But I doubt they'd leak it to another paper. I mean, it's completely infeasible that they would photocopy them before returning them, and leave them just lying around on a desk when another paper's reporter was there interviewing people for a story on the topic... (You writing this down, Oakland Tribune? Plausible deniability... it's a good thing!)
Nope. They've already been published on the internet, which means that Diebold can try all they like, but odds are since the document has been published,, can be republished.
Worst case scenario, they can't publish the report verbatim, but they can summarize it. Mark my words.
Actually, What the article doesn't tell you is it's completely worthless for ICBMs. It's only effective against short and medium range ballistic missiles. Somebody else said that this was a case of the military planning for the last war, and not the next war, and they're absolutely correct. This was planned in response to the Scud attacks against US troops, Kuwait, and Israel in the '91 Gulf War. Quite frankly, the Patriot Missiles didn't cut it, and their use was more effective as a propaganda effort than anti-missile effort.
This is more effective for future police actions against states like Iraq who have the capability to strike their neighbors. As the US is protected from short and medium range ballistic missiles by the pacific and atlantic (barring some odd twist with Canada, Mexico, or Cuba), this is actually an attempt at preventing a rogue state in a hostile situation from launching a 'last ditch' missile attack against neighbors.
Last I checked, between February 18, 1995 thru December 15, 2001 you were able to buy Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4 and NT5 (Aka Windows 2000). None of which have manditory registration.
As a result, Microsoft is completely incapable of having a record of who purchased their product.
Moreover, even if they did have such a list, they don't nessicarily have a list specifying the state in which the user resides, and as this rebate only applies to users in California...
Remember. The French, Germans, and Russians all had vested interests in keeping Hussein in power. Their arguements were not "He might not have WMD's", but rather "The Inspectors should disarm Iraq of WMD's". The Chinese had no vested interest, nor a host of other countries, and their intelligence agencies all reached the same conclusion as the US and UK intelligence: Saddam almost certainly has WMD's, but we can't prove it conclusively. Keep in mind that Saddam did have active programs. Stockpiles, however have not been found, though that does not equal proof they did not exist (There was significant border activity with Syria that they could have been transported out).
So why would all these different intelligence agencies reach the same (Now it looks possibly wrong) conclusion? Well, that's a more complex question than it sounds at first. The first part is quite simply that Saddam had a vested interest in making it appear that he still did have weapons. Iran was (and still is) a larger, more populous country with a historical grudge against Iraq (And I don't mean limited to the last few decades, or even century). While Iraq had a powerful military, it simply didn't have the numbers to defend itself from Iran if they decided to invade in full force. WMD's were the great equalizer, allowing Iraq to become much more powerful than its number would normally allow.
Second would be an intelligence failure. If the programs were indeed active but non-manufacturing, quite simply most intelligence agencies aren't equipped to deal with that possibility, including the CIA.
Third, Saddam was sending clear signals that he *did* have WMD's, even though he officially denied it every chance he got. Authorizing the use of chemical weapons and distributing chemical weapons gear to troops is a fairly blunt signal. For reasons why he, in retrospect, might have done this, see the first part.
That being said, if you want to be mad at the government, be mad at them for not looking at the best interest of your respective country. In the short run, the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Japan, Korea, and a few others got shafted big time in one way or another. Whether you view the long term benefit(s) as worth it is up to you, though.
Allright, I'll give the real world responce to each tactic.
C) Well, there are two sub options to this. How do you define 'careful'? Take it slow, allow the Iraqi Republican Guard to react, and drag the war on probably more months, possibly resulting in even more deaths because the operation couldn't be hastened preventing the Republican Guard from entrenching in Urban population centers (You think it's a mess now? Imagine if the regular army survived in the cities, command structure and all)? Or do you define it as completely avoiding civilian centers altogether, thus eliminating many high-priority targets from the contest all together? I mean, let's face it. The US did a bang-up job of NOT killing civilians, given how densely populated Baghdad is.
D) Oust Saddam without invading. Hate to break it to you, but it works in other countries because they don't have a massive military. Iraq, pre Gulf War, had the fourth largest military in the world, behind only the US, UK, and Russia. Post Gulf War, it was still nothing to sneeze at.
