No its not. Its closer to between 15 and 17 thousand. The number you are citing is most likely based on a refuted statistical study which basically claims the total body count is between 8,000 and 200,000, with 100000 the midpoint. Thats a fairly large range, far too big to have any meaning at all.
Those numbers I was citing were not just the casualties from one side, but from both. Wars are safer not just for the victor, but for the loser as well. In wars over a century ago, in order to take out a target, military forces would have to physically invade the city, not a nice prospect. In wars earlier this century, we had to drop hundreds of bombs on the city and hope a few of them hit the target. Today we send out one missle that seeks out a specific target and usually causes very little collateral damage.
Besides, I'm sure there are many in Iraq who would have loved it had we had less concern over the lives of our troops and were willing to take out Saddam ten years ago.
"If you are referring to Gettysburg, which was a three day battle and easily the largest engagement of the War, your number of "over 50,000 died" is a bit high. There were under 50,000 total casualties, which includes deaths (of which there were between 5000 - 7000), woundings, and missing (usually meaning captured)."
That number is the total number of deaths, not just those that were killed in the field of battle. That number is above 50,000. Advances in medicine is one of those things keeping our troops alive right now, making them one of those things that "makes war more bearable" as the origional poster would have put it. A gunshot wound in the leg is no longer the death sentence it was back then, and we don't have guys starving to death and dying of disease between the fighting.
"I do agree with your point that the type of fighting waged during the Civil War was so absolutely horrible that it gave people pause before fighting it."
I think you may have missed the point. Wars (along with other violent acts) were indeed more costly then, but they were still just as willing to fight them then as we are today. I hear people arguing that we "didn't need to fight in Iraq or Vietnam", but were all of the wars back then any more necessary? The Southern states didn't need to secede and start a war, nor did the Northern States really need to challenge them. We didn't need to fight the US-Mexican war or the Spainish-American war. And then look at the Revolutionary War. We like to talk about it in terms of fighting for our freedom and democracy, but what was it really about? Taxes, aka money. Was that really necessary? Probably not, and yet the horrible cost of war did not stop our forefathers.
"If such a strategy unquestionably worked and helped The Good Blue States defeat The Evil Red States, why isn't it being considered as an option in Iraq? Armies are great at killing people and blowing stuff up but they make lousy police forces and negotiators."
Well for starters we thankfully have higher standards these days. Victory in war is a means to and end, not an end in itself. Thus the idea that we should do whatever it takes to win a war is flawed.
Whats more, are you suggesting that as a result of Sherman's actions peace was quick and easy after the Civil War? No, we went through a long period of Reconstruction, and terrorist groups such as the KKK remained a force long after the "major combat phase" had ended.
SSNs are used in many more places than just by the social security administration. And in many of those places, the documents containing the number are not confidential.
As for a credit report, a "legitimate business need" can be interpreted fairly broadly. And generally speaking, if you have a reason to not want someone to know your credit report, that probably means they have a legitimate business need to find out about it. No, its not posted on the Internet for anyone to see, but then again neither are documents covered by the FOIA.
So you are thinking maybe its not a good thing to create technologies that lessen the horrors of war because that makes it easier to engage in war?
So by that logic we should throw out all the body armor, armored vehicles, medics, and anything else that makes our troops safer.
Hell lets throw out all that modern technology and go back to the "good old days" like during the Civil War, where over 50,000 died in one three day battle (thats around twice the total number of deaths in the entire Iraq war). I mean because of the horrors of war back then, people were so peaceful and never engaged in violence to settle a dispute.
Hey, while we are at it, lets stop all those researchers making drugs to help AIDs patients. The more horrible the disease is, the fewer people will engage in reckless sex and drugs.
"
Also, the websites they use probably skew the results as well; Disney, Best Buy, Sony, and Liz Claiborne?"
First of all, it has to be mentioned that those are only some of the sites that are being measured.
Second, this is not meant to be an accurate count of how many people across the world are using what browser. Rather it is merely a measure of each browser's relative popularity that can be watched over time.
Third, I think the fact they are only measuring computers running Windows skews the results more.
Fourth, if I own a company looking to make a website to sell some product and am trying to decide whether or not the site should be specific to IE or should work fine on other browsers, what type of Internet users am I going to be concerned about? Most likely those that visit other commercial sites.
