You make a lot of strong comments, but don't back anything up, so let me help.
I said, "The entire world believed Saddam to have WMD." I thought it common knowledge, but maybe I should have cited it anyway. How about UN Resolution 1441. According to the Wiki, it was passed Unanimously by the UN. I translate that roughly to mean "the entire world."
You talk about the economy, but I wasn't really talking about the overall economy at all. I was talking about the deficit spending, which you had no response to, and I can't blame you. The facts are simple, the Republican congress balanced the budget. But since you brought up the economy, here's a brief history. Clinton had a great economy when he was President. There's one problem though. The dot-com bubble. During his later years, Amazon.com was worth more than the entire airline industry. That was an artificial high: An artificially high economy. The dot-com bubble burst _before_ Clinton left office. The economy was heading downward during the last few months of Clinton. Then Bush took office. The economy still was heading downward. Then 9/11 hit and the economy tanked. But.... Since then it's come back. It's come back since the 9/11 low. Do you realize the nation is at full employment and has been since 2004? You don't hear that in the news every day, do you. So if you want to talk about the economy, I'll just say that both Clinton and W have had great economies, but look at what Clinton had going for him, and look what Bush had working against him.
Again with the "Bush Lying" crap. See UN Resolution 1441. If you have some argument based on that I would truly like to hear it.
Again with the "$45 TRILLION debt he's given us." He didn't give us the _whole_ 45 Trillion. I stated that in my previous post.
About "Letting Osama go at Tora Bora," I think the phrase you meant to say was that Bin Laden _escaped_ from Tora Bora. You make it sound like we had him in handcuffs and we let him go. That's not the case. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had Clinton on a silver platter multiple times, and didn't take him. Here's one link, you can find more.
I'd like to respond to the Pakistan thing, but I simply don't have time as I have to be somewhere.
The only reason Clinton had a budget surplus is because the Republican congress dragged him kicking and screaming into going along with it. Do you remember the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996? The President doesn't make the budget, congress does, and for 6 of 8 years, Bill Clinton had a Republican congress. In addition, the "$45-65 TRILLION debt" that you talk about isn't _all_ Bush's fault. We've been in debt since FDR, through Republican and Democratic Presidents, but you know who held Congress for _most_ of that time (remember, Congress, who makes the budget?), Democrats.
An earlier post talks about the missing Bin Laden. If you Bush-haters want to talk about Bin Laden, let's talk about how the Clinton Administration had multiple opportunities to take out Bin Laden and did _nothing_. The first google result for "Bin Laden Clinton" gives this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/ . Note that MSNBC is not exactly your "right-wing conspiracy" news outlet.
You have to give the President a lot of credit for doing what's right in the war (both of them) and not giving a damn about what the anti-Bush media says about it. What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right. For the most part, he knows what is right and he's doing it. Sure, I don't agree with all of it, (like the Medicare part D cluster), but being tough on Islamic Facism is the right thing. Sure, the administration "misunderestimated" the cost and the difficulty of Iraq, but that doesn't mean that it was wrong to go there in the first place. Let's remember properly if we can. Congress voted overwhelmingly to go into Iraq. Overwhelmingly means Democrats and Republicans alike voted to go to war. The US Constitution grants congress the power to go to war. Because of this, the whole "The war is unconstitutional" crap needs to stop, too. It isn't Bush's war, it's congress's. In addition, Bush didn't lie. The entire world believed Saddam to have WMD. We only know that once he finally let us in to inspect that he didn't have them _anymore_. Remember how he stalled every single time the UN inspectors wanted to inspect anything? Why would he stall like that if not to move weapons out? We know he had them at some point; he used them on his own people.
I'm tired of all the doubletalk from the Democrats. They just want to be on both sides of every issue. They voted to go to war, and now they want to cut and run before the job is done there. Doesn't being part of removing a cruel dictator from power and making Iraq a free and democratically elected state make you proud to be an American? People over there aren't oppressed anymore. Remember Saddam's sons? Remember the mass graves and the rape rooms? Doesn't that sound to you like an oppressed people? It does to me. Iraq is much better off now, and the United States "unilaterally" made that happen. There's a lot of good happening over there, and the Democrats hate the idea that anything good should happen while Republicans are in charge. Fortunately for them, the major media outlets are on their side, reporting only the bad about the war and not the good things that are happening over there.