E) Before we decided to impose sanctions, Saddam freely gassed the Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, and Iranians to the east. After the sanctions, the Kurds were basically autonomous and their living conditions improved *greatly*. The Shiites, who still were controlled by Saddam, simply started getting killed by lack of food and medicine, rather than bullets and bombs and gasses and poisons.
F) For one thing, the regimes in those places collapsed due to total economic ruin. Iraq, on the other hand, sits atop the second largest proven oil reserve on the planet. The French, Germans, and Russians would not stop trading oil, as it was too profitable to each (Especially the Russians, who are cash strapped as it was).
I'd like to take this time to point out that many people will look at my response to F) and think: See! The War was about Oil! On the contrary. Oil is thrice removed from the equation. This war was about stability, Iraq being an unstable and powerful country is a dangerous mix. Iraq was powerful because they were rich. Iraq was rich because they had oil. It would be no different if they were rich from Industry, Oil, or some other natural resource. To see the damage a powerful unstable government can do, look at the mess the countries you listed in F) left. Nuclear Weapons for sale (Hell, a few years back, somebody in Miami Beach, Florida, USA was arrested for trying to sell a Russian Nuclear Warhead), Biological research either unguarded or up for sale to the highest bidder... I think you catch the drift.
Neal Stephenson rocks. Seriously. If you haven't already, read Snow Crash. You'll be glad you did.
Now that the fawning and praise and adoration is out of the way... He did an interesting essay a while back called In the Beginning was the Command Line. It's a good read.
Two years ago, I visited London. Outside of the parliament were huge signs demanding an end to the sanctions against Iraq. Why? Appx. 1,000 Iraqi children were dying each week, and that's only children age 2 or younger. The overall numbers of actual humans dying were a fair bit higher. Since the war started, www.IraqBodyCount.com (Full disclosure: An anti-war site which produced a rather inflated count, at least for a while) claims that, as of April 21, 2004, a min of 8897 and max of 10747 civilians have died. Seeing as the war started over a year ago, I'll round the number of weeks down to 52 weeks. Taking a likely inflated number, dividing by a known deflated number, and I get 207ish people dead a week. Yes, this is a horrid number. Look at it. Realize that each of those 207 people had a family, friends, and a life. Now look back up. Sanctions were killing five times as many people.
What seems to be advocated is a preference for death by inaction, rather than death by action. I'd honestly like to know, why is letting 1000 some odd children die because some asshat tyrant can't be trusted better than having a fifth as many die, while granting freedom and independance?
As long as there is a link to the spacecraft, updating *shouldn't* be a problem, for the reasons you just listed. They can't afford to launch a satellite only to discover there was a bug in the software and have it be worthless, so they design them with the ability to update in mind.
Heck, remember when the Spirit Mars Rover crashed? They updated the software afterwards on both rovers to prevent future crashed from happening.
Ah, but you forget that different wavelengths of light can be used in different capacities. For instance, Blu-Ray disks are higher capacity than traditional red-laser DVD's, due to the shorter wavelength. If this were the case, they would indeed prefer blue for functional reasons...
Then again, I doubt a machine would perform significantly better than Eliza at the current stage in AI development, so the favorite color could just be if(rand(2)){return "blue";} else {return "red";}...
I do use 'whatever I feel comfortable with'. That's Windows. I've also used Linux and Mac extensively. Yes, I know that my machine is not impenetrable. I also know that it's damn unlikely that, as I've taked great pains to secure my machine and don't provide that valuable a target, that somebody will gun for me.
My 'advocacy' and 'apologist' posts as you call them are nothing of the sort. Apple isn't an open vendor. Simply having a Unix based system does not change this (Are you saying SCO is open?). Apple doesn't like sharing, and you know what? Like I said in the original post, great for them. That's their niche, and it works. I'm not 'advocating' or 'apologist' in that statement.
This is why I stated that a Linux or *BSD solution would be more apt for their stated goals. It allows for a greater freedom in Hardware, and better meets the stated goal.
