of dye hits someone at hundreds of miles an hour? I dunno, I think they'd have to bring mops and buckets. Not against trying it, mind you.:)
I am pretty sure Afghanistan was very connected to 9/11, Osama, and Al Queda via the Taliban, which was running Afghanistan at the time
Osama was not the architect of 9/11. Our own government told you that it was Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Bin Ladin expressed surprise (and delight) when the 9/11 attacks happened. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in Pakistan. Afghanistan as a nation did not attack us. A small group of terrorists did, and they were taken care of pretty quickly. Those terrorists, in fact, were almost entirely Saudi Arabian, with a few exceptions, none of whom were Afghan (or Iraqi.) The funding for the operation was also traced to Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan no more attacked us than Carl Panzram's acts in Europe, South America and so forth were acts of the American nation. Invading Afghanistan on a broad scale was completely uncalled for. The most you could say was the invasion was based upon wholly faulty intelligence; that makes it a tragedy instead of an outright act of evil, but it certainly does not make it ok.
In retrospect, what we actually suffered was an attack by radical Muslims, probably not acting for any nation, but if there's a nation we ought to be pointing fingers at, it is Saudi Arabia, hands down. The center of this type of thinking is not, and was not, Kabul -- it is Mecca, and it was (and is) promulgated by fairly straightforward interpretations of the Koran's harsher sutras. No matter the amount or nature of the things we blew up or killed in Afghanistan, there is no way that the actual problem is reduced in any way by those acts. On the other hand, we did manage to (at least) further anger a bunch of Afghans, which may bite us in the future. At which point, no doubt, we'll act all surprised and innocent. Again.
Were the Taliban not harboring many Al Queda operations and people connected to the attack?
No. Almost everyone connected was killed in the attack. The fellow who masterminded it was in, and was captured in, Pakistan. (So was Osama, later... think about that. Pakistan. Not Afghanistan.)
even we Canadians went in to help you Americans in Afghanistan in order to kill those that killed.
As near as I can tell, you were taken in by pervasive US agitprop, spearheaded by the lies of Bush and Cheney. I don't blame you, mind you, most of us were as well for some period of time. However, at this point, it's pretty clear that the events that were described to us were not the actual events that occurred. Time to rethink all that. Of course, like most nations, Canada probably finds it very difficult to say "we were hoodwinked" publicly; the more so because the US government would not view such a declaration with much favor, to put it mildly. The whole thing is winding down now, though it is quite difficult for us to extract ourselves (again, can't afford admit we were wrong), and I'm sure the governments of the various aggressor nations would be very happy if all this went down in history as being justified, but it really doesn't look that way.
Something else to keep in mind is this is not the only front on which your nation has made terrible policy decisions in line with US guidance; the drug war, prostitution, crazed border policies... I have to say Canada looks, at least from here, to be a lot smarter about a lot of things than we are, but you do screw up, and a lot of times, those screw-ups eerily echo some of ours. Completely independent or guided policy? I don't know. Curious, anyway.
As for Iraq, just look at the oil company profits in the wake of the war, not to mention the fortunes of Blackwater, and couple that with no earthly reason whatsoever to go into the country otherwise. Some interesting insights may follow a little research along those lines. Certainly I haven't found anything else based on actual facts that could explain the whole thing. I rather doubt the t
If you have two eyes, you already *HAVE* stereo vision. You experience it because when you are focused on a single point, that point is giving two different images to each eye.
Yes, of course.
This is the way you naturally perceive 3D.
No. That is part of how you perceive 3D. Other inputs include varying parallax, focus depth, and viewing axis priority. The problem with stereo-vision screens is that they don't provide varying parallax; they provide static parallax, and so when you move or even roll your eyes, the cues are wrong. Stereo vision displays don't provide actual depth, so when your eyes are driven by your brain's (entirely correct) notion of distance to refocus, the attempt fails. As to layering, this also works with parallax so that when you move, the layering changes based on depth, which also informs you as to what the depth is, except, again, not with a stereo display. Moving beyond this, when you move your eyes in the real world, you actually do get to see more/different stuff, and again, a stereo display cannot and does not provide this. Not even in the proposed system. It will provide it if you move very coarsely (they're talking about 1/64th of the viewable display, potentially), but do the math -- that's a big move, not an eye roll.
