"And having KFC pour money into the community hurts how? "
Pour money? Where do you get that weird notion from? If KFC was going to pour money into a community it would be running in the red. The goal of KFC is to extract money from the community and ship as much of it as possible to the shareholders.
Having said that I don't remember why the community objected but they did. Perhaps for environmental reasons but it doesn't matter. IN this case the community didn't want it and John the asswipe tried to convince the americans that the reason the people were starving was because there was not a KFC there.
"John Stossel is one of the few bright lights on network television. He's seen through his initial prejudices and uncovered the mechanisms of many aspects of society."
He is an asswipe. All he is doing is pushing his own right wing zealotry on TV while telling half truths.
I don't remember anything about the linux simputer, the drumbeat must not have been too loud.
"Gates won that round. He may win this one too,"
Yes indeed he may. He is the richest most powerful man in the world. If he doesn't win every fight he enters it would be big news. He is expected to win because he dominates the computer industry and he can buy and sell governments with the change he finds in his seat cushions. Frankly I am shocked that the fight is still going on.
If Gates does win this though it will suck for the poor of the world. Great for Gates, sucks for the poor.
I wasn't using netqmail, I didn't even know it existed. Anyway I am happy with postfix now so I don't think I will switch back. Good luck to you though.
No kidding. I remember watching that asswipe john stossel talking about india one time. Apparently the local govt objected to putting in a KFC in some neighborhood and stossel says something like "imagine that? there are people in india starving and the govt want to prevent the opening up of a KFC". I think the asswipe actually thought the poor starving masses were going to finally have a place to go buy some good greasy american food and feed themselves. They weren't starving because they didn't have money! They were starving because they didn't have a KFC to spend their money in!.
"Without food, how are they going to find the energy to turn the crank on that thing?"
Why doesn't Bill Gates give them food and let the MIT project give them computers? That way the people would be fed AND they would have energy to crank the computer.
"I think considering what Gates has contributed to these places that perhaps, just perhaps, we should save the foaming at the mouth comments and have a serious look at what he's saying."
Good Idea. Lets see now..... He didn't say anything about food so he thinks they have plenty of food already. He didn't say anything about medicine or roads so he must think they are perfectly healthy too. What did he say? He said we should give them cell phones, keyboard and televisions.
You know what I don't think we should be listening to what he is saying in this regard because what is saying is insane.
"You can't eat a $100 computer. Even one with a crank."
Yes, but the solution is easy. Bill Gates gives them food, MIT gives them computers. Nice huh? Why don't you write Bill and propose that solution?
"You can publish patches, as we've done with netqmail."
Believe it or not that why I moved from qmail to postfix. I wanted to patch our version of qmail to add a feature but I could not recreate our current binary because I had no idea which set of patches were applied to it. It seemed easier to install posfix and configure that (and it was!).
I don't think any of that is true. If it was then Russia would be more technologially advanced then the us due to their long occupation of Afghanistan.
COnventional wars are good for the economy because they make your enemy produce more weaponry. What Osama is doing is getting the US to chase it's tail and spend billions invading iraq (and soon iran).
1) In the last two millenia I don't know of any country that waged war with Australia and attempted to invade them. The aussies were involved in wars as a part of the british empire but it was alwasy in far off places.
2) Fighter jets seem like an especially useless defense mechanism when you on an island as big as austalia is.
3) YOu aren't really going to be able to defend against the chinese no matter what.
4) Your new enemies (the muslims thanks to howard) are going to attack you from the inside.
even a cook publication like epoch times says the speech may not be real. If you are willing to spend billions of dollars trying to defend from this threat then go ahead I suppose.