And I could easily claim that your post contains more than a fair bit of arrogance itself. I simply get sick of hearing the same shit repeated ad nauseam with little basis in reality (IE: 'Windows is so unstable!', 'Linux is so unusable for a novice!', and 'Apple is the greatest thing ever!', for example). Just because I'm tired of hearing said arguements which have little basis in reality, and as a result try and counter them, means little.
Robot: Danger Will Robinson! If you fall for this, your cranial capacity is minuscule! Danger! Dr. Smith: Shush, you blithering imbecile! Nobody could POSSIBLY fall for something so obviously fake!
Nice, that's only a handful of patches behind!
Thanks for being on the Internet, I sure appreciate the extra spam.
Well, considering I'm behind a Unix-based NAT router, *and* am running a third-party firewall, with a sprinkle of Antivirus, with a liberal dose of common sense (IE: Don't open attachments from people you don't know), I don't think I'm putting out any spam. But thanks for asking...
Note that I specifically said that I meant no offense. I, in fact, in some way admire that system, as it does tend to result in a well-functioning system as a whole.
I still stand by the point that Apple hardly qualifies as an 'open standard-based software and system' while they keep their hardware bundles to themselves.
That'll happen as soon as the rest of Slashdot stops holding the instability of the Win 9x series against Microsoft. (Currently typing this from an Win XP machine with a 91 day, 18 hour, 5 minute, 14 second uptime, give or take a few minutes as I'm double checking what I type).
I've found there are fewer memories longer than that of a geek annoyed...
Granted, but it's either stick with OS-X and be restricted to a much smaller subset of hardware they can choose from, or switch to Linux/*BSD and realize that Mac hardware *is* standard, and not exactly cheap.
Mac's prices are based on the fact that you have a stable system because, again, they control the hardware. If their goal was truely as stated, buying 'off-the-shelf' parts and installing Linux/*BSD would be just as effective and far cheaper...
Slashdot Mirror
Correct...
But I doubt they'd leak it to another paper. I mean, it's completely infeasible that they would photocopy them before returning them, and leave them just lying around on a desk when another paper's reporter was there interviewing people for a story on the topic... (You writing this down, Oakland Tribune? Plausible deniability... it's a good thing!)
So what you're saying is...
In the US, you vote for politicians. In Soviet Russia, poiticians vote for you?
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Nope. They've already been published on the internet, which means that Diebold can try all they like, but odds are since the document has been published,, can be republished.
Worst case scenario, they can't publish the report verbatim, but they can summarize it. Mark my words.
Actually, What the article doesn't tell you is it's completely worthless for ICBMs. It's only effective against short and medium range ballistic missiles. Somebody else said that this was a case of the military planning for the last war, and not the next war, and they're absolutely correct. This was planned in response to the Scud attacks against US troops, Kuwait, and Israel in the '91 Gulf War. Quite frankly, the Patriot Missiles didn't cut it, and their use was more effective as a propaganda effort than anti-missile effort.
This is more effective for future police actions against states like Iraq who have the capability to strike their neighbors. As the US is protected from short and medium range ballistic missiles by the pacific and atlantic (barring some odd twist with Canada, Mexico, or Cuba), this is actually an attempt at preventing a rogue state in a hostile situation from launching a 'last ditch' missile attack against neighbors.
Just a nit-pick.
You used the name Inigo Montana. I don't think it is what you think it is.
- Inigo Montoya
Last I checked, between February 18, 1995 thru December 15, 2001 you were able to buy Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4 and NT5 (Aka Windows 2000). None of which have manditory registration.
As a result, Microsoft is completely incapable of having a record of who purchased their product.
Moreover, even if they did have such a list, they don't nessicarily have a list specifying the state in which the user resides, and as this rebate only applies to users in California...
Define 'lied'.
Remember. The French, Germans, and Russians all had vested interests in keeping Hussein in power. Their arguements were not "He might not have WMD's", but rather "The Inspectors should disarm Iraq of WMD's". The Chinese had no vested interest, nor a host of other countries, and their intelligence agencies all reached the same conclusion as the US and UK intelligence: Saddam almost certainly has WMD's, but we can't prove it conclusively. Keep in mind that Saddam did have active programs. Stockpiles, however have not been found, though that does not equal proof they did not exist (There was significant border activity with Syria that they could have been transported out).