people who are looking at this kind of display from any different position would see something slightly different than you did... going so far as to approximate a course(sic) resolution holography
Right. It moves the bar on one issue; you get multiple angles if you move in a coarse fashion. It doesn't address any of the others. If you stay in one place, what's more, it is no different -- at all -- from a one angle display. That's what you get. One angle. The depth cues are still wrong, your focus distance is still driven by the wrong information because the very parallax you are being fed says "this is the focus distance", but the image tells you that the focus distances are varied. That's the problem; that's the source of the weird feeling in your head when you look at any stereo image that is actually two flat images. There are an almost unlimited set of focus cues there, and your brain can't use them, because all but one are wrong. Whereas if the image was actually 3D, things further away would be further away, allowing your entire visual system to function more normally, completely.
Which defines it as an internal Iraqi problem, from an Iraqi source, towards Iraqi targets. This is what distinguishes a problem where we caused the deaths, and therefore bear responsibility for.
Just as problems in the USA today in no way justify the invasion of our country by another, the problems in Iraq did not justify our invading them, and by extension, they did not justify any of the consequences of that invasion.
We have a right, although not an obligation, as does any sovereign country, to take an interest when a country steps outside its boundaries and begins to fuck with others (as in 1990 and Kuwait.)
We even have a right to engage in modification of how we deal with them, from simple diplomatic speak to the harshest refusal to trade, when they have internal issues we frown upon. Because these actions are taken outside the sovereign nation. We can gang up with other nations and do so. Still ok.
However, we do not have a right to step inside a sovereign country and fuck with its internal affairs. The moment we take the position that we do, that right extends to everyone else, and the idea of "sovereign borders" immediately becomes "who has the biggest military and strongest castle" and we decided long, long ago that such an approach was insufficient deal with the varied approach to civilization taken by the many nations of the world. And today, with the heinous fuckery our government is engaged in, everyone from China to Luxembourg has reason to step in and do to our government exactly what we did to Iraqs: squash it because it's not living up to its own standards, much less anyone else's. If you think you want that, you are a fool.
No. You don't. Look at any deep scene in front of you. Focus on the guy handing you a copy of Playboy. When you do so, the mountain in the distance is a fuzzy mess. Now focus on the mountain in the distance: The guy with the Playboy is a fuzzy mess. Changing your viewing angle will in no way affect this; it's a function of how small your pupil is (f-stop) and how compressed the lens in your eye is (focal distance.)
You can add display angles until they become a linear function of viewing angle, and you still haven't done anything to solve the problem of what your brain tells your eyes to do when it perceives depth and you change what you're focused on from one apparent depth to another, only the subject isn't at a different depth, it just looks like it is. Wrong message, wrong reaction, eventual problems.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq was actually kind of a dangerous place.
Yes. Particularly if you opposed the regime, or otherwise met Hussain's standards for "objectionable." Still, not our business, and not the cause of the current violence. We are the cause of the current violence, because we removed the previously stable, secular government.
Just as our many internal problems -- our murdering, home-invading police, our judicially violated constitution, our torture of our prisoners, our insane and evil war against people's choice to ingest certain substances and a long laundry list of other internal government malfeasance -- are not justification for others to invade us, neither is Iraq, or any other country's, internal unrest and fuckery our problem.
Invaded Iran in 1980.
Iran took care of it. Never became our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Killed 182,000 Kurdish civilians between 1986 and 1989.
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Killed 80,000 to 230,000 civilians during uprisings in 1991
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Executed hundreds of Ba'ath members in 1979
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Invaded Kuwait in 1990
As Kuwait could not possibly defend itself, this actually, and reasonably, became our problem. You remember how that turned out for Iraq? It was a military action, taken against a military force, and they were crushed. This was not an invasion of a sovereign country presenting no threat to others; it was the cardinal opposite: an action to preserve the sanctity of national borders.
Repressed, tortured and killed citizens throughout his reign
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
I believed the adminstration's story 10 years ago.
So did I. I was angry at a level I'd not experienced before in my life. My family was nearby, one had been in the WTC just shortly before, a personal friend died there, and my feeling was, if a state actor has been identified, nuke them. Nuke them till they glow, and let the world know that attacking us is not a fucking option. Ever.
But six weeks after the invasion began, I knew I had been lied to.