"You assume the most terrible responses from people like me. I think your assumptions immature and baseless. "
Nonsense. My so called assumptions are based on being fully informed about what is going in Iraq. I go out of my way to read virtually all the english language news sites not only in the middle east but also in greater asia, russia, and australia and nz. It's amazing how much information you get from news outlets from the rest of the world. I have a hard drive full of pages, pictures, and videos I have saved over the course of this war. Videos of soldiers shooting at taxis, getting into arguments with locals and then crushing their cars with tanks, slicing people to shreds with high power weaponry etc. I have read blogs of Iraqis describing their lives under the occupation, I have read the testimonies of coalition soldiers, civillian mercenaries (contractors), journalists, and ordinary people who have first hand knowledge of what is going on there.
"You think coalition soldiers as warmongerers."
I think I will paraphrase Ben Griffin who was a British SAS soldier when he said something like "half the americans are ignorant and the other half regard the irwaqis as sub humans". He also said he witnessed dozens of illegal acts by american forces. He says he actually was forced to hand over innocent people to the american forces where he knows for sure they went to abu graib or were turned over to iraqi forces to be tortured. He was there, we was one of the coalition soldiers, he served alsongside our soldiers and it made him sick enough to quit the army and publicly come out and critize them at the risk of being punished.
"I was at home watching Farscape before this. I don't have a choice of whether or not to go."
You chose to volunteer in the military. Now you are a tool wielded by people who want to occupy iraq. Sucks to be you, but nobody made you join the military.
"I have placed my skills and abilities into the hands of my government with the idealistic view that the citizens of my country can best decide when and where to use me."
Like I said, sucks to be you. Maybe next time you won't be so naive.
"Then you don't know me.. or my kind. In fact, i advise you not to speak like that to people "like me". "
I am simply following your example and line of reasoning. You told me that if your friend got stabbed in the neck by a boy in Iraq you would torture him. I am simply making expand on that. What happens after you are done torturing the boy? Do you leave him there and risk him telling his story? Do you take him back to your base and have to answer to your superiors and fill out paperwork? Or do you simply put a bullet in his head and finish the job you started?
"We use the tools of violence to perform our jobs, yes. It's what we do. That doesn't make us evil men."
My signature says "evil is as evil does". Sorry but that's the way it works. you are evil if commit evil acts. Killing people is evil. I think it's the first commandment too!. I don't think god makes an exception to that rule if you are killing while occupying another country either.
"do however deserve respect for performing my duties to the utmost of my being."
No you do not. You don't deserve respect from anybody until you do something that deserves respect. I too do my job, I too perform my duties. Unlike you I have chosen a career path that will not cause the destruction of other peoples property, killing of their parents or kids, or making their lives miserable. You too had that choice but you didn't take it. You chose instead to join the military. What's worse is that the military gave you the option of signing up as a conscientous objector and you chose not to do that either. Sorry no respect from me, I think I will save my respect for the janitor in my building who is working three jobs to feed his family and pay his taxes so people like you can play with your "tools of violence".
"do however deserve respect for performing my duties to the utmost o
"I'm not saying they would invade, but two countries that come to mind with the potential to attack are Singapore and Indonesia."
Are you an aussie? Let me presume for a while that you are.
You are paying taxes, if it's like most other european countries you are paying hefty taxes. So is it worth paying all these taxes to get new fighter planes just on the off, off, off, off, off chance that singapore will attack you in a manner which will neccesitate the use of fighter planes to defend yourself?
In the US we spend money on the military because we wage war every election or so. We love war, we engage in it constantly, and as a result lots of people hate us and want to kill us. Australia is not like that as far as I can see. Sure howard has his nose up GWs butt like blair does but that's more of an exception then a rule.
"There are half a billion muslims of uncertain stability just to their north,"
While it's true that Australians have made enemies out of their muslims neighbors to the north i highly doubt any of them are planning on launching fighter jets in your direction.
I am not sure which largish empire you are talking about there. China? Russia? North Korea? Japan? I don't ever recall either one of those countries expressing a desire to attack australia.
Houses burn all the time, lots of houses burned down in my city, two in my neighborhood alone.
If I lived in a country in which no house had ever burned down since it's founding then I would not buy fire insurance.