Actually Social Security Numbers are not private, and its not that hard to find one out. The problem is that organizations sometimes treat them as if they were private, often using them as ways to authenticate users.
I suppose technically a credit report is the property of the agency collecting the information, but they are free to do with that information as they wish. If you fail to pay a bill on time or repay a loan, you have no right to force those to whom you owe money to keep that information secret.
I'm not arguing whether or not the FBI is abusing their monopoly over accesss to certain information by making a half-assed search engine. I'm arguing that a perfect search engine simply does not exist. A perfect search algorithm simply does not exist. Thus you cannot require the FBI (or anyone for that matter) to implement a perfect search engine.
Yes, I see that you are a sheep. In fact, I could see that easily in your last post and was part of the reason I suspected you thought a story about the adequacy of automated searches has something to do with the USA PATRIOT Act.
If you search on Google for something and don't get what you want, do you call up Google and accuse them of intentially leaving something out? No, because any search engine is not going to be perfect. Whether or not this particular engine is adequate, I'm not willing to argue as I have not studied it. However, you cannot argue that search engines have to be perfect because that simply is not possible.
The very fact you think this has something to do with the USA PATRIOT Act illustrates that you have no idea either what the act actually says or what the issues are surrounding this case.
Well in this case, the issue is whether or not an automated search that (like any automated search) will once in a while miss a document or two is adequate (don't just read the summary, the submitter failed to RTFA and has no clue what the actual issues are). If it is determined that it is not adequate, that would require individual people to manually sift through each and every document, carefully reading each one, for each document request made. That would require a lot of time and money.
Would you take this same stance if the issue was the FBI (or some other group, not necessarily the government) giving out unlimited searching of databases of freely available personal information (such as each citizens address, SSN, criminal history, credit report, your whereabouts last Friday night, ect.)? Would it then still be the case that since the information is public, people should be able to use that information how ever or as efficiently as they wish?
Note that I'm not trying to trip you into making yourself into a hypocrite, merely that if this is how you feel I've found myself an ally next time there is a story involving public information databases or surviellence cameras in public areas. Normally those stories are full of people arguing that just because the individual pieces of data are public, that doesn't mean access to the data as a whole should be public.
Whether or not it is local really isn't that relevant. Outsourcing just refers to paying another company to do some work for you, in contrast to offshoring in which the other company is overseas.
Denial is getting more and more crowded every day.
That creates a huge problem, as there are plenty of people who take what they read on/. as actual news. Now that may not be a problem with a story like this, I mean who cares about the origin of a few dead fish? And in the editor's defense, they corrected it within the hour. But, I have seen plenty of false articles (many of them that were not fixed) make it through that not only have false information, but attack some person or group (Microsoft or the RIAA/MPAA/BSA are common targets).
As for your post title, I'm afraid it is inaccurate. Slashdot is not some amateur site run by volunteers, but is owned by a public company, and makes revenue through ads. Furthermore, in its subtitle, it does claim to be a news site. That meets my definition of a professional news site. The least they could do is pay someone to not only reject and accept stories submitted by users, but also actually read those stories and ensure there are no errors. You know, editors.
I mean is there a reason this made it to slashdot or are we just adding each story that praises firefox? Its not even that good of an article. The final paragraph ("Firefox isn't perfect. It still has some bugs...") contradicts the title ("A bug-free surfing zone"). It seems to think the reason firefox doesn't have pop-up ads is because ad makers were exploiting a flaw in MS as opposed to Firefox featuring a pop-up blocker (something which IE now has). And its overuse of "quotation marks" makes the "article" very annoying to "read".
I see no new information, nothing different from the dozens of other articles written about the browser. If all we are doing these days is doing a Google News search on Firefox and posting every positive review that comes up, well thats sort of pathetic, isn't it?
There is some controversy over whether or not the 16th was properly ratified, I believe it mostly has to do with minor changes in wording and states violating their existing state Constitutions during the ratification, along with some procedural violations.
Of course there is also some controversy over whether or not aliens landed in Roswell, that doesn't mean that happened.
Even that is bull as the rate of change of global temperatures changes all the time as well. Furthermore this "acceleration" is based on just the last few years of data, which is far from enough data points to know exactly what the rate of change will be over the long run.