Yes, that sounds about right. Somewhere in there my head cleared and some of the facts actually began to come to light, and regret began to replace anger. Then I became angry again, but in a different direction. No one like to be manipulated; being made complicit, essentially, in making war on the undeserving -- by virtue of those lies and statements I made based upon those lies -- has moved where I stand to that of a broadly skeptical and unsatisfied critic of our government. Having taken that stand, a great deal more malfeasance became more easily perceived. Now I'm just miserable. Too big, too much, too powerful, no options. The USA is not the bastion of liberty I was inculcated to believe it was as a young man. It's a fucking nightmare, an evil, out of control juggernaut that we have no chance of stopping outright, and no hope that I can see of even slowing down.
fools (like me)
Were you a fool? Or were you a victim? You might want to rethink that.
Contrary to what you may think, there was WMDs. Gas was used to kill hundreds of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq.
Those are not WMD's in the sense that the US had any reason to be concerned with them, hence are completely irrelevant as justification for our declaring war on Iraq. The question is, was Iraq going to deliver these things to us, did they pose, in any way, a credible threat to the United States of America? The answer is not only "no", but "Fuck no." No delivery system, no demonstrated intent to deliver, no sane survival strategy post having delivered, complete inability to achieve any kind of meaningful military success no matter how much of that crap he collected, stated policy of the USA to respond to WMD use with our own WMDs, which aren't chemical and aren't survivable, and would turn Iraq or whatever target we should choose into Allah's own glowing skating rink.
The Kurd issue was an internal Iraqi problem, just as Waco and Ruby Ridge and Kent State and the Chicago riots and the assault on US WWI soldiers in Washington by MacArthur and the internment of Japanese in WWII and the Montana "Freemen" and the current assault by the government on our constitutional rights -- and many other injustices -- were and remain internal US problems.
No, but nice try. This system is *exactly* like normal stereo-vision, except there are more planes of display. The same factors that cause headaches with single-plane stereo-vision are in play on every one of these. At any one viewing position, you have exactly what you had before: stereo-vision. Only gross movement will change that, and even then, in very coarse steps. So there's no change in either the nature or affect of the problems here, and in fact, they are caused by exactly what I said: incorrect focus depth cues.
Societies have to allow very many potentially dangerous things- cars, bleach, nitrate fertilizers to mention three, to exist and be available to ordinary people.
Lasers have no purpose or use to people in a mass production kind of way.
My cat suggests I smack you in the head. So would any astronomy student worth a darn. You might argue that astronomy is not "mass", and I would sadly agree that most people are broken in such a way that they are bereft of any such interest, however, you just can't argue with my cat, who has clearly thought this out further than you have. From one end of the building to the other, to be precise.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Wine is broken? I mean, other than that, well sure.
Me, I run XP in a VM. Works fine. I don't let it on the Internet because, well, it's Windows, and Microsoft has trained me not to trust them... but other than that, does everything I want it to. Office, my legit copy of developer studio, image processing apps, testing the Windows version of the software I develop... Do the same thing with linux, for that matter, except it's well designed enough not to hose itself just because there is a network connection.
Virtual machines: For those of us who are tired of solutions that don't work very well.
My suggested Windows 8 slogan: "Nowhere to go but up!"
That actually addresses the question in TFS: Will legitimacy spoil bitcoin?
First, you have to achieve legitimacy. In the USA, the power of currency, essentially, belongs to the federal government. If they perceive a threat (or simply a challenge) to that power, what do you think they will do? Hint: It's going to be directly related to the term "legitimate."
The thing about the assumption that the state "cannot" control something, is that it is almost always entirely wrong. This discovery is almost always accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth.
There is only one condition under which the state cannot control: When the state itself has been dismantled. And there is absolutely no sign of such a thing, even well out on the horizon.
Consequently, the answer to the question in TFS is: No. What's going to "spoil" bitcoin are actions of the state. Guaranteed. It won't be legitimacy, because that's permanently and irrevocably out of reach.
"I wish they were dead, Jim"
Congress makes unconstitutional law all the time. The supreme court generally upholds such laws, too, if they favor power or moneyed interests. Where have you been?
Yes, but it should be pointed out that such principles are easier to stand behind when you're not also saying "we'll skip collecting this money."
[Max] Baucus, (D-MT), Nay
Also, we don't impose a sales tax, and the state generally works within its actual budget (I know, right? But they do.)
