Hi Will, I just wanted to ask you about your writing.
Would you please describe what you hope to achieve through your books and your writing in general. Which authors have influenced you? How did you find yourself writing in the first place? Are you working on anything at the moment?
I don't know if that was terrorism per se, but it should certainly have been punished appropriately. I suggest hanging for terrorists in general because it is the fitting punishment for murder; imprisonment or fines would be fitting for destruction of property.
Well, by the legitimate and legal English government at the time, the appropriate punishment would have been summary execution. You're arguing a very extreme point of view that undermines the establishment of the American republic. Not a compelling idea because you're arguing against the establishment of your own country. this seems absurd.
If they killed innocents, yes. As an example in our own recent history, the bombing of the USS Cole is not properly called a terrorist action: it was a military attack (and should have been responded to appropriately, with military force). The bombing of embassies is more of a grey area: on the one hand they are official representatives of our United States; on the other there are plenty of innocent folks who work there. The 11 September attacks are properly deemed terrorist, as they were attacks on civilian persons and businesses (the Pentagon attack was terrorist in that it involved the deaths of the civilians aboard the plane).
If you define terrorism solely as deliberately killing civilian targets in any capacity, then you could quite easily include the American forces in Iraq, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Dresden, the Vietnam war, the US backing of the Shah in Iran - all as terrorist acts. But history doesn't agree with such a narrow definition. througout World War 2 for example, collaborators with the Nazis were deliberately murdered - mayors, public servants, munitions makers, civilians - this wasn't terrorism by any conventional sense of the word, it was guerilla war.
I would suggest that terrorism isn't defined solely by killing civilians, but whether the killing of them are for a warranted and justifiable millitary objective. If for example, a civilian is an informant or a spy, or perhaps possesses political influence and is tyranising people, then they are not merely civilians by any means. Some IRA targets for instance were these types of targets - not just soldiers. The IRA killing Louis Mountbatten for instance was a good example of this tactic.
I agree however, that killing people like in 9/11 merely for provoking terror is a terrible form of cowardice and this sort of thing doesn't warrant much mercy. However, I think you're misinformed if you put the IRA into that category, as killing innocent children is not one of their objectives or strategies, although there's no denying that they have done so, and it is certainly a terrible act, but I would suggest not a deliberate one.
Nonethless, your comments don't seem to address the English occupation of Ireland, and the resultant terror and murder brought about by that occupation.
If you want to compare Ireland to other things, try instead the sheer numbers of death brought about by English occupation compared to land size.
9/11 was a horrific event that has changed the world forever, and yet it only involved three buildings, four planes, and approximately three thousand deaths - comparatively little, and yet America has gone to war in two countries over it.
So size and statistics aren't really the appropriate yardstick alone for this sort of thing. Pearl Harbour for example was 2,403 dead. Really very few deaths when you think about it. (Although this in no way reduces the tragedy and horror of it of course).
However, if you want to get an idea of the number of people killed in Ireland in one instance of English occupation - From 1649 to 1652, one-third of the population of Ireland was destroyed. Twenty thousand Irish boys and girls also were sold into slavery to the West Indies.
By 1848 through deliberate English genocide, Ireland's population died by between than 2 to 5 million people. The number of European Jews killed in the Holocaust are estimated to be around 5,600,000 to 6,250,000.
So imagine that sort of ridiculously high number in such a small country. Of course, these figures don't discuss the total number of deaths in modern Irish history from English occupation. Unimaginable death, unimaginable suffering, in such a small country.
The modern Irish flag is based on the French tricolour, as a tribute to France. In fact, the Irish revolutionaries often flew the French tricoleur as a symbol of their struggle, in tribute to the French revolution.
Please remember that the IRA that fought in the War of Independence is not the same organisation as the Provisional IRA that has conducted a terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland in recent years. So it's unfair to say that "the British government would have us think that your grandfather was a terrorist".
My grandfather didn't distinguish between the old and provsional IRA - he killed police men, senior public servants - anyone who kept British rule going not just combatants. Oh, and my grandmother and great grandmother helped too. Same enemy, same cause as far as he was concerned, and any old IRA man would agree. Nobody voted for him to kill people, and in actual fact, very few people supported him back then too.
Until Ireland is free of English rule, she will always be perpetually at war with your British Monarchy, Government and People.
My grandfather was an I.R.A. terrorist who fought in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). The Catholic Church excommunicated him for his allegianaces too. Oh and he certainly killed plenty of Black and Tans.