I'm not saying global warming will not happen, merely that claiming that any changes with regard to global climate is unnatural and will destroy our 'fragile' ecosystem is just plain wrong.
"
1. Does anybody still have an argument on the two degree increase in the last decade alone? I thought that data was VERY sound"
Global warming is about more than a two degree increase over 10 years. The average temperature goes up and down all the time. Futhermore, much of that "global warming" can be attributed to development: a developed city is going to be warmer than undeveloped lands. Thus as development occurs, there are going to be localized temperature increases that have nothing to do with the global temperature.
"- and my averages from the weather that I've downloaded from my local automated weather machine at Hillsborough Airport certainly bear it out."
Those are local changes, not global changes. Try somewhere else and you could likely find increased temperatures.
"
2. Who cares what's causing it, the question is finding a place to move too which will be more habitable."
Should the negative feedback he mentioned occur, nothing will cause global warming.
"
4. Cut off ALL their funding, they're asking the worng question completely. The question shouldn't be "what caused this" the question should be "how can we survive this"."
How are we supposed to prepare for something we have no knowledge about? Or are you just cutting them off because they challenge what you believe is true? Its people like you who wanted Galileo and Darwin beheaded.
"After all, it doesn't matter if it's man or nature caused- dealing with it is going to be everybody's concern very soon, and there's very little doubt left that it is happening."
Actually there is a lot of doubt. Global warming remains an unproven hypothesis. Yes, certain areas have gotten warmer in recent years. Other areas (such as most of Antartica, where most of that ice everyone is worrying about melting is located) have gotten colder. And we have no idea what will happen in the coming years. Believe it or not, scientists do not have a magical crystal ball that tells them what the world will be like 100 years from now.
$5 says this will be moderated down by mods mad at me going against groupthink, so read it quick before it becomes hidden at -1 Troll.
"Okay, well, I concur with your definition of rape but them, the broadcast of that video is not rape nor even tantamount to it."
Once again, I know it wasn't rape, that is why I never said it was. I said it was tantamount to rape due to the fact that while he did not have sex with her without consent, he did perform an act with sexual overtones (the distribution of a video of her having sex) which she did not consent to.
"
Also, your definition of rape offers an out for oral sex "
No it isn't. Oral sex is often included with sodomy. Furthermore, I said "usually intercourse or sodomy", that doesn't exclude other things.
"I read the definitions at dictionary.com prior to posting - just to be sure. If you like, I can paste them into a post for you."
So have I. It says equivilant in effect or value. Not necessarily the same. Other dictionaries have similar definitions. My personal favorite is from Cambridge: "being almost the same or having the same effect as, usually something bad:
Her refusal to answer was tantamount to an admission of guilt."
In this case, I was referring to the fact that while she may have consented to one sexual act (the oral sex, which would have made it true rape) she did not consent to another sexual act (the distribution of a recording of that act).
"People use words in many ways and what is said isn't always what is MEANT and vice versa."
Are you trying to tell me what it was I meant to say?
"In the many discussions and arguments I've had over the years on a variety of subjects, one constant is that those who like to use "tantamount" have always really meant to say that x IS y, not x is sorta like y or X is almost the same as Y"
Well I hope you won those arguments because your foes had little grasp of the English language.
Slashdot Mirror
No its not. Its closer to between 15 and 17 thousand. The number you are citing is most likely based on a refuted statistical study which basically claims the total body count is between 8,000 and 200,000, with 100000 the midpoint. Thats a fairly large range, far too big to have any meaning at all.
Besides, I'm sure there are many in Iraq who would have loved it had we had less concern over the lives of our troops and were willing to take out Saddam ten years ago.
That number is the total number of deaths, not just those that were killed in the field of battle. That number is above 50,000. Advances in medicine is one of those things keeping our troops alive right now, making them one of those things that "makes war more bearable" as the origional poster would have put it. A gunshot wound in the leg is no longer the death sentence it was back then, and we don't have guys starving to death and dying of disease between the fighting.
"I do agree with your point that the type of fighting waged during the Civil War was so absolutely horrible that it gave people pause before fighting it."