So I'd like to invite any business that would prefer not to get involved in taxing its sales to move here. Land, homes and COL are relatively inexpensive, we could definitely use the work.
Thanks.
There is a simpler solution, though. Ban the Florida legislature.
Also: please read this post of mine
Might often makes the winner. It doesn't make right (even when it enables rewriting the histories to look that way.) Because of that, even the mighty can, and often are, felled by those with a finer understanding of little things like morality and ethics. It can take a while, but eventually, someone steps up to the plate. This is because might, wielded without finesse and character, leads to ultimately distasteful leadership habits (Hitler, etc.) and people simply won't put up with it forever.
National borders are a valuable tool in keeping people from arbitrarily destroying each other. Upset that system, and you may reap the whirlwind. Power or no power. Again, history provides the examples. Those who refuse to learn by example are likely to be taught by other methods.
To wish for it, however... that is foolish. Period.
Public support, I think you probably mean. Agreed. However, I'm pretty sure our government's reactions were calculated quite carefully. They weren't stupid, or emotional. They were evil.
Of course. So clearly, that wasn't what they were concerned about. The other shoe may not even have dropped on that question yet.
Remember, it wasn't OBL that crafted this; it was Khalid Sheik Mohammed. OBL was surprised (and happy) when he heard about it. The whole OBL thing wasn't really related to anything other than excuse making. The long manhunt, everything... basically unrelated. OBL, being perfectly happy to receive such publicity, made the most of it and broadcast all manner of idiocy, which in turn was used to try and keep our "terror alert level" high, and mostly, that worked. Fox news and other pawns played right along, and most people, busy with their lives, accepted the narrative without giving it any real thought. The whole time, the radical Muslims in Saudi Arabia who were actually responsible in the most accurate sense of the word -- funding, motivation, inspiration, manpower -- pretty much sat there and laughed at us, and are still doing so.
So again, why? Afghanistan has quite a bit of commercially valuable natural resources, so that's an interesting thing to think about; industry in the US loves it when we make war, as the money flows like crazy, so there's an internal thing to look at; contractors like Haliburton make hay while the sun is blocked by the smoke of crew served weapons, so that's worthy of consideration; and legislators and their families and friends benefit every time they do what the lobbyists want. Maybe in 20 years we'll know WTF. Maybe not. But what we do know is that invading Afghanistan solved nothing related to 9/11.
You think there'd be much to collect after a few pounds of dye hits someone at hundreds of miles an hour? I dunno, I think they'd have to bring mops and buckets. Not against trying it, mind you. :)
Osama was not the architect of 9/11. Our own government told you that it was Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Bin Ladin expressed surprise (and delight) when the 9/11 attacks happened. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in Pakistan. Afghanistan as a nation did not attack us. A small group of terrorists did, and they were taken care of pretty quickly. Those terrorists, in fact, were almost entirely Saudi Arabian, with a few exceptions, none of whom were Afghan (or Iraqi.) The funding for the operation was also traced to Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan no more attacked us than Carl Panzram's acts in Europe, South America and so forth were acts of the American nation. Invading Afghanistan on a broad scale was completely uncalled for. The most you could say was the invasion was based upon wholly faulty intelligence; that makes it a tragedy instead of an outright act of evil, but it certainly does not make it ok.
In retrospect, what we actually suffered was an attack by radical Muslims, probably not acting for any nation, but if there's a nation we ought to be pointing fingers at, it is Saudi Arabia, hands down. The center of this type of thinking is not, and was not, Kabul -- it is Mecca, and it was (and is) promulgated by fairly straightforward interpretations of the Koran's harsher sutras. No matter the amount or nature of the things we blew up or killed in Afghanistan, there is no way that the actual problem is reduced in any way by those acts. On the other hand, we did manage to (at least) further anger a bunch of Afghans, which may bite us in the future. At which point, no doubt, we'll act all surprised and innocent. Again.
No. Almost everyone connected was killed in the attack. The fellow who masterminded it was in, and was captured in, Pakistan. (So was Osama, later... think about that. Pakistan. Not Afghanistan.)