So tell me, who is going to be attacking Australia? Who is going to attack them from the air so that the aussies break out their new shiny fighter jets and smite them. The kiwis? the philipinas? the south koreans? the balinese? The fighting fijians?
"The days of fighters swooping around locked in a dog-fight-to-the-death are long gone. Anyone who attempts to engage the US ariforce in that type of combat will survive just long enough to realize just how stupid they really are. "
Isn't it funny that the only people who realize this are Al Quada? Osama is waging a long term war of attrition by making america spend as much money as possible while spending very little on his part (he has publicly said this is his strategy). Osama is waging a long term war like the one he waged in Afghanistan against russia.
I guess the whole idea of missilies, fighter jets etc have become moot hasn't it. The next bomb that explodes in the US will not come from a missile or a fighter jet. It will simply be in the trunk of a car or planted in the basement of an important building.
Why does Australia need such high power weaponry anyway? When was the last time they were attacked by anybody? Are the kiwis that much of a threat they AU has to arm itself with the latest in sophisticated weaponry?
It seems to me that all this expensive aircraft is nothing but a transfer of funds from the pockets of the AU taxpayers into the pocket of the military industrial complex.
"So has 'the other side' in Iraq stopped kidnapping torturing and killing civillians yet, let alone soldiers?"
Mmmm. Interesting. You are saying there is no differnce between the US army and Al Quada. You know come to think of it maybe you are more right then you think. After all they both kill and torture people.
"You and your buddy just fixed up some 15-16 year old kid and start working on an old man. With your backs turned that kid pulls out a knife and stabs your buddy in the neck. The kid puts his hands up and surrenders immediately. Your buddy is dead. Where does that individual fit into the Geneva Convention? Do you have it in you to detain him using the most minimal force necessary?"
Maybe you should not have invaded his country in the first place. If you were sitting at home watching lost I bet that iraqi kid would not have stabbed your friend in the neck.
Having said that what do you gain by torturing this kid? Once your hard on recedes all you have left is a kid with a couple of broken bones that you are going to have to either kill or carry back to case and write a report about. Knowing your kind you would probably just kill the kid and get another hard on for a few minutes.
" You should see the mass graves of those citizens who tried to expel saddam after the first Gulf War. 10's of thousands. I don't think you can even fathom that kind of number, dead."
A conservative estimate puts the number of iraqis dead so far at 35 thousand. Other estimates have put the number in six figures. There are mass graves being uncovered every day, just yesterday there was a mass grave found with 86 people in it who were recently tortured and killed.
That's just in iraq. How many people did Bush kill in Afghanistan? It was most likely another ten to thirty thousand people.
That's my point entirely. When a country is invaded it's the duty of all citizens of that nation to fight to kick out the invaders whether they have uniforms or dogtags or whatever.
This is something the geneva convention does not take into account. Instead the geneva convention tell the invading the country that it can legally torture those people without uniforms and dogtags by labling them "illegal combatants".
The geneva conventions are presuming that a war is going on like WWII. In this case there is not such a war. There is an attempt at invading and occupying a country. In that scenario it's not unreasonable to expect the citizens of that country to fight against occupation by foreign forces whether they are in the military or not.
What this "illegal combatant" stuff does is to give the right to torture civillians who may fight against an occupying force. In the history of every country there is at least one instance where the farmers took the street with their pitchforks and either overthrew the govt or repelled an invading army. The geneva convention gives nations the right to capture those farmers and torture them without consequence and totally legally.
It seems to me the real "illegal combatants" are the US military who are waging a non sanctioned occupation of Iraq.
Slashdot Mirror
"And having KFC pour money into the community hurts how? "
Pour money? Where do you get that weird notion from? If KFC was going to pour money into a community it would be running in the red. The goal of KFC is to extract money from the community and ship as much of it as possible to the shareholders.