I think you may have missed the point. Wars (along with other violent acts) were indeed more costly then, but they were still just as willing to fight them then as we are today. I hear people arguing that we "didn't need to fight in Iraq or Vietnam", but were all of the wars back then any more necessary? The Southern states didn't need to secede and start a war, nor did the Northern States really need to challenge them. We didn't need to fight the US-Mexican war or the Spainish-American war. And then look at the Revolutionary War. We like to talk about it in terms of fighting for our freedom and democracy, but what was it really about? Taxes, aka money. Was that really necessary? Probably not, and yet the horrible cost of war did not stop our forefathers.
"If such a strategy unquestionably worked and helped The Good Blue States defeat The Evil Red States, why isn't it being considered as an option in Iraq? Armies are great at killing people and blowing stuff up but they make lousy police forces and negotiators."
Well for starters we thankfully have higher standards these days. Victory in war is a means to and end, not an end in itself. Thus the idea that we should do whatever it takes to win a war is flawed.
Whats more, are you suggesting that as a result of Sherman's actions peace was quick and easy after the Civil War? No, we went through a long period of Reconstruction, and terrorist groups such as the KKK remained a force long after the "major combat phase" had ended.
As for a credit report, a "legitimate business need" can be interpreted fairly broadly. And generally speaking, if you have a reason to not want someone to know your credit report, that probably means they have a legitimate business need to find out about it. No, its not posted on the Internet for anyone to see, but then again neither are documents covered by the FOIA.
So by that logic we should throw out all the body armor, armored vehicles, medics, and anything else that makes our troops safer.
Hell lets throw out all that modern technology and go back to the "good old days" like during the Civil War, where over 50,000 died in one three day battle (thats around twice the total number of deaths in the entire Iraq war). I mean because of the horrors of war back then, people were so peaceful and never engaged in violence to settle a dispute.
Hey, while we are at it, lets stop all those researchers making drugs to help AIDs patients. The more horrible the disease is, the fewer people will engage in reckless sex and drugs.
First of all, it has to be mentioned that those are only some of the sites that are being measured.
Second, this is not meant to be an accurate count of how many people across the world are using what browser. Rather it is merely a measure of each browser's relative popularity that can be watched over time.
Third, I think the fact they are only measuring computers running Windows skews the results more.
Fourth, if I own a company looking to make a website to sell some product and am trying to decide whether or not the site should be specific to IE or should work fine on other browsers, what type of Internet users am I going to be concerned about? Most likely those that visit other commercial sites.
I suppose technically a credit report is the property of the agency collecting the information, but they are free to do with that information as they wish. If you fail to pay a bill on time or repay a loan, you have no right to force those to whom you owe money to keep that information secret.
I'm not arguing whether or not the FBI is abusing their monopoly over accesss to certain information by making a half-assed search engine. I'm arguing that a perfect search engine simply does not exist. A perfect search algorithm simply does not exist. Thus you cannot require the FBI (or anyone for that matter) to implement a perfect search engine.
The summary of today's story of FOIA requests is not only biased, but factually incorrect.
No, he was bitching about the USA PATRIOT Act passed in October 2001.
"and actually it is PATRIOT ACT"
No, its the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (or USA PATRIOT) Act.
Next time you try to correct someone, make sure you are indeed correct. Failure to do so just wastes everyone's time.
Yes, I see that you are a sheep. In fact, I could see that easily in your last post and was part of the reason I suspected you thought a story about the adequacy of automated searches has something to do with the USA PATRIOT Act.
If you search on Google for something and don't get what you want, do you call up Google and accuse them of intentially leaving something out? No, because any search engine is not going to be perfect. Whether or not this particular engine is adequate, I'm not willing to argue as I have not studied it. However, you cannot argue that search engines have to be perfect because that simply is not possible.
The very fact you think this has something to do with the USA PATRIOT Act illustrates that you have no idea either what the act actually says or what the issues are surrounding this case.
Well in this case, the issue is whether or not an automated search that (like any automated search) will once in a while miss a document or two is adequate (don't just read the summary, the submitter failed to RTFA and has no clue what the actual issues are). If it is determined that it is not adequate, that would require individual people to manually sift through each and every document, carefully reading each one, for each document request made. That would require a lot of time and money.
Note that I'm not trying to trip you into making yourself into a hypocrite, merely that if this is how you feel I've found myself an ally next time there is a story involving public information databases or surviellence cameras in public areas. Normally those stories are full of people arguing that just because the individual pieces of data are public, that doesn't mean access to the data as a whole should be public.