As near as I can tell, you were taken in by pervasive US agitprop, spearheaded by the lies of Bush and Cheney. I don't blame you, mind you, most of us were as well for some period of time. However, at this point, it's pretty clear that the events that were described to us were not the actual events that occurred. Time to rethink all that. Of course, like most nations, Canada probably finds it very difficult to say "we were hoodwinked" publicly; the more so because the US government would not view such a declaration with much favor, to put it mildly. The whole thing is winding down now, though it is quite difficult for us to extract ourselves (again, can't afford admit we were wrong), and I'm sure the governments of the various aggressor nations would be very happy if all this went down in history as being justified, but it really doesn't look that way.
Something else to keep in mind is this is not the only front on which your nation has made terrible policy decisions in line with US guidance; the drug war, prostitution, crazed border policies... I have to say Canada looks, at least from here, to be a lot smarter about a lot of things than we are, but you do screw up, and a lot of times, those screw-ups eerily echo some of ours. Completely independent or guided policy? I don't know. Curious, anyway.
As for Iraq, just look at the oil company profits in the wake of the war, not to mention the fortunes of Blackwater, and couple that with no earthly reason whatsoever to go into the country otherwise. Some interesting insights may follow a little research along those lines. Certainly I haven't found anything else based on actual facts that could explain the whole thing. I rather doubt the t
Yes, of course.
No. That is part of how you perceive 3D. Other inputs include varying parallax, focus depth, and viewing axis priority. The problem with stereo-vision screens is that they don't provide varying parallax; they provide static parallax, and so when you move or even roll your eyes, the cues are wrong. Stereo vision displays don't provide actual depth, so when your eyes are driven by your brain's (entirely correct) notion of distance to refocus, the attempt fails. As to layering, this also works with parallax so that when you move, the layering changes based on depth, which also informs you as to what the depth is, except, again, not with a stereo display. Moving beyond this, when you move your eyes in the real world, you actually do get to see more/different stuff, and again, a stereo display cannot and does not provide this. Not even in the proposed system. It will provide it if you move very coarsely (they're talking about 1/64th of the viewable display, potentially), but do the math -- that's a big move, not an eye roll.
Right. It moves the bar on one issue; you get multiple angles if you move in a coarse fashion. It doesn't address any of the others. If you stay in one place, what's more, it is no different -- at all -- from a one angle display. That's what you get. One angle. The depth cues are still wrong, your focus distance is still driven by the wrong information because the very parallax you are being fed says "this is the focus distance", but the image tells you that the focus distances are varied. That's the problem; that's the source of the weird feeling in your head when you look at any stereo image that is actually two flat images. There are an almost unlimited set of focus cues there, and your brain can't use them, because all but one are wrong. Whereas if the image was actually 3D, things further away would be further away, allowing your entire visual system to function more normally, completely.
Which defines it as an internal Iraqi problem, from an Iraqi source, towards Iraqi targets. This is what distinguishes a problem where we caused the deaths, and therefore bear responsibility for.
Just as problems in the USA today in no way justify the invasion of our country by another, the problems in Iraq did not justify our invading them, and by extension, they did not justify any of the consequences of that invasion.
We have a right, although not an obligation, as does any sovereign country, to take an interest when a country steps outside its boundaries and begins to fuck with others (as in 1990 and Kuwait.)
We even have a right to engage in modification of how we deal with them, from simple diplomatic speak to the harshest refusal to trade, when they have internal issues we frown upon. Because these actions are taken outside the sovereign nation. We can gang up with other nations and do so. Still ok.
However, we do not have a right to step inside a sovereign country and fuck with its internal affairs. The moment we take the position that we do, that right extends to everyone else, and the idea of "sovereign borders" immediately becomes "who has the biggest military and strongest castle" and we decided long, long ago that such an approach was insufficient deal with the varied approach to civilization taken by the many nations of the world. And today, with the heinous fuckery our government is engaged in, everyone from China to Luxembourg has reason to step in and do to our government exactly what we did to Iraqs: squash it because it's not living up to its own standards, much less anyone else's. If you think you want that, you are a fool.
No. You don't. Look at any deep scene in front of you. Focus on the guy handing you a copy of Playboy. When you do so, the mountain in the distance is a fuzzy mess. Now focus on the mountain in the distance: The guy with the Playboy is a fuzzy mess. Changing your viewing angle will in no way affect this; it's a function of how small your pupil is (f-stop) and how compressed the lens in your eye is (focal distance.)