Having said that I don't remember why the community objected but they did. Perhaps for environmental reasons but it doesn't matter. IN this case the community didn't want it and John the asswipe tried to convince the americans that the reason the people were starving was because there was not a KFC there.
"John Stossel is one of the few bright lights on network television. He's seen through his initial prejudices and uncovered the mechanisms of many aspects of society."
He is an asswipe. All he is doing is pushing his own right wing zealotry on TV while telling half truths.
I don't remember anything about the linux simputer, the drumbeat must not have been too loud.
"Gates won that round. He may win this one too,"
Yes indeed he may. He is the richest most powerful man in the world. If he doesn't win every fight he enters it would be big news. He is expected to win because he dominates the computer industry and he can buy and sell governments with the change he finds in his seat cushions. Frankly I am shocked that the fight is still going on.
If Gates does win this though it will suck for the poor of the world. Great for Gates, sucks for the poor.
I wasn't using netqmail, I didn't even know it existed. Anyway I am happy with postfix now so I don't think I will switch back. Good luck to you though.
If people knew lisp there would be no need for XML.
No kidding. I remember watching that asswipe john stossel talking about india one time. Apparently the local govt objected to putting in a KFC in some neighborhood and stossel says something like "imagine that? there are people in india starving and the govt want to prevent the opening up of a KFC". I think the asswipe actually thought the poor starving masses were going to finally have a place to go buy some good greasy american food and feed themselves. They weren't starving because they didn't have money! They were starving because they didn't have a KFC to spend their money in!.
"Without food, how are they going to find the energy to turn the crank on that thing?"
Why doesn't Bill Gates give them food and let the MIT project give them computers? That way the people would be fed AND they would have energy to crank the computer.
"I think considering what Gates has contributed to these places that perhaps, just perhaps, we should save the foaming at the mouth comments and have a serious look at what he's saying."
Good Idea. Lets see now..... He didn't say anything about food so he thinks they have plenty of food already. He didn't say anything about medicine or roads so he must think they are perfectly healthy too. What did he say? He said we should give them cell phones, keyboard and televisions.
You know what I don't think we should be listening to what he is saying in this regard because what is saying is insane.
"You can't eat a $100 computer. Even one with a crank."
Yes, but the solution is easy. Bill Gates gives them food, MIT gives them computers. Nice huh? Why don't you write Bill and propose that solution?
This is already done, it's just too expensive that's all.
Having said that Bill G could certainly afford to give everybody in africa a nice cell phone and a keyboard.
"You can publish patches, as we've done with netqmail."
Believe it or not that why I moved from qmail to postfix. I wanted to patch our version of qmail to add a feature but I could not recreate our current binary because I had no idea which set of patches were applied to it. It seemed easier to install posfix and configure that (and it was!).
I don't think any of that is true. If it was then Russia would be more technologially advanced then the us due to their long occupation of Afghanistan.
COnventional wars are good for the economy because they make your enemy produce more weaponry. What Osama is doing is getting the US to chase it's tail and spend billions invading iraq (and soon iran).
1) In the last two millenia I don't know of any country that waged war with Australia and attempted to invade them. The aussies were involved in wars as a part of the british empire but it was alwasy in far off places.
2) Fighter jets seem like an especially useless defense mechanism when you on an island as big as austalia is.
3) YOu aren't really going to be able to defend against the chinese no matter what.
4) Your new enemies (the muslims thanks to howard) are going to attack you from the inside.
even a cook publication like epoch times says the speech may not be real. If you are willing to spend billions of dollars trying to defend from this threat then go ahead I suppose.
"The mainland within living memory. If you include attacks on its embassies, Sep. 9, 2004."
How would new fighter jets have helped in that case?