So why would all these different intelligence agencies reach the same (Now it looks possibly wrong) conclusion? Well, that's a more complex question than it sounds at first. The first part is quite simply that Saddam had a vested interest in making it appear that he still did have weapons. Iran was (and still is) a larger, more populous country with a historical grudge against Iraq (And I don't mean limited to the last few decades, or even century). While Iraq had a powerful military, it simply didn't have the numbers to defend itself from Iran if they decided to invade in full force. WMD's were the great equalizer, allowing Iraq to become much more powerful than its number would normally allow.
Second would be an intelligence failure. If the programs were indeed active but non-manufacturing, quite simply most intelligence agencies aren't equipped to deal with that possibility, including the CIA.
Third, Saddam was sending clear signals that he *did* have WMD's, even though he officially denied it every chance he got. Authorizing the use of chemical weapons and distributing chemical weapons gear to troops is a fairly blunt signal. For reasons why he, in retrospect, might have done this, see the first part.
That being said, if you want to be mad at the government, be mad at them for not looking at the best interest of your respective country. In the short run, the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Japan, Korea, and a few others got shafted big time in one way or another. Whether you view the long term benefit(s) as worth it is up to you, though.
Allright, I'll give the real world responce to each tactic.
C) Well, there are two sub options to this. How do you define 'careful'? Take it slow, allow the Iraqi Republican Guard to react, and drag the war on probably more months, possibly resulting in even more deaths because the operation couldn't be hastened preventing the Republican Guard from entrenching in Urban population centers (You think it's a mess now? Imagine if the regular army survived in the cities, command structure and all)? Or do you define it as completely avoiding civilian centers altogether, thus eliminating many high-priority targets from the contest all together? I mean, let's face it. The US did a bang-up job of NOT killing civilians, given how densely populated Baghdad is.
D) Oust Saddam without invading. Hate to break it to you, but it works in other countries because they don't have a massive military. Iraq, pre Gulf War, had the fourth largest military in the world, behind only the US, UK, and Russia. Post Gulf War, it was still nothing to sneeze at.
E) Before we decided to impose sanctions, Saddam freely gassed the Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, and Iranians to the east. After the sanctions, the Kurds were basically autonomous and their living conditions improved *greatly*. The Shiites, who still were controlled by Saddam, simply started getting killed by lack of food and medicine, rather than bullets and bombs and gasses and poisons.
F) For one thing, the regimes in those places collapsed due to total economic ruin. Iraq, on the other hand, sits atop the second largest proven oil reserve on the planet. The French, Germans, and Russians would not stop trading oil, as it was too profitable to each (Especially the Russians, who are cash strapped as it was).
I'd like to take this time to point out that many people will look at my response to F) and think: See! The War was about Oil! On the contrary. Oil is thrice removed from the equation. This war was about stability, Iraq being an unstable and powerful country is a dangerous mix. Iraq was powerful because they were rich. Iraq was rich because they had oil. It would be no different if they were rich from Industry, Oil, or some other natural resource. To see the damage a powerful unstable government can do, look at the mess the countries you listed in F) left. Nuclear Weapons for sale (Hell, a few years back, somebody in Miami Beach, Florida, USA was arrested for trying to sell a Russian Nuclear Warhead), Biological research either unguarded or up for sale to the highest bidder... I think you catch the drift.
Neal Stephenson rocks. Seriously. If you haven't already, read Snow Crash. You'll be glad you did.
Now that the fawning and praise and adoration is out of the way... He did an interesting essay a while back called In the Beginning was the Command Line. It's a good read.
Define 'needless deaths'.
Two years ago, I visited London. Outside of the parliament were huge signs demanding an end to the sanctions against Iraq. Why? Appx. 1,000 Iraqi children were dying each week, and that's only children age 2 or younger. The overall numbers of actual humans dying were a fair bit higher. Since the war started, www.IraqBodyCount.com (Full disclosure: An anti-war site which produced a rather inflated count, at least for a while) claims that, as of April 21, 2004, a min of 8897 and max of 10747 civilians have died. Seeing as the war started over a year ago, I'll round the number of weeks down to 52 weeks. Taking a likely inflated number, dividing by a known deflated number, and I get 207ish people dead a week. Yes, this is a horrid number. Look at it. Realize that each of those 207 people had a family, friends, and a life. Now look back up. Sanctions were killing five times as many people.