Oh, but then the I.R.A. won the war, and he got a medal and a soldier's war pension, and the Catholic Church reinstated him. He never bothered with the Church again or with collecting his pension.
Today's terrorist could be tommorow's war hero. The British government even today would have you think that my grandfather was a terrorist, but the Irish nation is living proof that it isn't always so clear cut. It's terribly important that people decide for themselves who are the terrorists and who are not. Governments that think that they can decide for their citizens are merely tyrants, and tyrants often fall when they become intolerable.
Only the English love barren lifeless deserts and would want to preserve them in their pristine state.
Most people that live near or on a desert would rather change them into an oasis (or in this case terraform). Try living in, or travelling on one - it looses a great deal of it's romance very quickly.
Microsoft often target computer hardware companies in Australia - doing surprise audits and that type of thing. The teenage pirate isn't as damaging to them as computer sellers.
Not a bad thing really however - because a great deal of Microsoft's monopoly has been achieved because people have pirated their software. It will likely be a way that consumers are forced to make the switch to Linux, because they'll be no way for them to access illegal copies.
It's a credible, Zionist newspaper, so I'd say it's a fairly reliable source.
What part of this article exactly do you find idiotic?
Haaretz Daily July 15, 2004 Odigo says workers were warned of attack (9/11)
By Yuval Dror
Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.
Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which imme-diately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.
"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.
As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.
Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.
An academic researcher should really know better than to ask a question and then answer it.
But of course, you're answer is correct. Ultima:Ascension for example never ever worked, and that's just one of many EA games that clearly indicated that the programmers were exhausted.
The whole problem would be quite easily solved if viable alternative distribution channels for games existed and perhaps if the market were more discerning. Companies like EA would then have to answer for their bad quality. Until viable channels exist, then the situation will likely continue. Of course a great deal of buyers are just kids and don't often make informed choices. I had to learn myself that the game screenshot was not the game, as a kid.
EA have been churning out buggy games for decades, and yes, the programmers are clearly overworked. The problem is, that the market and the consumer don't really mind that. Until there's an real commercial alternative, and people are more discerning, EA will continue on it's merry way.
Anyone who thinks that the CIA doesn't already have systems to automatically monitor email, chatrooms etc - needs to read a bit more on intelligence technology. This would fall under "Echelon" anyhow.
The NSF might lack the tools, but I sincerely doubt that the CIA are developing these sorts of very basic tools. More likely, the NSF aren't given access or information on the extent of CIA information gathering.
Also, I imagine such a news article makes the public likely to believe that the technology isn't already in active use.
What's so touching about his story involving Bali? He was a block away. My cousin, a former Australian professional footballer had literally just walked outside of the club. He survived, but some of his friends didn't. (May they rest in peace).
Levy had no actual connection to the Bali bombing other than being a block away and thinking about it. Personally, I find the attempt to literally involve him with the terrorist attack somewhat distasteful, particularily when other people were actually killed and lost friends in it.
All for dramatic writing effect - cheap and nasty journalism.
Re:Betamax gets the last laugh
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 1
Yep, it's the layer change on DVDs that really annoys me. How could they imagine that the average consumer would be pleased with this?
On the Two Towers, it completely jars you out of the Middle Earth, and into "Swear at the DVD" land
Re:Betamax gets the last laugh
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Pardon me, yes, I should have said BetaCam.
Re:Betamax gets the last laugh
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
I'll have a go at cleaning it, thanks. It was a pretty pricey Phillips player, so I expect better performance from it.
Re:Betamax gets the last laugh
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Whenever I complain about a scatched disk, they offer to give me the same film again. Usually however, having to watch the Max Headroom version is more than enough.
Betamax gets the last laugh
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The number of scratched DVDs that I get from my video store, I think perhaps VHS was actually better. These DVD movies are just crap with their pausing and skipping.
I bought a retail Lord of the Rings - Two Towers, and the quality and pausing on a new disc half way through were so bad, that I'm lkeaning towards thinking that we were better off with magnetic tapes.
Perhaps Betamax gets the last laugh - it seems that it was better than DVD too. Add the problems with legal Linux distro DVD players, and I think the consumer has lost out.
Slashdot Mirror
So it looks like Grim Fandango was right.
Whilst meanwhile, their stocks continue to fall.
Hi Will, I just wanted to ask you about your writing.
Would you please describe what you hope to achieve through your books and your writing in general. Which authors have influenced you? How did you find yourself writing in the first place? Are you working on anything at the moment?