"You assume the most terrible responses from people like me. I think your assumptions immature and baseless. "
Nonsense. My so called assumptions are based on being fully informed about what is going in Iraq. I go out of my way to read virtually all the english language news sites not only in the middle east but also in greater asia, russia, and australia and nz. It's amazing how much information you get from news outlets from the rest of the world. I have a hard drive full of pages, pictures, and videos I have saved over the course of this war. Videos of soldiers shooting at taxis, getting into arguments with locals and then crushing their cars with tanks, slicing people to shreds with high power weaponry etc. I have read blogs of Iraqis describing their lives under the occupation, I have read the testimonies of coalition soldiers, civillian mercenaries (contractors), journalists, and ordinary people who have first hand knowledge of what is going on there.
"You think coalition soldiers as warmongerers."
I think I will paraphrase Ben Griffin who was a British SAS soldier when he said something like "half the americans are ignorant and the other half regard the irwaqis as sub humans". He also said he witnessed dozens of illegal acts by american forces. He says he actually was forced to hand over innocent people to the american forces where he knows for sure they went to abu graib or were turned over to iraqi forces to be tortured. He was there, we was one of the coalition soldiers, he served alsongside our soldiers and it made him sick enough to quit the army and publicly come out and critize them at the risk of being punished.
"I was at home watching Farscape before this. I don't have a choice of whether or not to go."
You chose to volunteer in the military. Now you are a tool wielded by people who want to occupy iraq. Sucks to be you, but nobody made you join the military.
"I have placed my skills and abilities into the hands of my government with the idealistic view that the citizens of my country can best decide when and where to use me."
Like I said, sucks to be you. Maybe next time you won't be so naive.
"Then you don't know me.. or my kind. In fact, i advise you not to speak like that to people "like me". "
I am simply following your example and line of reasoning. You told me that if your friend got stabbed in the neck by a boy in Iraq you would torture him. I am simply making expand on that. What happens after you are done torturing the boy? Do you leave him there and risk him telling his story? Do you take him back to your base and have to answer to your superiors and fill out paperwork? Or do you simply put a bullet in his head and finish the job you started?
"We use the tools of violence to perform our jobs, yes. It's what we do. That doesn't make us evil men."
My signature says "evil is as evil does". Sorry but that's the way it works. you are evil if commit evil acts. Killing people is evil. I think it's the first commandment too!. I don't think god makes an exception to that rule if you are killing while occupying another country either.
"do however deserve respect for performing my duties to the utmost of my being."
No you do not. You don't deserve respect from anybody until you do something that deserves respect. I too do my job, I too perform my duties. Unlike you I have chosen a career path that will not cause the destruction of other peoples property, killing of their parents or kids, or making their lives miserable. You too had that choice but you didn't take it. You chose instead to join the military. What's worse is that the military gave you the option of signing up as a conscientous objector and you chose not to do that either. Sorry no respect from me, I think I will save my respect for the janitor in my building who is working three jobs to feed his family and pay his taxes so people like you can play with your "tools of violence".
"do however deserve respect for performing my duties to the utmost o
"I'm not saying they would invade, but two countries that come to mind with the potential to attack are Singapore and Indonesia."
Are you an aussie? Let me presume for a while that you are.
You are paying taxes, if it's like most other european countries you are paying hefty taxes. So is it worth paying all these taxes to get new fighter planes just on the off, off, off, off, off chance that singapore will attack you in a manner which will neccesitate the use of fighter planes to defend yourself?
In the US we spend money on the military because we wage war every election or so. We love war, we engage in it constantly, and as a result lots of people hate us and want to kill us. Australia is not like that as far as I can see. Sure howard has his nose up GWs butt like blair does but that's more of an exception then a rule.
"There are half a billion muslims of uncertain stability just to their north,"
While it's true that Australians have made enemies out of their muslims neighbors to the north i highly doubt any of them are planning on launching fighter jets in your direction.
I am not sure which largish empire you are talking about there. China? Russia? North Korea? Japan? I don't ever recall either one of those countries expressing a desire to attack australia.
Houses burn all the time, lots of houses burned down in my city, two in my neighborhood alone.
If I lived in a country in which no house had ever burned down since it's founding then I would not buy fire insurance.