"... it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring." - Romans 9:8
Not the acutal decendents of Abraham, but the "Spiritual" children of Abraham.
Rough numbers from http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ indicate (using the maximum numbers, and considering the time period to be three years when it's really more like 3.5) put the death rate at 48.6 per 100,000 per year.
From http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ (eh, it looks legit enough), the murder rate in the United states in 2005 was 5.5 per 100,000. In Washington DC in 2000 (the last year there was data for on that site), the rate was 41.7 per 100,000. In 1997, the rate in DC was 56.8 per 100,000. That's higher than in the "Civil war" state of Iraq. So in reality, Iraqis should feel _more_ safe than people who lived in the Capital of the Free World in 1997, and about as safe as people who live in DC today.
... that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures...
"Existing laws and procedures" include requiring a court order to get at this kind of data.
Sounds to me like the 4th amendment isn't being violated. Thanks for the refresher on the US Constitution.
US dead: 2600+. WMD: 0. Bin Laden: still at large.
Hate to say we told you so...
So he got rid of his weapons at the last minute. Didn't the whole world know that he had them? Didn't he use them on his own people (well, people in his country (Kurds in the North))? Before the war, the UN agreed he had WMD (Resolution 1441). The thing the UN didn't agree with the US on was going to war over it. So essentially, the UN didn't think they should enforce their own resolutions. Both political parties voted to go to war. That makes this Congress's war, not Bush's. On top of that, we found evidence of a nuclear weapons program. We found small amounts of chemical weapons which the media just dismissed as being "left over from the Iran-Iraq war." I guess WMD's aren't as dangerous if they're left over from a previous war. I apparently missed that chemistry lesson.
So while we're at it, lets add some more stats to your signature. Iraqi people: Unoppressed. Saddam Hussein: In custody. His murdering and rapist sons: Dead. Number of free elections: > 1. Government: Representative. Civil liberties of the Iraqi people: Immesurably increased.
Tapped embassy communications? You mean they tapped communications involving people located in the United States? That's civil liberties travesty, isn't it? Oh wait, that actually worked? Oh, you were tapping the communications of people who were communicating with known bad guys (in this case Soviets). Huh. From reading Slashdot, I thought that kind of thing was wrong. Or is it only wrong when the Bush Administration does it? I'm confused.
What is it about George Bush that makes conservatives want to give him authority unchecked by due process, separation of power, and public scrutiny? Has that whole "power corrupts" idea been rescinded? I didn't see that memo. Did I miss something?
Maybe it's just you. Or maybe it's the liberal media's distorting of facts by glossing over phrases like "with a court order" and focusing on phrases that sell newspapers, like "domestic spying." Last I checked, a majority of American voters re-elected this administration _after_ the Patriot Act. Maybe you're the one that doesn't really get it.
Because this kind of thing happens all the time. Probable cause happens to mean a _lot_ more than searching for the word uranium on the internet. In fact, if you're still looking up uranium on google, you probably aren't even close to being able to carry out a terrorist attack with any kind of nuclear weapon. People take this privacy crap to an extreme end. Consider this one..... Did you know that the government can track your automobile? That's right, there's a plate on the back of your car with a number on it, and any police officer can run that number through his computer and find out where you live. Next thing you know, the cops who drive Fords are going to start going to people's houses and arresting the Chevy drivers. Maybe they'll do it with black helicopters at night. See how absurd it sounds? Your argument sounds the same.
I love how people think that "companies," "big evil corporations," etc are the ones who need to be punished or taxed or whatever for $PROBLEM. Who are these companies? Shareholders. Who holds these shares? If you have a 401K, _you_ do.
So let's punish them real good.
Alan.