I don't know if that was terrorism per se, but it should certainly have been punished appropriately. I suggest hanging for terrorists in general because it is the fitting punishment for murder; imprisonment or fines would be fitting for destruction of property.
Well, by the legitimate and legal English government at the time, the appropriate punishment would have been summary execution. You're arguing a very extreme point of view that undermines the establishment of the American republic. Not a compelling idea because you're arguing against the establishment of your own country. this seems absurd.
If they killed innocents, yes. As an example in our own recent history, the bombing of the USS Cole is not properly called a terrorist action: it was a military attack (and should have been responded to appropriately, with military force). The bombing of embassies is more of a grey area: on the one hand they are official representatives of our United States; on the other there are plenty of innocent folks who work there. The 11 September attacks are properly deemed terrorist, as they were attacks on civilian persons and businesses (the Pentagon attack was terrorist in that it involved the deaths of the civilians aboard the plane).
If you define terrorism solely as deliberately killing civilian targets in any capacity, then you could quite easily include the American forces in Iraq, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Dresden, the Vietnam war, the US backing of the Shah in Iran - all as terrorist acts. But history doesn't agree with such a narrow definition. througout World War 2 for example, collaborators with the Nazis were deliberately murdered - mayors, public servants, munitions makers, civilians - this wasn't terrorism by any conventional sense of the word, it was guerilla war.
I would suggest that terrorism isn't defined solely by killing civilians, but whether the killing of them are for a warranted and justifiable millitary objective. If for example, a civilian is an informant or a spy, or perhaps possesses political influence and is tyranising people, then they are not merely civilians by any means. Some IRA targets for instance were these types of targets - not just soldiers. The IRA killing Louis Mountbatten for instance was a good example of this tactic.
I agree however, that killing people like in 9/11 merely for provoking terror is a terrible form of cowardice and this sort of thing doesn't warrant much mercy. However, I think you're misinformed if you put the IRA into that category, as killing innocent children is not one of their objectives or strategies, although there's no denying that they have done so, and it is certainly a terrible act, but I would suggest not a deliberate one.
Nonethless, your comments don't seem to address the English occupation of Ireland, and the resultant terror and murder brought about by that occupation.
So who exactly aren't terrorists? Were the Founding Fathers or the revolutionaries involved in the Boston Tea Party?
Would you have them hanged? How about the people who fought in the French Revolution? Who exactly are terorists and who aren't?
Were the French and Italian resistances terrorists when they fought the Nazis?
If you want to compare Ireland to other things, try instead the sheer numbers of death brought about by English occupation compared to land size.
9/11 was a horrific event that has changed the world forever, and yet it only involved three buildings, four planes, and approximately three thousand deaths - comparatively little, and yet America has gone to war in two countries over it.
So size and statistics aren't really the appropriate yardstick alone for this sort of thing. Pearl Harbour for example was 2,403 dead. Really very few deaths when you think about it. (Although this in no way reduces the tragedy and horror of it of course).
However, if you want to get an idea of the number of people killed in Ireland in one instance of English occupation - From 1649 to 1652, one-third of the population of Ireland was destroyed. Twenty thousand Irish boys and girls also were sold into slavery to the West Indies.
By 1848 through deliberate English genocide, Ireland's population died by between than 2 to 5 million people. The number of European Jews killed in the Holocaust are estimated to be around 5,600,000 to 6,250,000.
So imagine that sort of ridiculously high number in such a small country. Of course, these figures don't discuss the total number of deaths in modern Irish history from English occupation. Unimaginable death, unimaginable suffering, in such a small country.
The modern Irish flag is based on the French tricolour, as a tribute to France. In fact, the Irish revolutionaries often flew the French tricoleur as a symbol of their struggle, in tribute to the French revolution.
Please remember that the IRA that fought in the War of Independence is not the same organisation as the Provisional IRA that has conducted a terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland in recent years. So it's unfair to say that "the British government would have us think that your grandfather was a terrorist".
My grandfather didn't distinguish between the old and provsional IRA - he killed police men, senior public servants - anyone who kept British rule going not just combatants. Oh, and my grandmother and great grandmother helped too. Same enemy, same cause as far as he was concerned, and any old IRA man would agree. Nobody voted for him to kill people, and in actual fact, very few people supported him back then too.
Until Ireland is free of English rule, she will always be perpetually at war with your British Monarchy, Government and People.