What seems to be advocated is a preference for death by inaction, rather than death by action. I'd honestly like to know, why is letting 1000 some odd children die because some asshat tyrant can't be trusted better than having a fifth as many die, while granting freedom and independance?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those! Hours of parking time could be finished in minutes!
Even worse, they didn't set the ISMALICIOUS flag, in *clear* violation of RFC-3514...
As long as there is a link to the spacecraft, updating *shouldn't* be a problem, for the reasons you just listed. They can't afford to launch a satellite only to discover there was a bug in the software and have it be worthless, so they design them with the ability to update in mind.
Heck, remember when the Spirit Mars Rover crashed? They updated the software afterwards on both rovers to prevent future crashed from happening.
Ah, but you forget that different wavelengths of light can be used in different capacities. For instance, Blu-Ray disks are higher capacity than traditional red-laser DVD's, due to the shorter wavelength. If this were the case, they would indeed prefer blue for functional reasons...
Then again, I doubt a machine would perform significantly better than Eliza at the current stage in AI development, so the favorite color could just be if(rand(2)){return "blue";} else {return "red";}...
I believe UserLinux is GNOME only...
As an actual link: Connectiva's Technology Preview Page
I do use 'whatever I feel comfortable with'. That's Windows. I've also used Linux and Mac extensively. Yes, I know that my machine is not impenetrable. I also know that it's damn unlikely that, as I've taked great pains to secure my machine and don't provide that valuable a target, that somebody will gun for me.
My 'advocacy' and 'apologist' posts as you call them are nothing of the sort. Apple isn't an open vendor. Simply having a Unix based system does not change this (Are you saying SCO is open?). Apple doesn't like sharing, and you know what? Like I said in the original post, great for them. That's their niche, and it works. I'm not 'advocating' or 'apologist' in that statement.
This is why I stated that a Linux or *BSD solution would be more apt for their stated goals. It allows for a greater freedom in Hardware, and better meets the stated goal.
And I could easily claim that your post contains more than a fair bit of arrogance itself. I simply get sick of hearing the same shit repeated ad nauseam with little basis in reality (IE: 'Windows is so unstable!', 'Linux is so unusable for a novice!', and 'Apple is the greatest thing ever!', for example). Just because I'm tired of hearing said arguements which have little basis in reality, and as a result try and counter them, means little.
Sorry, I'm not biting.
Perhaps a 'Lost in Space' joke was lost on somebody, but it hardly seems 'offtopic'... overrated, on the other hand...
Robot: Danger Will Robinson! If you fall for this, your cranial capacity is minuscule! Danger!
Dr. Smith: Shush, you blithering imbecile! Nobody could POSSIBLY fall for something so obviously fake!
In which case they could simply purchase Linux-based Desktops from, say, HP.
Apple is expensive. It does have its many niches, but enterprise solution is *not* one of them for a reason.
Note that I specifically said that I meant no offense. I, in fact, in some way admire that system, as it does tend to result in a well-functioning system as a whole.
I still stand by the point that Apple hardly qualifies as an 'open standard-based software and system' while they keep their hardware bundles to themselves.
That'll happen as soon as the rest of Slashdot stops holding the instability of the Win 9x series against Microsoft. (Currently typing this from an Win XP machine with a 91 day, 18 hour, 5 minute, 14 second uptime, give or take a few minutes as I'm double checking what I type).
I've found there are fewer memories longer than that of a geek annoyed...
I'm more of the mindset that it's interesting that they *could* do such things, than they *are* doing such things.
Like I said though, I'm a pretty big fan'o'google...
Granted, but it's either stick with OS-X and be restricted to a much smaller subset of hardware they can choose from, or switch to Linux/*BSD and realize that Mac hardware *is* standard, and not exactly cheap.
Mac's prices are based on the fact that you have a stable system because, again, they control the hardware. If their goal was truely as stated, buying 'off-the-shelf' parts and installing Linux/*BSD would be just as effective and far cheaper...