I work for a company that does Microsoft Office Automation (flames to/dev/null; it pays the bills), and I can tell you the reason to do this. But before I do, I will confirm what all of you are thinking. Yes it is a royal pain in the butt to do. Sure you might be able to read a book and get some toy examples going quickly, but as the application grows it quickly becomes much harder to maintain than a stand-alone product. We look like idiots on a regular basis because we deliver software with bugs in it. Now I know that most software has bugs, but bugs when you're automating Office (we do mostly PPT) are generally much worse than those in normal stand-alone software. We get stuff like PowerPoint crashing, VB errors, partial functionality, the add-in just not loading, and a boatload of others that I'm forgetting. In addition, a whole host things have to be just right on the target machine for the thing to even run at all. Good luck supporting multiple Office versions or even multiple Windows versions using the same version of Office without thoroughly testing each combination. Stupid errors seem to always show up when just using a different version of Windows. On top of all that, the paradigm seems to be to write these add-ins in VB (it may be possible to do otherwise but I don't work directly on the PPT integration.). Since it's in VB, all access to C++ code has to come from COM, so we have to make COM wrappers for _everything_. As soon as you add COM, you get the joy of registering and unregistering DLLs, Applications not starting properly, and general COM Hell. (Anyone who says that COM fixes DLL Hell is out of their mind. COM is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire).
All that said, why would one go through such a painstaking process to make apps in PowerPoint (or Excel) when they could just make the apps themselves? The reason is that people get a warm and fuzzy feeling about using PowerPoint. I know this is a long way removed from the people who read Slashdot, but the laymen get _really_ attached to their software. People _feel_ at home when using programs they're used to, even though in reality, they aren't making a presentation or a spreadsheet even, but something entirely different, and they're using different command toolbars and menus to do it. We say crap like, "If you know how to use PowerPoint, you know how to use our stuff," and people eat it up with a spoon even though it is completely untrue.
Bottom line: it _sells software_, and as much as I hate the idea of bending over for Microsoft's ultimate goal of complete vendor lock-in, selling software is what people are in business to do.
The idea is to get a more recent standard such that when it gets widely adopted, you are ready for it, rather than having to upgrade or add cards when it does become popular.
Oh, I see. So buy it now while it's new and expensive and no one else uses it (making it no better than the older standard), so you don't have to do a cheap upgrade later when it gets popular.
Some of the C++ tests would not compile. I've never been very good at decoding GCC's error messages, so if I couldn't fix a test with a trivial modification, I didn't include it in my benchmarks.
That's Great! I can't figure out GCC's error messages, but I offer definitive proof that Java is faster than C++.
Nice.
Yeah, we've just switched to all FDDI around here. We just figure that fiber is going to be the future, so we junked all our 10/100 equipment. Interestingly enough, the internet doesn't really feel any faster yet, but we've got our guy working on it. It must just be some configuration problem. It's light, right? It has to be faster than copper.
Slashdot Mirror
I said, "The entire world believed Saddam to have WMD." I thought it common knowledge, but maybe I should have cited it anyway. How about UN Resolution 1441. According to the Wiki, it was passed Unanimously by the UN. I translate that roughly to mean "the entire world."
You talk about the economy, but I wasn't really talking about the overall economy at all. I was talking about the deficit spending, which you had no response to, and I can't blame you. The facts are simple, the Republican congress balanced the budget. But since you brought up the economy, here's a brief history. Clinton had a great economy when he was President. There's one problem though. The dot-com bubble. During his later years, Amazon.com was worth more than the entire airline industry. That was an artificial high: An artificially high economy. The dot-com bubble burst _before_ Clinton left office. The economy was heading downward during the last few months of Clinton. Then Bush took office. The economy still was heading downward. Then 9/11 hit and the economy tanked. But.... Since then it's come back. It's come back since the 9/11 low. Do you realize the nation is at full employment and has been since 2004? You don't hear that in the news every day, do you. So if you want to talk about the economy, I'll just say that both Clinton and W have had great economies, but look at what Clinton had going for him, and look what Bush had working against him.
Again with the "Bush Lying" crap. See UN Resolution 1441. If you have some argument based on that I would truly like to hear it.
Again with the "$45 TRILLION debt he's given us." He didn't give us the _whole_ 45 Trillion. I stated that in my previous post.