My grandfather was an I.R.A. terrorist who fought in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). The Catholic Church excommunicated him for his allegianaces too. Oh and he certainly killed plenty of Black and Tans.
Oh, but then the I.R.A. won the war, and he got a medal and a soldier's war pension, and the Catholic Church reinstated him. He never bothered with the Church again or with collecting his pension.
Today's terrorist could be tommorow's war hero. The British government even today would have you think that my grandfather was a terrorist, but the Irish nation is living proof that it isn't always so clear cut. It's terribly important that people decide for themselves who are the terrorists and who are not. Governments that think that they can decide for their citizens are merely tyrants, and tyrants often fall when they become intolerable.
Only the English love barren lifeless deserts and would want to preserve them in their pristine state.
Most people that live near or on a desert would rather change them into an oasis (or in this case terraform). Try living in, or travelling on one - it looses a great deal of it's romance very quickly.
All it now needs is a decent name, compatible with normal human speech.
Ahh, brains and an eccentric dresser - good for him.
Take a look at that snazzy outfit. He's made to multiply.
Microsoft often target computer hardware companies in Australia - doing surprise audits and that type of thing. The teenage pirate isn't as damaging to them as computer sellers.
Not a bad thing really however - because a great deal of Microsoft's monopoly has been achieved because people have pirated their software. It will likely be a way that consumers are forced to make the switch to Linux, because they'll be no way for them to access illegal copies.
A photo of Gert Mittring can be found here.
Please note his rather tasteful attire.
The page also has information on the actual rules on calculating the 13th root of a 100 digit number.
It's a credible, Zionist newspaper, so I'd say it's a fairly reliable source.
What part of this article exactly do you find idiotic?
Haaretz Daily
July 15, 2004
Odigo says workers were warned of attack (9/11)
By Yuval Dror
Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.
Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which imme-diately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.
"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.
As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.
Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.
An academic researcher should really know better than to ask a question and then answer it.
But of course, you're answer is correct. Ultima:Ascension for example never ever worked, and that's just one of many EA games that clearly indicated that the programmers were exhausted.
The whole problem would be quite easily solved if viable alternative distribution channels for games existed and perhaps if the market were more discerning. Companies like EA would then have to answer for their bad quality. Until viable channels exist, then the situation will likely continue. Of course a great deal of buyers are just kids and don't often make informed choices. I had to learn myself that the game screenshot was not the game, as a kid.
EA have been churning out buggy games for decades, and yes, the programmers are clearly overworked. The problem is, that the market and the consumer don't really mind that. Until there's an real commercial alternative, and people are more discerning, EA will continue on it's merry way.
Odigo - the same company that was forewarned of 9/11 - two hours before it happened. Info here.
Anyone who thinks that the CIA doesn't already have systems to automatically monitor email, chatrooms etc - needs to read a bit more on intelligence technology. This would fall under "Echelon" anyhow.
The NSF might lack the tools, but I sincerely doubt that the CIA are developing these sorts of very basic tools. More likely, the NSF aren't given access or information on the extent of CIA information gathering.
Also, I imagine such a news article makes the public likely to believe that the technology isn't already in active use.
What's so touching about his story involving Bali? He was a block away. My cousin, a former Australian professional footballer had literally just walked outside of the club. He survived, but some of his friends didn't. (May they rest in peace).
Levy had no actual connection to the Bali bombing other than being a block away and thinking about it. Personally, I find the attempt to literally involve him with the terrorist attack somewhat distasteful, particularily when other people were actually killed and lost friends in it.
All for dramatic writing effect - cheap and nasty journalism.
Yep, it's the layer change on DVDs that really annoys me. How could they imagine that the average consumer would be pleased with this?
On the Two Towers, it completely jars you out of the Middle Earth, and into "Swear at the DVD" land
Pardon me, yes, I should have said BetaCam.
I'll have a go at cleaning it, thanks. It was a pretty pricey Phillips player, so I expect better performance from it.
Whenever I complain about a scatched disk, they offer to give me the same film again. Usually however, having to watch the Max Headroom version is more than enough.
The number of scratched DVDs that I get from my video store, I think perhaps VHS was actually better. These DVD movies are just crap with their pausing and skipping. I bought a retail Lord of the Rings - Two Towers, and the quality and pausing on a new disc half way through were so bad, that I'm lkeaning towards thinking that we were better off with magnetic tapes. Perhaps Betamax gets the last laugh - it seems that it was better than DVD too. Add the problems with legal Linux distro DVD players, and I think the consumer has lost out.