Whether or not it is local really isn't that relevant. Outsourcing just refers to paying another company to do some work for you, in contrast to offshoring in which the other company is overseas.
That creates a huge problem, as there are plenty of people who take what they read on /. as actual news. Now that may not be a problem with a story like this, I mean who cares about the origin of a few dead fish? And in the editor's defense, they corrected it within the hour. But, I have seen plenty of false articles (many of them that were not fixed) make it through that not only have false information, but attack some person or group (Microsoft or the RIAA/MPAA/BSA are common targets).
As for your post title, I'm afraid it is inaccurate. Slashdot is not some amateur site run by volunteers, but is owned by a public company, and makes revenue through ads. Furthermore, in its subtitle, it does claim to be a news site. That meets my definition of a professional news site. The least they could do is pay someone to not only reject and accept stories submitted by users, but also actually read those stories and ensure there are no errors. You know, editors.
I see no new information, nothing different from the dozens of other articles written about the browser. If all we are doing these days is doing a Google News search on Firefox and posting every positive review that comes up, well thats sort of pathetic, isn't it?
Of course there is also some controversy over whether or not aliens landed in Roswell, that doesn't mean that happened.
I'm not saying global warming will not happen, merely that claiming that any changes with regard to global climate is unnatural and will destroy our 'fragile' ecosystem is just plain wrong.
Global warming is about more than a two degree increase over 10 years. The average temperature goes up and down all the time. Futhermore, much of that "global warming" can be attributed to development: a developed city is going to be warmer than undeveloped lands. Thus as development occurs, there are going to be localized temperature increases that have nothing to do with the global temperature.
"- and my averages from the weather that I've downloaded from my local automated weather machine at Hillsborough Airport certainly bear it out."
Those are local changes, not global changes. Try somewhere else and you could likely find increased temperatures.
" 2. Who cares what's causing it, the question is finding a place to move too which will be more habitable."
Should the negative feedback he mentioned occur, nothing will cause global warming.
" 4. Cut off ALL their funding, they're asking the worng question completely. The question shouldn't be "what caused this" the question should be "how can we survive this"."
How are we supposed to prepare for something we have no knowledge about? Or are you just cutting them off because they challenge what you believe is true? Its people like you who wanted Galileo and Darwin beheaded.
Actually there is a lot of doubt. Global warming remains an unproven hypothesis. Yes, certain areas have gotten warmer in recent years. Other areas (such as most of Antartica, where most of that ice everyone is worrying about melting is located) have gotten colder. And we have no idea what will happen in the coming years. Believe it or not, scientists do not have a magical crystal ball that tells them what the world will be like 100 years from now.
$5 says this will be moderated down by mods mad at me going against groupthink, so read it quick before it becomes hidden at -1 Troll.
Once again, I know it wasn't rape, that is why I never said it was. I said it was tantamount to rape due to the fact that while he did not have sex with her without consent, he did perform an act with sexual overtones (the distribution of a video of her having sex) which she did not consent to.
" Also, your definition of rape offers an out for oral sex "
No it isn't. Oral sex is often included with sodomy. Furthermore, I said "usually intercourse or sodomy", that doesn't exclude other things.
No one ever said the English language was not ambiguous.
"What, pray tell, is "your personal favorite" definition of rape?"
To engage in a physical sexual act (usually intercourse or sodomy) with someone without their (legal) consent.
So have I. It says equivilant in effect or value. Not necessarily the same. Other dictionaries have similar definitions. My personal favorite is from Cambridge: "being almost the same or having the same effect as, usually something bad: Her refusal to answer was tantamount to an admission of guilt."
In this case, I was referring to the fact that while she may have consented to one sexual act (the oral sex, which would have made it true rape) she did not consent to another sexual act (the distribution of a recording of that act).
"People use words in many ways and what is said isn't always what is MEANT and vice versa."
Are you trying to tell me what it was I meant to say?
"In the many discussions and arguments I've had over the years on a variety of subjects, one constant is that those who like to use "tantamount" have always really meant to say that x IS y, not x is sorta like y or X is almost the same as Y"
Well I hope you won those arguments because your foes had little grasp of the English language.