So tell me, who is going to be attacking Australia? Who is going to attack them from the air so that the aussies break out their new shiny fighter jets and smite them. The kiwis? the philipinas? the south koreans? the balinese? The fighting fijians?
"The days of fighters swooping around locked in a dog-fight-to-the-death are long gone. Anyone who attempts to engage the US ariforce in that type of combat will survive just long enough to realize just how stupid they really are. "
Isn't it funny that the only people who realize this are Al Quada? Osama is waging a long term war of attrition by making america spend as much money as possible while spending very little on his part (he has publicly said this is his strategy). Osama is waging a long term war like the one he waged in Afghanistan against russia.
I guess the whole idea of missilies, fighter jets etc have become moot hasn't it. The next bomb that explodes in the US will not come from a missile or a fighter jet. It will simply be in the trunk of a car or planted in the basement of an important building.
Why does Australia need such high power weaponry anyway? When was the last time they were attacked by anybody? Are the kiwis that much of a threat they AU has to arm itself with the latest in sophisticated weaponry?
It seems to me that all this expensive aircraft is nothing but a transfer of funds from the pockets of the AU taxpayers into the pocket of the military industrial complex.
Interesting. You are saying that if performance is important to your application then you should not use .NET.
If you are trying to sell your application though isn't performance a very important factor?
"So has 'the other side' in Iraq stopped kidnapping torturing and killing civillians yet, let alone soldiers?"
Mmmm. Interesting. You are saying there is no differnce between the US army and Al Quada. You know come to think of it maybe you are more right then you think. After all they both kill and torture people.
"You and your buddy just fixed up some 15-16 year old kid and start working on an old man. With your backs turned that kid pulls out a knife and stabs your buddy in the neck. The kid puts his hands up and surrenders immediately. Your buddy is dead. Where does that individual fit into the Geneva Convention? Do you have it in you to detain him using the most minimal force necessary?"
Maybe you should not have invaded his country in the first place. If you were sitting at home watching lost I bet that iraqi kid would not have stabbed your friend in the neck.
Having said that what do you gain by torturing this kid? Once your hard on recedes all you have left is a kid with a couple of broken bones that you are going to have to either kill or carry back to case and write a report about. Knowing your kind you would probably just kill the kid and get another hard on for a few minutes.
" You should see the mass graves of those citizens who tried to expel saddam after the first Gulf War. 10's of thousands. I don't think you can even fathom that kind of number, dead."
A conservative estimate puts the number of iraqis dead so far at 35 thousand. Other estimates have put the number in six figures. There are mass graves being uncovered every day, just yesterday there was a mass grave found with 86 people in it who were recently tortured and killed.
That's just in iraq. How many people did Bush kill in Afghanistan? It was most likely another ten to thirty thousand people.
"This issue is largely irrelevant; .NET was never promoted as a systems programming environment "
But he is not talking about systems programming. He is talking about userland applications.
"The proof is in their application layer. Office, Visual Studio, and their other user applications."
.NET?
So will visual studio and office be written in
That's my point entirely. When a country is invaded it's the duty of all citizens of that nation to fight to kick out the invaders whether they have uniforms or dogtags or whatever.
This is something the geneva convention does not take into account. Instead the geneva convention tell the invading the country that it can legally torture those people without uniforms and dogtags by labling them "illegal combatants".
The geneva conventions are presuming that a war is going on like WWII. In this case there is not such a war. There is an attempt at invading and occupying a country. In that scenario it's not unreasonable to expect the citizens of that country to fight against occupation by foreign forces whether they are in the military or not.
What this "illegal combatant" stuff does is to give the right to torture civillians who may fight against an occupying force. In the history of every country there is at least one instance where the farmers took the street with their pitchforks and either overthrew the govt or repelled an invading army. The geneva convention gives nations the right to capture those farmers and torture them without consequence and totally legally.
It seems to me the real "illegal combatants" are the US military who are waging a non sanctioned occupation of Iraq.