About "Letting Osama go at Tora Bora," I think the phrase you meant to say was that Bin Laden _escaped_ from Tora Bora. You make it sound like we had him in handcuffs and we let him go. That's not the case. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had Clinton on a silver platter multiple times, and didn't take him. Here's one link, you can find more.
I'd like to respond to the Pakistan thing, but I simply don't have time as I have to be somewhere.
Alan.
The only reason Clinton had a budget surplus is because the Republican congress dragged him kicking and screaming into going along with it. Do you remember the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996? The President doesn't make the budget, congress does, and for 6 of 8 years, Bill Clinton had a Republican congress. In addition, the "$45-65 TRILLION debt" that you talk about isn't _all_ Bush's fault. We've been in debt since FDR, through Republican and Democratic Presidents, but you know who held Congress for _most_ of that time (remember, Congress, who makes the budget?), Democrats.
An earlier post talks about the missing Bin Laden. If you Bush-haters want to talk about Bin Laden, let's talk about how the Clinton Administration had multiple opportunities to take out Bin Laden and did _nothing_. The first google result for "Bin Laden Clinton" gives this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/ . Note that MSNBC is not exactly your "right-wing conspiracy" news outlet.
You have to give the President a lot of credit for doing what's right in the war (both of them) and not giving a damn about what the anti-Bush media says about it. What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right. For the most part, he knows what is right and he's doing it. Sure, I don't agree with all of it, (like the Medicare part D cluster), but being tough on Islamic Facism is the right thing. Sure, the administration "misunderestimated" the cost and the difficulty of Iraq, but that doesn't mean that it was wrong to go there in the first place. Let's remember properly if we can. Congress voted overwhelmingly to go into Iraq. Overwhelmingly means Democrats and Republicans alike voted to go to war. The US Constitution grants congress the power to go to war. Because of this, the whole "The war is unconstitutional" crap needs to stop, too. It isn't Bush's war, it's congress's. In addition, Bush didn't lie. The entire world believed Saddam to have WMD. We only know that once he finally let us in to inspect that he didn't have them _anymore_. Remember how he stalled every single time the UN inspectors wanted to inspect anything? Why would he stall like that if not to move weapons out? We know he had them at some point; he used them on his own people.
I'm tired of all the doubletalk from the Democrats. They just want to be on both sides of every issue. They voted to go to war, and now they want to cut and run before the job is done there. Doesn't being part of removing a cruel dictator from power and making Iraq a free and democratically elected state make you proud to be an American? People over there aren't oppressed anymore. Remember Saddam's sons? Remember the mass graves and the rape rooms? Doesn't that sound to you like an oppressed people? It does to me. Iraq is much better off now, and the United States "unilaterally" made that happen. There's a lot of good happening over there, and the Democrats hate the idea that anything good should happen while Republicans are in charge. Fortunately for them, the major media outlets are on their side, reporting only the bad about the war and not the good things that are happening over there.
Alan.
"... it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring." - Romans 9:8
Not the acutal decendents of Abraham, but the "Spiritual" children of Abraham.
Some stats on Iraqi's living in fear:
Rough numbers from http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ indicate (using the maximum numbers, and considering the time period to be three years when it's really more like 3.5) put the death rate at 48.6 per 100,000 per year.
From http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ (eh, it looks legit enough), the murder rate in the United states in 2005 was 5.5 per 100,000. In Washington DC in 2000 (the last year there was data for on that site), the rate was 41.7 per 100,000. In 1997, the rate in DC was 56.8 per 100,000. That's higher than in the "Civil war" state of Iraq. So in reality, Iraqis should feel _more_ safe than people who lived in the Capital of the Free World in 1997, and about as safe as people who live in DC today.
Nobody is spying on you! The authorities would need a court order to get the data from your ISP.
So while we're at it, lets add some more stats to your signature. Iraqi people: Unoppressed. Saddam Hussein: In custody. His murdering and rapist sons: Dead. Number of free elections: > 1. Government: Representative. Civil liberties of the Iraqi people: Immesurably increased.