You can add display angles until they become a linear function of viewing angle, and you still haven't done anything to solve the problem of what your brain tells your eyes to do when it perceives depth and you change what you're focused on from one apparent depth to another, only the subject isn't at a different depth, it just looks like it is. Wrong message, wrong reaction, eventual problems.
Yes. Particularly if you opposed the regime, or otherwise met Hussain's standards for "objectionable." Still, not our business, and not the cause of the current violence. We are the cause of the current violence, because we removed the previously stable, secular government.
Just as our many internal problems -- our murdering, home-invading police, our judicially violated constitution, our torture of our prisoners, our insane and evil war against people's choice to ingest certain substances and a long laundry list of other internal government malfeasance -- are not justification for others to invade us, neither is Iraq, or any other country's, internal unrest and fuckery our problem.
Iran took care of it. Never became our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
As Kuwait could not possibly defend itself, this actually, and reasonably, became our problem. You remember how that turned out for Iraq? It was a military action, taken against a military force, and they were crushed. This was not an invasion of a sovereign country presenting no threat to others; it was the cardinal opposite: an action to preserve the sanctity of national borders.
Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.
So did I. I was angry at a level I'd not experienced before in my life. My family was nearby, one had been in the WTC just shortly before, a personal friend died there, and my feeling was, if a state actor has been identified, nuke them. Nuke them till they glow, and let the world know that attacking us is not a fucking option. Ever.
Yes, that sounds about right. Somewhere in there my head cleared and some of the facts actually began to come to light, and regret began to replace anger. Then I became angry again, but in a different direction. No one like to be manipulated; being made complicit, essentially, in making war on the undeserving -- by virtue of those lies and statements I made based upon those lies -- has moved where I stand to that of a broadly skeptical and unsatisfied critic of our government. Having taken that stand, a great deal more malfeasance became more easily perceived. Now I'm just miserable. Too big, too much, too powerful, no options. The USA is not the bastion of liberty I was inculcated to believe it was as a young man. It's a fucking nightmare, an evil, out of control juggernaut that we have no chance of stopping outright, and no hope that I can see of even slowing down.
Were you a fool? Or were you a victim? You might want to rethink that.
George Bush and his stooges very much indicated that the Iraq "problem" was part and parcel of our "war on terror." There is no question whatsoever that he linked the one to the other, and expected us to accept that. To claim otherwise is both revisionist and deceptive.
Those are not WMD's in the sense that the US had any reason to be concerned with them, hence are completely irrelevant as justification for our declaring war on Iraq. The question is, was Iraq going to deliver these things to us, did they pose, in any way, a credible threat to the United States of America? The answer is not only "no", but "Fuck no." No delivery system, no demonstrated intent to deliver, no sane survival strategy post having delivered, complete inability to achieve any kind of meaningful military success no matter how much of that crap he collected, stated policy of the USA to respond to WMD use with our own WMDs, which aren't chemical and aren't survivable, and would turn Iraq or whatever target we should choose into Allah's own glowing skating rink.
The Kurd issue was an internal Iraqi problem, just as Waco and Ruby Ridge and Kent State and the Chicago riots and the assault on US WWI soldiers in Washington by MacArthur and the internment of Japanese in WWII and the Montana "Freemen" and the current assault by the government on our constitutional rights -- and many other injustices -- were and remain internal US problems.
No, but nice try. This system is *exactly* like normal stereo-vision, except there are more planes of display. The same factors that cause headaches with single-plane stereo-vision are in play on every one of these. At any one viewing position, you have exactly what you had before: stereo-vision. Only gross movement will change that, and even then, in very coarse steps. So there's no change in either the nature or affect of the problems here, and in fact, they are caused by exactly what I said: incorrect focus depth cues.
Religion. You should have mentioned religion.
My cat suggests I smack you in the head. So would any astronomy student worth a darn. You might argue that astronomy is not "mass", and I would sadly agree that most people are broken in such a way that they are bereft of any such interest, however, you just can't argue with my cat, who has clearly thought this out further than you have. From one end of the building to the other, to be precise.
So... you don't understand optics, electricity, or biology. Some problems with math, too. Physics, as the Pythons would have it, is "right out."
Just relax, son, others have got this for you.
No, we should regulate him (only to the point of making sure he can't regulate *us*) because he's a superstitious idiot.