Tapped embassy communications? You mean they tapped communications involving people located in the United States? That's civil liberties travesty, isn't it? Oh wait, that actually worked? Oh, you were tapping the communications of people who were communicating with known bad guys (in this case Soviets). Huh. From reading Slashdot, I thought that kind of thing was wrong. Or is it only wrong when the Bush Administration does it? I'm confused.
Because this kind of thing happens all the time. Probable cause happens to mean a _lot_ more than searching for the word uranium on the internet. In fact, if you're still looking up uranium on google, you probably aren't even close to being able to carry out a terrorist attack with any kind of nuclear weapon. People take this privacy crap to an extreme end. Consider this one..... Did you know that the government can track your automobile? That's right, there's a plate on the back of your car with a number on it, and any police officer can run that number through his computer and find out where you live. Next thing you know, the cops who drive Fords are going to start going to people's houses and arresting the Chevy drivers. Maybe they'll do it with black helicopters at night. See how absurd it sounds? Your argument sounds the same.
I love how people think that "companies," "big evil corporations," etc are the ones who need to be punished or taxed or whatever for $PROBLEM. Who are these companies? Shareholders. Who holds these shares? If you have a 401K, _you_ do.
So let's punish them real good.
Alan.
I work for a company that does Microsoft Office Automation (flames to /dev/null; it pays the bills), and I can tell you the reason to do this. But before I do, I will confirm what all of you are thinking. Yes it is a royal pain in the butt to do. Sure you might be able to read a book and get some toy examples going quickly, but as the application grows it quickly becomes much harder to maintain than a stand-alone product. We look like idiots on a regular basis because we deliver software with bugs in it. Now I know that most software has bugs, but bugs when you're automating Office (we do mostly PPT) are generally much worse than those in normal stand-alone software. We get stuff like PowerPoint crashing, VB errors, partial functionality, the add-in just not loading, and a boatload of others that I'm forgetting. In addition, a whole host things have to be just right on the target machine for the thing to even run at all. Good luck supporting multiple Office versions or even multiple Windows versions using the same version of Office without thoroughly testing each combination. Stupid errors seem to always show up when just using a different version of Windows. On top of all that, the paradigm seems to be to write these add-ins in VB (it may be possible to do otherwise but I don't work directly on the PPT integration.). Since it's in VB, all access to C++ code has to come from COM, so we have to make COM wrappers for _everything_. As soon as you add COM, you get the joy of registering and unregistering DLLs, Applications not starting properly, and general COM Hell. (Anyone who says that COM fixes DLL Hell is out of their mind. COM is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire).
:)
All that said, why would one go through such a painstaking process to make apps in PowerPoint (or Excel) when they could just make the apps themselves? The reason is that people get a warm and fuzzy feeling about using PowerPoint. I know this is a long way removed from the people who read Slashdot, but the laymen get _really_ attached to their software. People _feel_ at home when using programs they're used to, even though in reality, they aren't making a presentation or a spreadsheet even, but something entirely different, and they're using different command toolbars and menus to do it. We say crap like, "If you know how to use PowerPoint, you know how to use our stuff," and people eat it up with a spoon even though it is completely untrue.
Bottom line: it _sells software_, and as much as I hate the idea of bending over for Microsoft's ultimate goal of complete vendor lock-in, selling software is what people are in business to do.
I hope my boss doesn't read this
The fact that the parent is modded +5 Insightful just reeks of rationalization.
I did NOT do anything wrong. The hatch just BLEW. It was a GLITCH. It was a- a TECHNICAL MALFUNCTION. Why in hell won't anyone believe me?
How about Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols?
Oh, I see. So buy it now while it's new and expensive and no one else uses it (making it no better than the older standard), so you don't have to do a cheap upgrade later when it gets popular.
That's Great! I can't figure out GCC's error messages, but I offer definitive proof that Java is faster than C++. Nice.
Yeah, we've just switched to all FDDI around here. We just figure that fiber is going to be the future, so we junked all our 10/100 equipment. Interestingly enough, the internet doesn't really feel any faster yet, but we've got our guy working on it. It must just be some configuration problem. It's light, right? It has to be faster than copper.